Shaun de Waal
CD OFTHEWEEK
Clint Mansell’s score for the film Requiem for a Dream (Nonesuch) contributed in no small measure to the devastating impact of that nerveshredding tale of addiction. It works very well, even separated from the movie, employing a mode somewhere between Philip Glass and Bernard Hermann, with some very original twists.
The score, featuring the Kronos Quartet, starts with a lushly solemn string figure before shuddering into an electronic rhythm that would do any dance floor proud, except that it’s almost over before it has begun. Later, there will be Bialy & Lox Conga and Bugs Got a Devilish Grin Conga, though they sound more like skeletal gavottes.
The pieces are short, making the whole a kind of cutup collage, held together by insistent themes, and grouped into three movements, as it were, to match the film’s three seasons: Summer, Fall, Winter. No Spring, note.
The full despair of the film arrives in the climactic Meltdown; even a choir of disembodied space voices joins in. Then we slide into Lux Aeterna, a string piece that starts broodingly and builds to a catharsis, before reaching the soothing seaside memory of Coney Island Low. All are examples of the creative juxtaposition of classical instruments and electronica: some enterprising DJ type should get busy on the remix album.