Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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54 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Music of the Spheres comes to Earth via the Amazon, May 2, 2003
Whatever you may think of Solaris the movie (the friends I saw it with were too busy hating it to even NOTICE it had a soundtrack), the original motion picture score is an amazing, hypnotic, deeply moving musical experience unlike any other you've had at the movies. Without any recognizable song structure or hummable melody line, composer Cliff Martinez has created a distinctive, haunting sound which stays with you for months after hearing it. Imagine the music from the train ride sequence in Risky Business played marimba-style on muted steel drums, with occasional waves of sweeping, weeping violins and/or horns for accent. The musical conceit running throughout seems to be a basso ostenuto of three ascending notes played over and over with driving urgency, holding the piece together, while steel drums dance, reverberate, and tilt liltingly through, around, and beyond it like a celestial light show.
To give just a little background for anyone who hasn't seen the movie, Solaris deals with the cost of love, the abuses we heap on each other in the name of love, and the price we'd pay to restore lost loves. Solaris is the name of a planet in deep space (covered by a sentient ocean, in the book) being explored some decades in our future by a crew whose mission is to determine if the rays given off by the planet can be used as an alternate source of fuel for a seriously energy-depleted Earth. A byproduct of the anomalous energy is that it can give physical form to your deepest, most private desire. In just about every case, that desire turns out to be a love that went wrong and ended in death, a relative spurned, a wife or lover rejected or neglected, who later died. Martinez does an incredible job of embodying all the different aspects of the story - the vast emptiness of deep space, the alien-ness of the planet, the tenderness and heartache that accompany self-discovery, and most importantly the poignancy of love lost, regained, lost once more...and perhaps regained one final time.
The tracks basically use three arrangements: the steel drum sound described above, a much slower-paced, lullaby-like arrangement using an instrument which sounds like a child's music box played backwards (sounding a lot like the intro of "Prayer for the Dying" by Seal, before the guitar kicks in), and a slightly more conventional arrangement using sustained minor or even dissonant chords of horns and woodwinds, reminiscent of the more ominous tracks of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Some, like "Will She Come Back" and "Don't Blow It," will amaze you with their ability to affect you with their careful, gentle wash of notes that build to a thrumming intensity, giving physical form (as does the anomalous planet in the movie) to both sadness and hope; even though the pieces were designed for specific sequences in the movie, they are universal enough for each listener to claim them as his own, calling up memories of loss and desire to "illustrate" each one.
I wish words could do this album justice, but that is its genius - it has to be heard to even begin to be appreciated. I usually forget the soundtrack of a movie five minutes after I leave the theatre, but this one stayed with me for months, prompting me to dodge into any [local stores]I passed in search of the CD (ultimately, I could only find it here on Amazon). It's rich enough to listen to attentively, yet ambient enough to be used as background music, or even (save for the more ominous selections) music to fall asleep to. If you saw the movie and remember even slightly noting how original the music was, or - like me - were unable to get it out of your head, by all means get this CD, you won't be disappointed.
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Orchestral ambient music, December 14, 2002
By A Customer
I just got my copy of this CD in the mail the other day & I have to say I find the disc spellbinding. I saw the film the day it came out (which, by the way is worth seeing & I'll be awiting the DVD release!). While watching the film, I had decided I needed to get this soundtrack.The music is mostly orchestral, often using thick lush harmonies that remind me a lot of the sort of chords in Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians and sometimes The Desert Music, but minus the pulsating "stroble-light" effect that is so characteristic of Reich's mid-70's-late 80's style. The other peculiar thing about this music is the use of steel drums, vibraphones, gamelan and other bell-like sounds pulsing away here & there, though not as aggressively as in Reich's music. Harmonically the music not too dissonant, and the shadings from one chord to the next are often surprising - very emotional, but in a slightly restrained way. The music is very moody, atmospheric, a kind of orchestral ambient music. What is so enjoyable about the music is not so much listening to a particular melody, chord progression or rhythm (how a westerner would normally listen to music), but the sheer presence of soundscapes. In this way it reminds me of Brian Eno's work - very additictive and listenable on a variety of levels and engagement. SO: The disc is well worth buying if you like: (a) minimalist music (b) ambient music (c) just good background music to read by, go to sleep by, etc. It's beautiful sound-painting.
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Triumphant, definitive scoring for science fiction, April 24, 2003
By A Customer
The main purpose of a film score is to further communicate themes portrayed on the screen. With the sound and vision of the cinema experience being inextricably intertwined, the experience is somehow lessened - one without the other.
Over the years, Cliff Martinez has been responsible for scoring the many films of Steven Soderbergh and gained a reputation for producing works as powerful as they are unconventional. Of the score to Solaris, Soderbergh offers, "I relied on it not only to unify the film emotionally, but to import actual narrative information." On this soundtrack, Martinez explores an area where orchestral sound, third world instrumentation, ambient music and science fiction themes all converge. The result is engaging, insular music - equally valid with or without the visual element of Solaris the film.
The spellbinding sound and score for Solaris heightens the film's intimacy and helps portray the intensity and isolation played out by the characters of the film's plot. Here, Martinez uses a traditional orchestra (strings, horns, winds, vocalists) in a unique way.
The horns' slow swells of volume and brightness sustaining beneath the string section's shifting harmonic contrasts are reminiscent of the spiritual movement in modern classical music. By adding steel drum rhythms and cyclical gamelon tones, Martinez creates a score with a strong personality and presence. It's like a character from the film, as alien and unseen as the force affecting the hapless crew of this psychological drama.
The score to Solairis provides an impressive range of moods; from the welcome embrace of a lost love to the void, vast distances between stars. The track "Hi Energy Proton Accelerator", with its contrast, disonance, cacophony and ultimate resolution, beautifully demonstrates the orchestra's emotional coloristic range. "Will She Come Back" offers tenderness and a soothing space for those haunted by loss, while "Wear Your Seat Belt" combines the energetic rhythms of the steel drum with the orchestra's brilliant animations.
The soundtrack to Solaris serves its purpose well by adding substantial depth and a palpable atmosphere to the film it was designed to accompany. Cerebral yet emotional, at times warm and inviting, at others frigid and empty; these compositions easily stand apart from the film as an interesting and accomplished album of acoustic ambient spacemusic.
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