Soundtrack Review: Filmmusik

By Mark Sung Oct 4, 2005, 21:37 GMT

As Larson states in his notes, ‘the music attempts to speak on two things at once; pain and beauty,’ and Larson’s music does this very well. Larson’s choice of guitar-based melodies provide a nice change from the usual orchestral based movie scores. Whilst trying to maintain his themes of pain and beauty, Larson manages to create some interesting and engaging melodies with an artistic simplicity. Whilst there aren’t any instantly memorable themes or motifs, the music does resonate with underlying emotions and angst.

Music from the movie Prozac Nation provides some mellow and often uplifting soundscapes with its use of violin solos and ambient guitar underscore, as heard in tracks such as ‘Prozac’ and ‘Something Like Love.’ Larson again makes use of the violin later on in the haunting tracks ‘Night Basketball’ and ‘Mommy, Are Angels Dead?’ taken from the movie Lilja 4-Ever.

Larson provides some diversity with tracks such as ‘Tigerland’ and ‘Operator.’ Taken from the movie Phone Booth, ‘Operator’ is a busy energetic urban mix of synthesized acoustics, in contrast to ‘Tigerland’ with its eastern influences. Together with the use of an electric guitar and the erhu, Larson mixes moments of fragile softness with threatening harshness. Another highlight of the album is the quirky track ‘Fiction’ taken from the movie Storytelling.

The music from the movie Boys Don’t Cry is given a moody tone with the rock band influences in the track ‘Boys’ and the electric guitar solo in ‘Rape and a Burning Polaroid.’

Filmmusik is an interesting collection of scores which display Larson’s unique style. Despite containing music from over ten different movies, the album plays well as a whole. Larson creates some engaging soundscapes whilst retaining a nice level of simplicity.