Wednesday, April 25, 2007  3:38 pm 

E A R T H

Its Earth Jim, but not as we know it. ‘Fantastic Planet’ (to give it it’s English title) is one of those mental films that you might catch as a kid because its an animation but it goes straight over your young head. The full epic amazingness only hits you when your older, when you can appreciate the revoultion and struggle of the Ohms (humans) and the trippy sci-fi-on Quaaludes style of the visuals (crystal growing from the ground around your feet was a favourite, as was that weird bird alien with the long tongue).

Alain Goraguer - Deshominisation II

Now with this being one of those oh-so-Now mp3 blogs, its all about the stunning soundtrack by Alain Goraguer. The above track is a pretty good example of the general sound of the OST, everything at a painfully slow funeral-like pace, with thick sheets of drama layered across it, perfectly capturing the sights of the alien landscapes in a musical format. Its all 7O’s twangs and doomy keys that must get the boys from The Emperor Machine moist around their alien-gills. DC Recordings infact released the soundtrack a few years back, but a vinyl reissue flew from the shelves like UFO’s speeding through hyperspace.

Yet more 12″ circular objects that flew from shelves were the two Godsy EP’s. Like the Map Of Africa and Quiet Village records before them, they were highly sought after due to them being on the uber-genius label, Whatever We Want.

Godsy - The Grass Runs Red

On ‘The Grass Runs Red’ from the EP “Razor Against Silk”, Godsy seem to have burrowed to the centre of the Earth and recorded the sound that the great firey dragons who keep the Earth spinning on its axis make. Squealching lava undulates under sputtering lasers and a beatless drone fluctuates, so basically it all kind of oozes for a time as the dragons circulate in a steady rhythm. This is back to the womb music.

Time now to share a current obssession of mine, the “Earth” LP by Vangelis. Its been on loop on my iPod, and then lo and behold my favourite track gets covered by the people responsible for another current obssession (Let’s Practice’), Lindstrom & Solale - check the myspace page for the sprawling disco-rotic reworking of this track:

Vangelis - Let It Happen

It begins like something from the soundtrack to ‘Ghost In The Shell’, and briefly conjures up glittering images of Tokyo 2O29, but then the watery key flourishes pin your mind straight back into ‘Blade Runner’s’ rain-soaked LA streets, with Vangelis’ killer score of said film. All the characters are alien Amazonian love robots and they aren’t hunting eachother down anymore but gleefully skipping through golden sun-drenched corn fields, gazing into oneanother’s artificially created eyes.

labels >> anim, cybernetic