Walter (Wendy) Carlos - "Stanley Kurbrick's A Clockwork Orange" OST, Vinyl, LP, 1972 (Warner Brothers)

A beautiful icy cruel album for our brutal times at the moment (Trump Virus). Wendy Carlos, who made most of the music on this album, adopts Beethoven and Sir Edward Elgar, as well as a memorable version of Rossini's "William Tell Overture." The thing about Kubrick is that he was always two steps ahead of a lot of other mainstream artists.  Stanley's approach to using music, such as classical, is unique and bold. Kenneth Anger comes to mind as a fellow genius in using music/songs to convey the mood of the images. The soundtrack to "A Clockwork Orange" is very much not only fits the images of the film exceptionally well but also expresses the rot that is the 20th and 21st-century. This is music that reminds you of a rich past but in a bleak present. Mostly due to the skill and vision of Carlos in making something new out of old material. As I look at images of the virus and how it has affected various parts of the world, I hear this soundtrack in my head. This is the music that announces that we are fucked. 

Kimley and I have a podcast called Book Musik, and we did an episode focusing on Wendy Carlos. You can hear it here:  BOOK MUSIK: Wendy Carlos

Various - "Babylon Berlin" OST, 3 x Vinyl, 2 x CD, LP, Album, Germany, 2018 (BMG)

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. 

Gillian Hills "Vue Intégrale (Twistin' The Rock Vol. 9) 2 x CD, Compilation, 2002 (Barclay)

Gillian Hills is a British actress who lived in France to become a singer with a fascinating Father and Mother.   Father is Denis Hills, an adventurer, writer, and traveler, who wrote about Idi Amin in Uganda, who was sentenced to death for espionage in that country.  The intervention of the Queen allowed him to safety and back to the UK.  Her mother is Dunia Leśmianowna, the daughter of Polish Poet Bolesław Lésmian.  Gillian, at 14, was discovered by Roger Vadim, who put her in the film "Les liaisons dangereuses."  At 15, she starred in the British film "Beat Girl," with the first soundtrack by the great John Barry.  It was at this time she went back to France and made a series of recordings with artist Henri Salvador, and was one of the few Yé Yé singers to write her material.   After recording the French sides,  she eventually came back to London to be in the films "Blow Up" by Michelangelo Antonioni and Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange."  After that, she moved to New York to focus on a career as a book and magazine illustrator.  Whew!



"Vue "Intégrale" is a collection of her recordings she did in France for the label Barclay, and it's pretty remarkable in its sophistication in the Yé-Yé pop song market.   The fact that she co-wrote or wrote these songs are pretty amazing in itself.  Oddly enough, she is unknown, except for those who are obsessed with French pop from the 1960s, and of course her film appearances in such cult classics.  I think it's more than Hill being in the right place and time; she truly had the stars above her lead her to interesting aspects of the French and British entertainment world.   Beautiful as Bardot, Hills expressed an urgency and restlessness in her approach to the recording arts as well as film.  A remarkable talent at an exceptional time in cultural history.  It's time to rediscover her work.