Dust to Glory: (Nathan Furst) While most people
probably haven't heard of the Baja 1000 event in Baja California,
Mexico, it's a fully sponsored auto race that has the distinction of
being the world's longest non-stop point-to-point race. All sorts of
vehicles inhabit the same course, from race cars worth millions of
dollars to motorcycles and Volkswagen Beetles. The actual course changes
from year to year and features secret checkpoints that make it risky,
though still legal, to take shortcuts. From dirt roads to actual Mexican
highways (where racers not only have to weave around regular civilian
traffic, but can get pulled over by the cops for speeding), the race
takes drivers on a perilous journey that has different records for each
class of vehicle. The speedy ones can complete the course in 16 hours,
and the slowpokes have to do it in 32 hours to even qualify as a winner.
Most vehicles don't even make it to the finish line, with injuries and
even deaths (to drivers and spectators who stand along the edge of the
road to watch) not uncommon. Big name drivers and celebrities, from
Mario Andretti to James Garner and Steve McQueen, have participated. The
2005 documentary
Dust to Glory, written and directed by Dana
Brown and released by IFC Films, chronicles the 2003 race with 50
cameras following the action from both the sidelines and from mounts on
the vehicles themselves. The footage is spectacular and provides many
splendid moments for both motorheads and those who enjoy the vistas of
North Mexico's landscape. The music for the documentary contains a
variety of kick-ass rock songs, but at 97 minutes in length, the picture
also required a considerable amount of original score. The director and
producer sought a score that was "valiant, ethnic, and exciting," but
modern to the ears. Their temp score of choice seems to have been
Gladiator, but with Hans Zimmer and his associates far from
budgetary means, the attorney for the filmmakers suggested 25-year-old
composer Nathan Furst. Untested on a large scale, Furst was a risk for
the project, but his success in adapting the sound they would need for
Dust to Glory manifested itself in the form of what was
undoubtedly the young composer's most ambitiously grandiose piece of
music to date and among the best works of his television-centered career
thereafter. The intent of the score was to purely emulate a large-scale
orchestral score, and although live players are discernable throughout,
a heavy amount of Zimmer-like processing (and electronics at work as
well) give the music a distinctly synthetic sound at times.
Despite its rambunctious personality and many
overachieving sensibilities,
Dust to Glory is a very flawed score
in two fundamental regards. First, nearly every cue is saturated with
the influences of the scores that were either mentioned to Furst by the
filmmakers as examples of acceptable music or outright used as temp
material for the film. Secondly, the ethnic elements in the score are
distinctly Middle-Eastern and have nothing to do with Baja California.
That said, Furst's approach is likely to be a guilty pleasure to any
film score listener despite these flaws, and the score is more than
sufficient for its context. Harmonically simple and rhythmically
pleasing, the music is fluid and well balanced in its instrumentation. A
cue like "Sharing Dust" can have vibrant, dynamic performances by solo
instruments such as piano, acoustic guitar, or voice, while action cues
can stir you out your seat with their ensemble intensity and depth. The
ethnic percussion underneath the synthetic and real orchestral elements
uses the same balance and rhythmic progressions as Brian Tyler's
Children of Dune, though
Dust to Glory also shares the
2003 work's uncanny knack for reminding you other scores at nearly every
turn. Much of the straight action material, culminating in "The Beach,"
contains nearly a note-for-note borrowing of the coliseum sequences in
Zimmer's
Gladiator, and that score's main theme's progressions
are present in the latter half of one of Furst's primary ideas. Other
melodic influences vary from the obvious to the curious; in "One More
Mile," a highlight cue with an outstanding rhythmic climax, Furst
exhibits one theme (heard frequently in the score) seemingly inspired by
the "fields" theme of Mychael Danna's
Exotica and then calls upon
another melody one in the form of hip guitar performances from Robert
Rodriguez's
Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Pieces of James Newton
Howard float in and out randomly. Commonly popular female solo and
choral vocal applications are also plentiful in
Dust to Glory,
perhaps a cliche by definition but very enjoyable in more cerebral cues
such as "Weatherman" and "Night Visions." Specialty instrumental tones
originating from the Middle East to Australia are littered throughout.
It is perhaps difficult to recommend
Dust to Glory to the learned
film score collector, because on album, with its unrelated songs
scattered throughout and with so many obvious temp-track influences, the
music is far from intelligent mastery. But if you can set aside the
obvious head-scratching curiosities and enjoy the enthusiastic
arrangement and grand execution of the score (as well as its crisp,
bass-friendly recording), then you'll be steering yourself towards one
very pleasant surprise.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
The insert includes a note from director Dana Brown about
the score and film.
