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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
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Composed, Arranged, Performed, and Produced by:
Trent Reznor Atticus Ross
Solo Vocals by:
Mariqueen Maandig
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LABELS & RELEASE DATES
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Null Corporation (Sampler)
(December 2nd, 2011)
Null Corporation (Digital) (December 9th, 2011)
Null Corporation (Regular) (December 27th, 2011)
Null Corporation (Deluxe) (February 6th, 2012)
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ALBUM AVAILABILITY
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This score's albums are a commercialized nightmare. The six-track
sampler was made available free for download at the composers' website a week before
the release of the retail download product and over three weeks prior to the street
date of the regular commercial 3-CD set. At the very end of 2011, a 2-CD "For Your
Consideration" promotional set was pressed and leaked to the secondary market. The
"Deluxe" set released in February of 2012, limited to 3,000 copies and containing
the vinyl option, retailed for $300. The regular 3-CD set, by comparison, was
initially offered at $14. A lossless download option was available as well for $12.
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AWARDS
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Nominated for a Golden Globe, a BAFTA Award, and a Grammy Award.
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ALSO SEE
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Buy it... only if you're a Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross enthusiast
or a bandwagon soundtrack fan who cares little about the proven
procedures that it takes to actually craft an effective film score.
Avoid it... if you don't want the intellectual elite of the film
music world to label you as hopeless git, especially if you're
contemplating the ego-stroking, $300 "deluxe" album for this ineffective
and aimless sound design.
BUY IT
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: (Trent
Reznor/Atticus Ross) The people of Sweden have to be horrified by all
the attention that the publishing and film industries have given to
Stieg Larsson's contemporary crime novels. Published and adapted after
the author's death, the first entry of his "Millennium Trilogy" of
stories has been translated with the title "The Girl With the Dragon
Tattoo" and adapted into multiple feature films, each of which not very
complimentary of Swedish society. Through Larsson's lens, the people of
that country are violent rapists, practicing Nazis, incompetent
investigators, and immoral capitalists, not to mention that all of this
behavior happens in a disturbingly bleak environment. That gloomy world
is the backdrop for a group of unhappy characters in The Girl With
the Dragon Tattoo, all of which suffering from societal
misrepresentation or ills of acquaintanceship. The owner of a magazine
who has lost a libel case against a wealthy and corrupt business mogul
is played by Daniel Craig, and he is given a second chance by another
corporate CEO who wishes to use the journalist's skills to investigate
the disappearance of his niece 40 years earlier. In return, the
journalist will be financially supported and provided with dirt on the
businessman who sued him. On a parallel collision course of a timeline
is the story of Lisbeth Salander, a troubled young woman who lives under
state supervision and is an expert computer hacker. When they team up to
conduct the investigation together, they grow unexpectedly close and
wade through the corrupt layers of the target family until the plot's
somewhat upbeat conclusion. Amidst this journey, however, are gruesome
stories and depictions of rape and revenge, torture and executions that
have garnered the film some of the harshest available ratings in each
international venue. Director David Fincher has never made much of an
attempt to avoid such unsavory topics, and the music for his violent
thrillers has often been supplied by some of Hollywood's most competent
composers for the genre. The likes of Howard Shore, Elliot Goldenthal,
and David Shire have all provided extremely troubled but effective
ambient environments for Fincher's previous projects, their scores
deeply challenging listeners using intelligent methods of striking
unpleasant but close emotional bonds based upon the most poignant
moments in each project. When the director struck gold with The
Social Network, however, his collaboration with former Nine Inch
Nails members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross was cited as one of that
film's greatest assets, leading to their involvement once again with
Fincher on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in 2011. It's impossible to separate and review the music that
Reznor and Ross created for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
without taking into account the "meta" aspects of its
existence. Thus, there are two concurrent debates about this soundtrack
that need to be addressed: first, the effectiveness of ambient sound
design as a film score and, second, the way the music was created,
edited, and then marketed on its own. For some listeners, there will be
no way to divide this debate, for the methodology involved in the latter
group of issues is clearly influential on the music's application in
context. It is beginning to become widely acceptable to score a feature
film of the 2010's by supplying its filmmakers with a library of
generalized music that they, with the help of a music editor, can pick
through and insert into the picture where necessary. By request, The
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is precisely such an effort. Reznor and
Ross received a few directions from Fincher and then sequestered
themselves in a process during which they wrote three hours of music
that was very basically inspired by the storyline. They did not bother
themselves with synchronization points, specific emotional crescendos
for key narrative moments, revisions to individual cues to account for
changes, or an overall arc of movement from start to finish. They
essentially took the opportunity to write what amounts to a solo effort,
one that could have been written by the pair for no specific affiliation
with a movie and sold with success as its own project. Fincher then took
a minority of this mostly sparse, atmospheric material upon delivery and
dropped into the picture like a second sound effects track. Entire
selections out of these two to eight minute passages were neglected in
the final cut, while others deemed more effective were used in multiple
places. This technique is not new; it has been around for decades,
actually. But rarely do these kinds of scores function to their fullest
potential like one tailored to each specific scene. Filmmakers and
composers argue otherwise when a movie "requires" only ambient music,
but this rhetorical claim is a cheap excuse for laziness in the name of art.
Members of the press and industry, as well as fans of the artists, will
contend endlessly that this approach is "radical" and therefore
"effective." High praise showered down upon Reznor and Ross immediately
for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, sales numbers skyrocketing
and positive press abounding. What you will note, however, is that few
of these supporters actually have a deep understanding about the effort
that it takes to create an effectively tailored film score, even ones
that may seem as obnoxious to some as Titanic and Pirates of
the Caribbean. By comparison, Reznor and Ross are lucky, over-hyped
novices.
You can't blame the general public and composers and
studios eager for fame and profits for using the spectacle of a film
score for their gain. The "think different" advertisement campaign long
waged by Apple has embodied an effort by most people to equate
"different" with "cool." Indeed, what Reznor and Ross provide may seem
different on the surface, despite the fact that composers have been
writing ambient sound design for low budget movies for a long time
without the same acclaim. In the case of The Girl With the Dragon
Tattoo, you simply have rock stars awarded for diverting their
careers, branching out into a different genre and, by their own limited
abilities, generating music that is unconventional for its industry.
What betrays their motives more than anything else is the ridiculous
barrage of marketing employed in the numerous releases of this music on
album. They think so highly of themselves that they give away a sampler
of music through their website and publish three-hour CD, vinyl, and
high fidelity digital releases, the largest package of which a hefty
$300 on their website, and then literally challenge listeners to sit
through it all. What film composer would have an ego so large as to
exercise that kind of arrogance? Many of them have egos, granted, but
the manufactured phenomenon surrounding this Reznor and Ross "event"
detracts from the entire soundtrack industry by making it into a circus.
Everyone involved in this production is to blame for such a commercial
disgrace, including Fincher, whose application of the music in the film
isn't even that effective. He forces the music to directly compliment
the sound effect track in several instances, begging the question why
music was necessary at all in such circumstances. In other sequences,
the director bleeds the score into the background to such an extent that
it is nearly inaudible, a problem exacerbated by the fact that the music
itself drifts off to silence often during its recording anyway.
Ultimately, the only truly appreciable insertions of music into The
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo are the three songs. The first is an
extremely abrasive cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" to set the
mood of the film in its stylish opening credits, and the last is a far
more palatable cover of Bryan Ferry's "Is Your Love Strong Enough?" by
the composers' own group, How to Destroy Angels. In between and not
included on any of the soundtrack releases is Enya's famous new age
song, "Orinoco Flow," which was inserted by Daniel Craig's suggestion as
a joke when source music was required for a pivotal scene in which a
serial murderer is getting in the mood to execute his character. The
levity is nice, but it is positioned to nearly ruin the overall
atmosphere of an otherwise extremely grim film.
Lost in all of this unnecessary hoopla, naturally, is
discussion about the music itself. Nobody could expect Reznor and Ross,
neither of which working from much experience in the film music genre,
to write anything other than what they produced. Their three dozen
self-contained little suites of separate ideas all share the same
generally oppressive and hazy atmosphere. That is, unfortunately, the
only element of cohesion at work in the score for The Girl With the
Dragon Tattoo. There is no organic feel outside of occasional vague
contributions by a solo female voice, the other samples of symphonic
sounds manipulated to intentionally dilute their appeal. Sounds of the
piano and chimes are most common leaders above the droning synthetic fog,
the former detuned and the latter also altered in pitch to ruin the
familial implications they carry. Never do the composers date this score
like they did in The Social Network, the arcade techniques
thankfully absent. But the stuttering, obnoxious loops that sometimes
build to a lengthy crescendo are once again at play, only very vaguely
generating any accelerated tone of suspense. The car chase cue near the
end is extremely poorly handled, its juvenile increase in the volume of
a dissonant loop making any film music collector long for John Powell's
ostinato techniques that have become so popular despite the intellectual
deficiencies from which they also sometimes suffer. The travesty of this
score is that the plotline of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
actually did require some tokens of warmth throughout. The target of the
lead duo's investigation has a very redemptive resolution to her tale,
leading to a reunion that ironically compensates for much of the poor
behavior seen in the rest of the film. And the relationship between the
two leads, though frustrated in the end, is very genuine, at least on
Salander's part, and it merited a growing emotional connection in the
music that is likewise poorly developed. Reznor and Ross do attempt to
address these needs with a few recurring motifs in very basic fashion,
especially in the case of the missing niece, with softer chime and vocal
ideas that bring much-needed tonality to three or so tracks. In this
regard, listeners may be surprised to encounter roughly ten minutes of
pleasantly accessible material amongst all of the muck defining the
whole. But even in these passages, the composers do not allow for any
remote sense of saccharine feeling in their work, plunging the
environment to despair perhaps with unnecessary force. That's the kind
of mistake filmmakers will make when they don't attempt to match their
music to the subtle dynamics of a scene. Creating a glorified sound
effects track for a film will work for purposes of mystery and suspense
in some cases, but it will never be able to express gratitude, relief,
or hope, all of which existing to some extent in this story.
The way the composers present their full score for
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo on album makes it difficult to
place their suites into the proper context, but, as expected, they did
press a two-CD awards sampler with different mixes and edits that
assigns the suites to their actual film placements in shorter cues (of
about 83 minutes total) in the film. This sampler, if the two covers of
the existing songs were added as well, is the presentation that should
have constituted the regular commercial release of the soundtrack,
leaving the full three-hour version for the $300 "deluxe" product aimed
at the fanbase of the artists. Don't look for any of these products,
despite the reasonable pricing of the non-deluxe versions (including
lossless downloadable offerings, a welcome choice), to find a home in
the collections of too many traditional film score collectors. And don't
expect most film music critics to be too kind to the process or the
result of this soundtrack, either. When you have career orchestrators
like Mark McKenzie and Conrad Pope, who use extraordinary expertise in
instrumental applications to imply and support emotional appeals rarely
completely appreciated in their final execution, struggling to enhance
movies by over-performing in their rare compositional assignments, you
cannot help but expose Reznor and Ross as the lucky novices they are,
the rock stars diminishing a different genre of music in the process of
reaping the most commercial benefit from it as possible. Even the work
of a sound design expert like Cliff Martinez, regardless of its own
detriments, has substantially more thought seemingly expended in its
creation. Undoubtedly, Reznor and Ross will continue to enjoy the
limelight in the movie industry much like Gustavo Santaolalla did in the
mid-2000's, utilizing the bliss of media ignorance while covering for
their total inexperience and consequent underachievement for a film that
could have used a Shore, a Goldenthal, or a Shire to really accentuate
the raw power of its story. The irony in all of this debacle is that the
music for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, when considered both
in and out of context, is arguably more accessible and applicable than
The Social Network was, starting Reznor and Ross on a learning
curve that will, perhaps, in twenty-five years, put them on pace to
rival the effectiveness of the descendants of the current Hans
Zimmer/Remote Control army of clones. If soundtracks like this one
continue to win acceptance as the gold standard in modern film scoring,
then all the vilification of Zimmer and his production house for dumbing
down the common denominator in this genre of music in the 1990's and
2000's will have been misdirected. The fact that many in the public
enjoy using occasions such as this to drive the nail further into the
coffin of classicism is all the proof you need to reinforce the notion
that the average movie-goer can be, in fact, a hopeless git. * @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Agreed Graham - September 14, 2013, at 7:52 p.m. |
1 comment (751 views) |
horrible Rob D - February 12, 2012, at 6:14 a.m. |
1 comment (859 views) |
Why you hate it Expand >> supermario - February 7, 2012, at 7:23 a.m. |
2 comments (1651 views) Newest: February 17, 2012, at 2:06 p.m. by Thomas Allen |
2011 Sampler Album Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 34:34 |
1. Hidden in Snow (5:19)
2. People Lie All the Time (4:08)
3. What If We Could? (3:59)
4. Oraculum (8:16)
5. Please Take Your Hand Away (5:53)
6. Under the Midnight Sun (6:59)
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2011 Regular Albums Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 173:30 |
CD1: (60:08)
1. Immigrant Song - performed by Karen O (2:48)
2. She Reminds Me of You (4:25)
3. People Lie All the Time (4:10)
4. Pinned and Mounted (5:05)
5. Perihelion (6:02)
6. What If We Could? (4:08)
7. With the Flies (7:41)
8. Hidden in Snow (5:19)
9. A Thousand Details (3:59)
10. One Particular Moment (7:01)
11. I Can't Take It Anymore (1:48)
12. How Brittle the Bones (1:49)
13. Please Take Your Hand Away (6:00)
CD2: (56:10)
1. Cut Into Pieces (4:04)
2. The Splinter (2:33)
3. An Itch (4:10)
4. Hypomania (5:48)
5. Under the Midnight Sun (7:01)
6. Aphelion (3:34)
7. You're Here (3:29)
8. The Same as the Others (3:09)
9. A Pause for Reflection (4:12)
10. While Waiting (2:18)
11. The Seconds Drag (4:34)
12. Later Into the Night (4:56)
13. Parallel Timeline With Alternate Outcome (6:33)
CD3: (57:12)
1. Another Way of Caring (7:03)
2. A Viable Construct (3:15)
3. Revealed in the Thaw (2:47)
4. Millennia (1:20)
5. We Could Wait Forever (4:22)
6. Oraculum (8:21)
7. Great Bird of Prey (5:19)
8. The Heretics (5:20)
9. A Pair of Doves (2:02)
10. Infiltrator (7:04)
11. The Sound of Forgetting (2:30)
12. Of Secrets (3:26)
13. Is Your Love Strong Enough? - performed by How to Destroy Angels (4:30)
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2011 Awards Promo Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 83:16 |
CD1: (48:44)
1. I Can't Take It Anymore (1:18)
2. Salander Goes Home (She Reminds Me of You) (1:56)
3. Morrel's Report (People Lie All the Time) (2:10)
4. Heartbreak (What If We Could?) (2:41)
5. Salander/Cecilia/Harald (Hidden in Snow) (2:56)
6. Varmland (Under the Midnight Sun) (4:54)
7. Maps (The Seconds Drag) (1:43)
8. Bjurman BJ (Please Take Your Hand Away) (3:19)
9. Salander Returns to the House (One Particular Moment) (1:53)
10. Archives (Pinned and Mounted) (2:45)
11. Coffee Cup (I Can't Take It Anymore) (0:52)
12. Martin's Story (Under the Midnight Sun) (1:25)
13. Martin Traps Blomkvist (Aphelion) (2:24)
14. Car Chase (Great Bird of Prey) (2:04)
15. Harriet Theme 4 (Millenia) (0:57)
16. Salander's Trip (The Heretics) (3:48)
17. North Pole (A Pause for Reflection) (0:48)
18. Media Event of the Year (One Particular Moment) (0:43)
19. Harriet's Story (Under the Midnight Sun) (4:05)
20. Bank Sequence (You're Here) (1:15)
21. Harriet Theme I (While Waiting) (2:33)
22. Salander Tattoos Bjurman (Of Secrets) (2:26)
CD2: (34:32)
1. Millenia (1:37)
2. She's One of the Best, She's Different (We Could Wait Forever) (2:44)
3. Parade Photos (You're Here) (1:54)
4. Bible Verses (Aphelion) (1:59)
5. Plague, Trinity & Wasp (Infiltrator) (1:59)
6. Salander Arrives at Bjurman's (Cut Into Pieces) (1:40)
7. Salander Reports to Blomkvist (Aphelion) (1:43)
8. Salander at Wennerstrom's Apartment (People Lie All the Time) (1:02)
9. Blomkvist Shot (Great Bird of Prey) (1:06)
10. Lovemaking (What If We Could?) (1:41)
11. Harriet's Flowers (How Brittle the Bones) (1:34)
12. Harriet/The Accident (Hidden in Snow) (2:38)
13. Salander at Soder Hospital (Under the Midnight Sun) (0:48)
14. Meeting Bjurman (We Could Wait Forever) (1:07)
15. Salander Raped (With the Flies) (2:05)
16. Salander Tasers Bjurman (You're Here) (1:16)
17. Martin Interviews Blomkvist (Great Bird of Prey) (2:57)
18. Blomkvist Meets Martin (Unknown Track) (1:16)
19. Blomkvist Travels to Hedestat (She Reminds Me of You) (1:53)
20. Widow Brannlund's Photos (Hidden in Snow) (1:18)
21. Dead Cat (Of Secrets) (0:38)
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(secondary titles correspond to the equivalent music on the regular set) |
The digital download albums contain no artwork other than the cover. The 3-CD set
is housed in a large-format, unfolding case, but its awkward three-page insert includes no
extra information about the score or film. The 2-CD promotional set comes in a slipcase with
no additional information, either. The "Deluxe" product contains extensive extra materials,
highlighted by an 8GB USB memory stick containing a lossless presentation of the music.
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