Only a few times in my old life have I been affected by a film/show where I needed to get the soundtrack of that work right away. "Performance" and "A Clockwork Orange" comes to mind that I raced to the record store to get those OST albums after seeing those films in a theater. "Babylon Berlin" is the third soundtrack album, where I was compelled due to the excellence of the show, and how important the recording was to the images that came on my TV set. "Babylon Berlin is a German TV show based on a series of detective novels by Volker Kutscher that takes place in the Weimar Republic. The program is a mixture of noir and the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew. The soundtrack is mostly composed by one of the show's directors Tom Tykwer and composer Johnny Kilmek. This three disk set if you play from side one to the last, is two hours long. Along with the Tykwer/Kilmek music, you also get the Bryan Ferry Orchestra, with Ferry on vocals on two cuts, the Moka Efti Orchestra, one song by Tim Fischer, and blues performer/guitarist (& wonderfully named) Guitar Crusher.
Like the production of the show, this soundtrack is a form of perfection as well. When I first heard it, I thought it sounded like electronic music, but as far as I can tell, this is real instruments in a large ensemble, playing very complexed pieces. It sounds like music composed/made in Germany in the late 1920s, but in actuality, the work is very layered and contemporary, but with one foot in the past, and the other very much in present 21st-century music. The album by its packaging and theme one would think it will be nostalgic music, but the work is very 'now,' and is very much music based on the past, but with overtures to that's post-modern in practice. The Bryan Ferry Orchestra is a perfect example of re-thinking one's work (Ferry's songs for solo and Roxy Music) and placing it in another era. For Ferry, I think it was another way of bringing life to his melodies or framing it in a new position where one listens to the work in a new way. Ironically it's remembrances are from the past, but it's old music presented in a new manner. Tykwer and Kilmek use the same method, but it's modernism that is the engine that makes this music so appealing. The key track is "Zu Asche, Zu Staub" which is one of the great end-of-credit songs ever. Also music (video) showpiece for "Babylon Berlin," with a cross-dressing erotic presence of Severija. The show looks like it cost Millions (and it did) but also the soundtrack sounds as expensive to produce as well.
Some soundtracks bring up the images from the film/show when you play it, and the music does that when you listen to "Babylon Berlin," but the other aspect is that this is music that can exist by itself. A vibrant soundtrack to a historically significant (and sad) culture is placed on the grooves of this work by Ferry, Tykwer, and Kilmek.
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