Heat: Music from the Motion Picture [Soundtrack]

Elliot Goldenthal | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (December 19, 1995)
• Original Release Date: December 19, 1995
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Soundtrack
• Label: Warner Bros / Wea
• ASIN: B000002N4J
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,424 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #74 in Music > Music Deals > $7.99 and Under

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This is a downbeat and brainy set of mostly instrumental tracks from the likes of Kronos Quartet, ECM guitarist Terje Rypdal, guitarist Michael Brook, and Lisa (Dead Can Dance) Gerrard. Highlights include "Always Forever Now" by Passengers (Brian Eno, U2), and Moby's mordant cover of Joy Division's "New Dawn Fades." --Jeff Bateman

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Soundtrack I've Ever Heard., November 26, 2003

By 

Erik R. Olson (Dublin, CA, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Heat: Music from the Motion Picture (Audio CD)

Period.

It helps, of course, to be deeply in love with the movie too -- as I am.

When I first saw Heat in December of 1995, and sat through the closing credits scored by Moby's "God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters," I knew I had to own the soundtrack. Knew it. The music was so deeply emotional, so heavy with sorrow at times and uplifting on the closing track, that I had no other choice.

Kronos Quartet's title track soothes my being from the very first note. The strings are so warm and personal, so richly laden with a tranquility that brings me peace even when I've had a miserable day. I feel like I am capable of anything when I hear these notes. The music shifts at about 2:25 to a more industrial, aggro sound, but the change is not at all jarring or unnatural. An absolutely amazing intro to the soundtrack.

"Always Forever Now" is a fast-paced, entrancing, bass-heavy, uplifting piece, and I see no reason to gripe about the minor differences between this version and that found on the Passengers' album.

"Condensers" is built around the most mournful guitar piece I have ever heard. A beautiful, emotional piece of music.
Terje Rypdal's jazz/blues guitar contributions, "Last Nite" and "Mystery Man," are every bit as strong, capturing Neil and Eady's relationship in dark, moody, intense instrumentals.

Michael Brooks' "Ultramarine" is one of the less brooding pieces, and I believe it was used to great effect in the scene outside the restaurant, when Vincent and his crew watch Neil's gang for the first time from the top of a building.

"Of Helplessness" is probably the saddest piece of music on the album -- and that's saying something. Only strings here, used in a scene I don't want to spoil for those readers who have not yet seen Heat. But it conveys precisely why Vincent is the kind of detective he is; he sees so much human misery in any given day, so much pain, that it's all he can do to bottle it and let it fuel him in pursuit of his suspects.

Track eleven, Moby's cover of "New Dawn Fades," is best heard on a dark summer night in a very fast car on a wide open freeway. That's how it is used in the movie, and it's hard to imagine it any other way. It has a sense of danger, pursuit, and above all, speed. I have not heard the Joy Division version of this song, but I have a hard time imagining it would be this powerful. A song you'll never forget.

"Force Marker," the Brian Eno industrial synth track, is fast, tense, and repetitive. It suits the bank scene perfectly, but might be a little grating in other contexts.

The two Lisa Gerrard tracks, "La Bas" and "Gloradin," are moving, somber, dark pieces of music. Hearing these two tracks will make you think your best friend just died. Not the sort of thing you always want to listen to, but they certainly fit some moods.

"Run Uphill," a very pretty strings and guitars piece, fits this soundtrack nicely. However, it is not the actual piece of music used in the film during that scene. What I am remembering in the movie is not anywhere on the soundtrack, but it would be certainly welcome here. One of the few "if only"s I can think of for the whole thing.

"Predator Diorama" is aptly named; here we are in the tense, adrenaline-filled world of Neil McCauley in the last few minutes of the movie. If you've seen Heat, and remember the movie well enough to associate this track with the scene it represents, then this piece will be a deeply gratifying experience when you're in a vindictive and wrathful mood.

Like the movie, the soundtrack concludes with Moby's "God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters." It's a remarkably simple tune, but also deeply, almost religiously affecting. It consists of a twinkling piano pattern, like rainfall or sunlight, against the backdrop of soaring strings and crashing cymbals. Yet another tune that is impossible to forget. Occasionally it can almost move me to tears. I know that it lacks the bridge found in the movie, but I think that was a device inserted for purposes specific to the movie (the bridge hits right when the screen goes black to credits) and therefore I cannot object to its absence here. This version is just as strong without that change.

Of the tracks I did not specifically mention, only Einsturzende Neubauten's "Armenia" is out of place; this track is used only briefly in the movie, and the screaming is really quite ugly.

This is more than just a soundtrack. This is a cohesive, dark, moving tapestry of sound that transcends the whole notion of "music from a movie." It's an album of its own. This is a stirring 21-track CD, beautiful in the context of the movie or completely by itself. I would buy this CD again even if the replacement cost me fifty bucks. A must-have.

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Closing Music from the Film is not the Version on this Album, September 22, 2005

By 

B. Johnson (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Heat: Music from the Motion Picture (Audio CD)

If you are looking for the music to the closing scene of the film, the music that reaches an almost religious apex, the soundtrack does not contain it. That song is indeed called "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters" and it is by Moby, but that song exists in several versions. The version included here on the soundtrack album has the twinkling piano and chords, but does not reach the rousing synth high, as found in the film. For the version closest to what appears in the film, see Moby's album "I Like to Score."

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars (mostly) highs and (a few) lows, February 3, 2000

By 

Reg Primrose (Peebles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heat: Music from the Motion Picture (Audio CD)

The breezy, sprawling strings that open (what I will call, as it has 3 distinct parts, but is only listed as one track) Kronos Quartet's Heat suite as we watch the train pull into the station, rates as my all time favourite movie opening. For me it remains awesome (in the true sense of the word) every time I see it. This soundtrack goes on to beautifully punctuate Michael Mann's masterpiece. But it also stands on it's own as an album. Mann has a very keen sense of the way music and pictures can work together, and in Heat, everything falls gorgeously intro place.

However, I have 2 gripes about this soundtrack, pedantic as they may be - First, The version (on my disc, at any rate) of Moby's 'God Moving Over the Face of the Waters' is NOT the version heard in the film, and is missing a vital bridge that the film's climax hinges on! That REALLY annoys me - if I buy 'music from the motion picture', that is what I damn well expect to get! (if you want a better version, get Moby's album 'I Like to Score', but that version doesn't sound as 'big' so you never get the real thing, if you know what I mean). Secondly, for such a major and (what they must have known was going to be) historic production, the sleeve design seems uncaringly slapped together and lame. I would love to see this redesigned and reassembled by someone who cares. I realise it's not a major seller, but maybe for some anniversary re-release with the movie it would be nice to see such a fine film getting all the treatment it deserves even if it is only for the more passionate collectors.