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Composed and Performed by:
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Cliff Martinez
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Produced by:
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Patricia Joseph
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Release Date:
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January 7th, 2003
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Audio Clips:
2. Kick My Ass in the Morning (0:30), 150K narc2.ra
6. I Love You Baby (0:30), 150K narc6.ra
11. Don't Let It Happen Again (0:30), 150K narc11.ra
15. Freeze (0:28), 141K narc15.ra
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Availability:
Regular U.S. release.
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if Cliff Martinez's style of slow, electronic ambience and
atmospheric mood without theme, motif, or orchestra makes for a solid background
listen for you.
Avoid it... if neither Traffic nor Solaris is on your shelves
and you value harmony, melody, or complexity over droning electronic ambience.
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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| | Martinez | |
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Narc: (Cliff Martinez) The career of Cliff Martinez has
begun to grow a consistent following with listeners around the world. His
ambient electronic score for Traffic was well recognized for its role in
the film and his more orchestrally inclined work for Solaris is a popular
item on album despite the film's short-lived fame. For Narc, Martinez
returns to the Traffic end of that scale, abandoning the orchestra and
delving once again into the drifting, sparse realm of his solitary electronics.
At its most powerful, the music for Narc offers drum loops and
electronically altered guitar sounds that, at least momentarily, break the
monotony of the mass of Martinez's underscore. The majority of its forty-minute
playing time, however, is occupied by subtle and sometimes nearly
indistinguishable background chords of his keyboards. It is not atypical for a
Martinez score of this nature to feature less than ten notes in any two-minute
period of time.
Questions remain about the effectiveness of these kinds of
electronic, ambient scores. A score without theme or motif is left with the
prospect of relying heavily upon either instrumentation or rhythm to paint its
musical canvas for the film. In the case Narc, there is no unique
instrumentation --or electronic sampling, per se-- and the score also suffers
from an inconsistency in rhythm. Several loops are employed to accentuate an
emotion for a particular scene, but no single loop or electronic sampling is
established as the primary character of the score. Without any of those elements
strong at work, the score ceases to identify itself as film music and instead is
an extension of sound effects in the film. The dark and creepy groaning of a
cityscape is captured by Martinez, but --even more so than in Traffic--
there isn't anything at all to grasp onto here on album. If it is a background
ambience that you are looking for, there are better selections that feature, at
least, chord progressions that establish a more coherent mood. Aside from the
appropriate song at the end of the album, there's nothing here to highlight. *
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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• 1. Big Catherine, Little Catherine (2:33)
• 2. Kick My Ass in the Morning (2:32)
• 3. The Bloody Leg (2:25)
• 4. Narc (2:18)
• 5. Something to Do (1:19)
• 6. I Love You Baby (1:19)
• 7. Let's Sit on the House (1:15)
• 8. Girl in the Closet (3:27)
• 9. Crime Scene (1:51)
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• 10. Notice Anything Strange? (1:59)
• 11. Don't Let It Happen Again (2:06)
• 12. You Hit? (2:19)
• 13. I'm Still Gonna Leave (2:00)
• 14. I Wanna Check this Place Out (1:41)
• 15. Freeze (1:00)
• 16. This Is It (1:15)
• 17. Tell Me the Truth (4:44)
• 18. Provoked - Baby Namboos (6:23)
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Insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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