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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Dark City (Trevor Jones)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you seek dense and complicated action music amongst
the most challenging of Trevor Jones' career.
Avoid it... if you don't typically care for synthetic alterations to orchestral music, especially when it involves an extreme enhancement of the bass region.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Dark City: (Trevor Jones) When the adaptation of
Dark City from its comic book was released early in 1998, it was
hailed as a stunning science-fiction thriller, a worthy extension of
director Alex Proyas' unyielding atmosphere for 1994's The Crow.
Despite the generally glowing reviews, however, Dark City quickly
slipped into obscurity, and it's now the type of late-night B-rated
content that you'll find in box store bins for $4. How exactly that
happened is a mystery, for the film's phenomenal vision, exemplary
acting choices, and mind-twisting plot all place it as a potentially
superior alternative to the similar premise of The Matrix. When
reality is at stake in a film, especially one with as many stylish film
noir elements as Dark City, the soundtrack can make a huge
difference in actively enhancing the atmosphere, and to this end, Trevor
Jones succeeds to a far better level than Don Davis would the following
year for the better known film. The output of Jones in the 1990's had
been best defined by his grand, sweeping themes for epic films, and his
employment on Dark City would show his growing collecting base an
intriguing facet of his abilities. He has, in the years since, offering
stark science-fiction and action music to such an extent that these
talents are now well known, but Dark City was nothing short of a
rousing surprise, both on film and on album, when it debuted. Despite
the obvious temptation to allow the varied instrumentation and its
inherent dissonance to provide a simple backdrop for the gloomy nature
of Dark City, Jones pounds the film with several memorable themes
and motifs to go along with the atmosphere. His score evolves from its
tense beginnings into a victorious reflection of beauty at the end,
providing plenty of intelligent and interesting ideas in between that
vary on their listenability depending on how high the dissonance knob is
cranked. The instrumentation is key to Dark City, for it combines
the large orchestral ensemble at the heart of the human story with an
extremely strong and domineering synthetic accompaniment that represents
the "strangers" in the film. The primary function of the electronics in
the score is to overwhelm much of the sonic spectrum with a broad and
ominous bass region integral to the story's charcoal-shaded
visuals.
The diverse field of themes and motifs is headed by the ideas for the "strangers" and their tuning of the real world to fit their experiments. Jones hits you with their watching eyes at the very outset of the score, with their rising seven note theme performed at the lowest ranks of male voices. Not long after in "Into the City," Jones provides a preview of both the mechanically cold full-ensemble rhythm that relentlessly drives their 'tuning' actions and a small motif on brass meant to represent the "awe factor" of the story. The rhythm is particularly interesting because of its rolling alternations between the minor and major keys. These elements would all come together in more powerful statements in "The Strangers are Tuning," in which a striking combination of harmonic statements with pulsating dissonant phases (not unlike The Matrix, in many regards) lead to a resounding brass combination of all the 'stranger' themes, rhythms, and motifs into one mammoth brass rendition that accompanies an overhead shot of the entire city being tuned. Of particular note in this cue is the snare drum, tapped so quickly and with such force that you have to wonder exactly how many of them were contributing to the cue. As the film's chase reaches its climax, "The Wall" and "You Have the Power" both explore these extremely dense passages further. The amount of activity occurring in the ensemble during the opening minutes of "You Have the Power" may be overshadowed by the electronica bass pulses setting the frantic rhythms underneath them, but the density of the players' performance is astonishing. If orchestral ruckus was ever to be defined in a single moment of film music, it would come a minute or two into that final track. Relentless timpani, snare, gong, clanging percussion, and the electronic rhythm create a wall of sound over which several layers of brass whip in different directions and the strings become almost lost as a filler in the middle. You can even distinctly hear the desperate wails of a flute over top. The expansive scope of these battle rhythms seem so enticingly out of control and yet they manage to stay on course in each of their performances, with Jones inserting just enough tonality to them to make them listenable. There are more subtle moments of this technique, as in most of the chase sequences near the outset of the film, but these cues are distinctly defined by their droning bass region instead of the wide creativity you'll hear later on. Many of these bass-heavy sequences, extending all the way to the grand finale, are contributed to by a phenomenally powerful organ, providing an appropriate religious element to the story. Before the score reaches its stunning conclusion, it does offer its weak points. The conversational underscore in Dark City isn't particularly powerful, and that's because character cues like "Emma" and "Living an Illusion" are intentionally washed out to mirror the minds of those characters in the film. Before the clarity of knowledge is achieved at the end of the picture, one of the few hints of romance you hear from the high strings exists in fleeting moments in "Memories of Shell Beach," a foreshadowing of the victory to come. That success reaches triumphant heights in the latter half of "You Have the Power," with two crescendos of string-theme beauty enhanced not only by their own simple, harmonic constructs, but also serving as a much needed (and literal, in the film) breath of fresh air in an otherwise brutal score. After the organ gloriously leads the science-fiction element of the city's revelation at 5:30 in the final cue, the elegant resolution of the score by the string section at 9:00 is an unquestionable highlight of Jones' career, both in film and on album. On the whole, the score is a clever and crucial part of the film's success, and because it so perfectly matches the film's psychological tug of war, the listening experience on album could be substantially awkward for those who are unfamiliar with the film's engrossing atmosphere. On commercial album, over 35 minutes of score were offered after several songs, with the Anita Kelsey performances representing Jennifer Connelly's lounge scenes in the film. For the most part, the bonus songs are unfortunate electronica nightmares, though "Just a Touch Away" is a pleasantly worthy throwback to 80's light rock. Not surprisingly, a bootleg with more score material would be released several years later. Adding anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes of music onto the commercially available cues, the bootleg features a strong sound quality that often gives you a slightly different mix from the music on the commercial album (perhaps it's simply not as well refined). Most of the additional cues are inconsequential in length, but even some of ones shorter than 30 seconds are important to chase and tuning scenes in the film. Notable inclusions on the bootleg are the opening two minutes of the film, for which Jones uses some of his most notable electronic manipulation of the score. Post-recording, synthetic alterations further twist reality by changing or abruptly stopping the music's flow. More of this less-listenable material would pop up throughout the bootleg, including on the lengthy interrogation track in the latter half of the film. That cue does, however, have one short, beautiful statement of the string/romance theme heard in full at the end of the film. A substantial number of the really short cues offer more of the mundane 'following motif' and have sudden fades in and out at the ends of each entry. The most important inclusion on the bootleg --and perhaps making it worth the search for it alone-- is the "End Titles," a suite of most of Jones' ideas for the film. Contrary to how it may sound to casual listeners, this suite is not simply a rearranged collection of the performances from the rest of the score; it was a separately recorded piece for the credits that offers a few ideas that are strangely not heard in the preceding material. It opens and closes with rambunctious performances of the strangers' battle theme at a pace more aggressive than anywhere else in the score, reaching a fantastic crescendo on the final note of the track. A reprise of the victorious string theme is an interlude, and following its performance is a chopping string motif seemingly absent from the rest of the score. Every element of the score, from the synthetic manipulation to the deep male choir and organ, makes an appearance in this suite, elevating it to an interesting and exciting wrap-up for the score. The bootleg also includes the inconsequential "New Line Logo" music and the terrible Hughes Hall music used for the film's trailer. On the whole, the bootleg may not be complete, but its 54 minutes of Jones' score will be enough to satisfy nearly anybody who loves this score. For the rest of you, the commercial album will present more than enough material to make your purchase worthwhile. While this statement applies to nearly any film score, Dark City is one that truly requires a viewing of the film to appreciate, and that's not a bad thing considering the quality of the film and its cheap price nowadays. Both film and score are hidden gems.
TRACK LISTINGS:
1998 TVT Album:
Total Time: 60:18
(About 36:00 of score - track times not listed on packaging) 2001 Bootleg: Total Time: 56:22
* contains previously unreleased material (Alternative bootleg track titles in parentheses)
NOTES & QUOTES:
Neither the commercial nor bootleg albums contain any extra information about the
film or score.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Dark City are Copyright © 1998, TVT Soundtrax, Bootleg and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 4/1/98 and last updated 1/7/07. |
