Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #683
Written 1/21/01, Revised 10/12/08
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Buy it... if you seek a decent collection of music and dialogue
from the show, for this album is among the better companion products to
accompany any sci-fi show of its era.
Avoid it... if you have never seen an episode of "Lexx," in which
case this album may seem completely senseless in its tone and
presentation.
Lexx: (Marty Simon) Along with "Farscape," one of
the Sci-Fi Channel's greatest triumphs in the late 1990's was the
explicitly sexual "Lexx," a series of 65 episodes over four years that
were dominated by everything and anything perverse. To understand the
series at any level, you really must watch an episode or two. It was
clearly aimed at an adult audience that sought an imaginatively dark
alternative to the feel-good stories that had dominated television
science fiction over the previous ten years. The level of sexuality in
its writing was so flagrant that the show has been referred to by the
upset pious portion of society as softcore porn rather than a sci-fi
affair. While that's an oversimplification of the series, such comments
aren't entirely baseless. One could easily get the impression that the
sci-fi venue for "Lexx" is only a casual backdrop for the constant
orgasmic content of the episodic scripts. Not that any of this is wrong;
in fact, television could use more such deviant creativity regardless of
what George W. Bush and his media overlords have to say about it. The
show's extension into its third and fourth seasons owed no small debt of
gratitude to the consistently pornographic elements of its premise. Not
only was its open sexuality responsible, on the whole, for the success
of the show, but ultimately its music as well. For a series that
included characters blatantly pulling at each other's loins, debating
the intricacies of supreme sexual satisfaction, and arguing about the
same old "who gets to mount whom," a new breed of sci-fi score was
required. Composer Marty Simon was already a veteran of songwriting and
arranging, and remained as the long-standing musical artist for the
show. His music for the series, in coordination with the often bizarre
and totally unexplainable happenings on screen, jumps around through
several kinds of aural genres as needed for the haphazard scripts.
One aspect of the scores for "Lexx" that set them apart
from their counterparts on other sci-fi shows is their outward
sensuality. Because of the show's adult humor, Simon responded with
electronic music that is more lyrical than others that attempted to
navigate the same low budgets. He is a one-man crew for most of the
endeavor, but a greater number of harmonic rhythms, including a diverse
range of pop rhythms, keep the music on a consistently listenable level.
There isn't the typical action music that you would hear in other shows
of the same genre. Even though the giant insect ship Lexx (which is
itself shaped in a dubious, curvaceous mold) blows up planets so that it
can consume them, the music is more inclined to dwell upon the plentiful
scenes of lust. Perhaps this was a necessary move based on the budgetary
restrictions, though that never stopped series like "Babylon 5" and
"Farscape" from varying the volume significantly for action scenes. The
third season's title theme, leading off the album, begins with the
choral "Vaiyo A-O" fight song and the best harmonic realization on the
entire product. The better episodic score cues included on the album are
lumped in its first half, with quite listenable and lengthy cues of
romance leading well into each other. The middle portion of the album
features the bulk of unlistenable rock rhythms and samples of
synthesized harshness that stray into the realm of straight dissonance
at times. The final few selections dive into a euphoric feeling before
yielding to a wretched performance of the second season's theme that
closes the product. The music is so diverse within the confines of the
show that it is difficult to grasp any one part of it before it is over,
so in essence, the strength of the music from the show also serves as
the main weakness of the album. The changes of tone and style within the
lengthier, convoluted cues sometimes cause the music to whip itself into
a frenzy that breaks the mood of adjoining cues of mellow intent.
For the same reason that many collector of "Star Trek"
music didn't understand or appreciate the "Lexx" series, traditional
film music collectors likely won't understand or appreciate the style of
the music for "Lexx" either. Therefore, this isn't the kind of material
that could be recommended to the mass of mainstream film score
collectors, and in this regard, the album releases for "Lexx" have an
audience as targeted as those for "Babylon 5," "Farscape," and other
peers. It's hard to recommend such albums to general score collectors,
simply because their electronically low-budget atmosphere tends to
irritate too many of them (though Christopher Franke arguably remained
an exception to the rule). The lyrical and harmonic nature of this
music, while placing it above many others, still doesn't establish much
of a base motif or theme to work by. Other than the occasional
references to the "Vaiyo A-O" song heard at the outset (which are sadly
lacking in quantity, given that the song is easily the highlight of the
show and a definite improvement over the previous seasons' themes), not
much ties it all together. Ultimately, the marketing intent of the album
was surely to appeal to the encapsulated fans of the orgasmic concept.
The female vocals within the final mixes of the episodes are audible
enough to make this album a delightful treat for those devoted fans. The
product is otherwise presented in a fashion that would irritate a
traditional score collector. The cues from singular episodes are not
placed together in sequence, and they are interrupted by dialogue from
all the major characters in show (including the typical "who gets to
screw poor Zev" debate). This is the kind of thing that might cause fans
of the show to go orgasmic themselves, though outsiders will be left
scratching their heads. Unquestionably, "Lexx" has a fanbase all unto
itself, and this album is a prized bounty for that crowd. Few others
would find it comprehensible or even perhaps interesting at any level. A
subsequent album release offered extended performances of some of the
material heard on this late GNP Crescendo album.
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