Koyaanisqatsi (1998 Re-recording)
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Music CD Cover
Composer: Philip GlassEdition: Music CD
Format: Soundtrack
CD Release Date: 1998-10-27
Music Label: Nonesuch
Soundtracks:
- Koyaanisqatsi
- Organic
- Cloudscape
- Resource
- Vessels
- Pruit Igoe
- The Grid
- Prophecies
Free Music Notes for Koyaanisqatsi (1998 Re-recording)
Free Music Review: Your mantra and hypnotic companion
Hit: 5 Stars
How much in love with a piece of music can one man be? I discovered this soundtrack about a year-and-a-half ago, when I bought a Philip Glass box called: "Philip On Film."
I knew nothing about Glass. I had just read about him a couple of times on the Web and my impression was that he made incredibly weird and complex music. I had just emerged from my Zimmer period at that time and so I wasn't very interested in someone who makes eccentric classical music and ventures into film music every once in a while to freak people out with it. (The irony is that today, thanks to Glass, I have become very much addicted to "eccentric classical music" by the likes of Reich, Adams, Bartok or Jenkins.)
The Glass box was a great disappointment. Over the course of a week, I put on Koyaanisqatsi once, twice, half-way through -- what the hell is this? Next up: PowaqQatsi (what's with these names anyway, are they meant to Hippify this LSD-induced keyboard music?) PowaqQatsi was even weirder. I thought Koyaanisqatsi was way too frantic, but PowaqQatsi was like frantic squared.
Also in the box were Dracula (chamber music, string quartets -- boring) and Selections From La Belle et La Bete (incredibly complex opera singing - wtf?) as well as one disk with some selections from other filmworks (Kundun, Mishima, Anima Mundi, et al.) To me it was just plain, simple weirdness.
To my novice ears it was five disks of the same musical piece only with different instrumentations and in different keys. Why the hell did I waste EUR60 on this? To make things worse, I had never even heard of any of the films represented on the box; apart from Dracula -- and I wasn't planning on seeing that one.
Of course today I feel differently, or I would not be writing this review. I think there are three ways for an unbeliever like me to develop a taste for Glass: he listens to Glass looking out the window of a fast train rushing through various landscapes, he actually goes see the Qatsi movies, or he puts on the Koyaanisqatsi album while reading Stephen Kings's novel "The Drawing Of The Three." In reverse order, it were these three events that bolted this album onto the inside of my skull, possibly for the rest of my life.
Like a child trying to push block of different shapes through corresponding holes in a box, to me suddenly the music made sense. What at first seemed repetitive and unimaginative suddenly became hypnotic and nuanced. I found myself reading "The Drawing Of The Three" with the soundtrack on loop in the background. After I had finished the book, I found myself looking out train- and bus windows with the soundtrack on loop. For a while - before the effect wore off, something effects always do, damn them - Koyaanisqatsi was my mantra, my hypnotising and thrilling companion. Hard to believe at first couldn't see any value in it.
At some point I decided to see the film, and my love for the album became permanent and unerasable. It's told that you either love this album or hate it fervently. I used to hate it, but once I found the right manner of appreciating it I immediately grew to love it. I have the impression that people who say they don't like this music either don't travel, read fantastic literature or watch movies. Just give it a (second) try.
Five stars for this one.
Koyaanisqatsi (1998 Re-recording) Poster
Though Glass composed this breathtaking score to accompany Godfrey Reggio's beautiful time-lapse and slow-motion images, the music stands on its own as one of the composer's most intriguing works. This reissue, the movie soundtrack's first digital incarnation, includes never-before-released music.Fifteen years after its initial release, Philip Glass's score to Godfrey Reggio's film Koyaanisqatsi is still as timeless as it was meant to be. Glass's epic score, virtually the only sound in this non-narrative movie, accompanied an exhilarating, wordless meditation of images ranging from expansive, slow-motion landscapes to whirling-dervish city scenes shot using time-lapse techniques. Glass's music was a perfect match. The opening chant is still unlike anything Glass has composed, a Tibetan monk operatic growl that set up the foreboding sense of loss the film engenders. Most of the score, however, casts Glass's minimalist themes in orchestral expanses. Bass strings troll the bottom while flutes draw circles in the air. On "The Grid," manic keyboards drive into the night, pounding out the cyclical refrains that are a Glass trademark. When Koyaanisqatsi came out, it seemed opulent with its orchestral forces, but always at the center were the keyboards, reeds, and voice that are Glass's characteristic sound. Koyaanisqatsi means "life out of balance," but Glass's remarkably austere score remains perfectly poised. This newly re-recorded edition adds nearly 30 minutes to the previous CD release with two previously unissued tracks and extended versions of "The Grid" and "Prophecies," the two signpost works of the film. --John Diliberto
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