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The Matrix
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Composed, Orchestrated, Conducted, and Produced by:
Soprano Vocals Performed by:
Thed Lebow
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LABELS & RELEASE DATES
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ALBUM AVAILABILITY
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The 1999 album is a regular U.S. release. A song album for the
film had been released two months earlier. The 2008 "Deluxe Edition" is an
entry in Varèse Sarabande's Club series, with 3,000 copies pressed
and sold only through soundtrack specialty outlets at an initial price of $20.
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AWARDS
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None.
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ALSO SEE
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Buy it... on the 1999 commercial album only if you want a sneak
peak at Don Davis' often difficult, postmodern score (and on the limited
2008 product only if you consider yourself an established fan of the
franchise's music).
Avoid it... if you demand the greater role of thematic harmony that
develops in the two sequel scores by Davis, both featuring a more
interesting blend of challenging dissonance and quasi-religious
harmony.
BUY IT
 | Davis |
The Matrix: (Don Davis) Very rarely does a truly
visionary concept come out of Hollywood, especially in science fiction
and fantasy genres that include thousands of entries over many decades.
The existential issues raised by Andy and Larry Wachowski in 1999's
The Matrix proposed the idea that everything man knows in terms
of "reality" is a computer simulation controlled by machines in a real
world of the future, a world in which humans' bodies are harvested for
energy while their brains are fed the illusion of a world contemporary
to viewing audiences. Those who have escaped the machines and their
endless levels of competing programming hide deep under the surface of
the planet, plugging into the virtual world when necessary to cause
trouble and save people who didn't know they needed salvation. The
primary target for both humans and machines is the character of Neo
(Keanu Reeves), who is the Jesus Christ figure of this disjointed world
and who can both save humanity and bring balance to the machine world.
The film's March release revealed relatively low initial expectations
from Warner Brothers, though an explosive return at the box office
eventually opened the door for two successful sequels, both released
(awkwardly) in 2003. The production elements of The Matrix are
stunning, especially in the art direction and Wachowski Brothers' unique
techniques of shooting and editing fight sequences. The dimensions of
time and space are distorted in the film's pivotal moments, yielding a
marvelous spectacle of sight to coincide with the story's already
unconventional propositions. The Wachowski Brothers realized immediately
that the film would require an unusual combination of music, especially
when pertaining to the score. While the trilogy adopted more of a
romantic sense of fantasy in its sequels, The Matrix presented an
odd blend of horror and coolness in between its frantic chase sequences.
The real world veterans played by Carrie-Ann Moss and Laurence Fishburne
exuded professional and cool personas that necessitated an equally
rocking personality in the music, and for these concepts, the Wachowskis
relied on hard rock songs. This is especially evident as Neo adopts the
same persona in the last flying sequence of the film. With the hip, mainstream elements of The Matrix
addressed by Marilyn Manson and others, the Wachowski Brothers turned to
their collaborator for the quirky Bound, Don Davis, to provide
the unusual sounds necessary for the darker concepts. The directors
specifically requested music that was different, and whether you label
it postmodern or avant garde, Don Davis' result certainly succeeds. It
was a project that Davis referred to as a dream assignment, for it
allowed him, as he stated, to rely more heavily on the "postmodern works
that are being done now on the concert stage." Davis has always enjoyed
writing original concert pieces in his career, because it allows for a
level of freedom and exploration that films don't often permit. He
commented that The Matrix, despite being a good candidate for a
different sound, would not have worked with a score heavily laden with
synthesizers, and he justified this by claiming that electronic scores
had become something of the norm by the late 1990's. Instead, when Davis
arrived at a particular scene in the film, he tackled it by writing
music in exactly the opposite mould of what initial reactions might
dictate. Perhaps this is most evident in the cue "The Power Plant," in
which Davis arrives at the score's most monumental crescendo of harmonic
resonance for full ensemble and (ironically Mormon) choir, albeit
briefly, for the moment when the lead character discovers the horrors of
the real world for the first time. Another example exists in the cue
"Welcome to the Real World," which is treated to a melancholy boy
soprano solo despite the fact that man, Neo, is now surrounded by a
group of real and genuinely caring people for the first time. Davis'
work for the film is better recognized, however, for its harsh
dissonance and startling brass tones in atonal bursts of energy that are
indeed quite harrowing to hear. Even when the score isn't as truly
unlistenable as the terrifying mangle of sound in "Unable to Speak,"
Davis inserts unease into every cue. As a horror experience, The
Matrix is one of the more engaging on album, though this fact
remains interesting in that such material really doesn't define the
music as heard in the film. For this score, there is significant
difference between the two.
While Davis has claimed that he looked back at no
orchestral film score as his guide for The Matrix, there are
actually distinct similarities between this work and that which resulted
from the Alien sequels by James Horner and Elliot Goldenthal.
Fans of the latter composer, specifically, will note that Davis'
handling of layers of instrumentation in order to produce disharmony,
highly organized despite being unpleasant, is remarkably reminiscent to
Goldenthal's avant garde tendencies. The unusually large and diverse
role for the brass section is mostly responsible for this style in
The Matrix, along with ominous rumbling of the piano and other
percussion. Many of these instruments are electronically manipulated to
give them a foreign sound. There are no simple themes in The
Matrix, despite the franchise's movement towards the romantic in the
sequels. The superhero element for Neo does shine through in "Anything
is Possible," with the major-key statement on brass over choir in the
cue providing an obvious hint of both his powers and his savior status
(this proves to be a theme in and of itself in the sequels). Late in
that cue, at 4:50 (as well as late in "Ontological Shock"), audiences
hear the opening bars of the love theme for Neo and Trinity that would
flourish in the sequels. The finale cue ends with a raucous crescendo
that could easily fit in Alien 3, Heat, or Sphere.
The two most distinct ideas in The Matrix are also staples of the
series. First, the pulsating, pitch-defying brass effect that wavers
between trumpets on top and horns below is an extremely distinctive
identity for the entire franchise. It's instantly recognizable and
proves quite useful in the ease with which it can be integrated into
nearly any cue. Davis' method of presenting the motif at the very start
of the film, with rolling piano and tingling metallic percussion, would
carry over to the sequels. Secondly, the evil machines are given a
rhythmic effect of a deliberate, accelerating movement, both tapped out
lightly on the cymbals several times (a definite Horner influence) or
blasted by brass in the aforementioned moment of choral harmony in "The
Power Plant." The sense of the inevitable in this motif cannot be
missed. Also omnipresent are metallic sound effects through all of these
ideas, sometimes making you wonder if one of your major household
appliances is malfunctioning.
Overall, The Matrix is extremely original, but
it's not easy listening on album. The songs play such a prominent role
in the film that there is often confusion for mainstream viewers about
where the boundary between the songs and score exists. Perhaps the most
obvious blurring of lines comes with the use of Rob Dougan's "Clubbed to
Death" piece for the scene when Neo is reintroduced to the matrix (and
the lady in the red dress). So distinct was the adaptation of that piece
into The Matrix that Dougan would himself expand the idea for
The Matrix Reloaded. It's not surprising that most of the hype
generated by the music of The Matrix came from the non-Davis
material (which consists of songs that people often associate with the
film when protesting and extending their belief that it inspires school
shootings). The most interesting debate about music usage for the film
ironically involved the use of "The Eyes of Truth" by Enigma, with a
gothic new age style of heavy percussion and massive chorus that very
obviously stirred anticipation in the film's trailers. The lack of an
Enigma-like sound in the score was understandable when you look at the
project from Davis' viewpoint, but it's interesting to observe that his
two sequel scores would slowly move towards that kind of sound. It's
unlikely that this choice was made based on so much positive hype from
the usage, but those listeners unsatisfied with the lack of that kind of
score would eventually hear something more to their liking. The
Varèse Sarabande release of the score at the time of the film's
debut only included 30 minutes of material, omitting a significant
portion of the film's middle "explanation scenes" and final action music
(upwards of ten minutes in the case of the latter alone). Among all of
Varèse's 30-minute albums of the middle to late 1990's (which
were short due to financial, re-use reasons and not by the choice of the
label), The Matrix was among those that truly bothered film music
collectors the most. But you can't fault Varèse in this case,
taking into account the fact that the recording included a 90-piece Los
Angeles (in other words: union) ensemble. To their credit, they
assembled 30 minutes of material that included a competent selection to
represent the various parts of Davis' work. For some casual listeners,
this presentation may even suffice.
The problems posed by the Varèse album were
solved for some film score collectors when the (region 1) DVD was
released with an isolated score track, and within a couple of years,
2-CD bootlegs of the music flooded the market. Surprising most in the
community, Varèse chose to add The Matrix to its selection
of "Deluxe Edition" entries within its series of limited Club titles in
September of 2008, expanding the running time of the presentation to a
whopping 78 minutes. Considering the large pressing (3000 copies) and
the fact that many fans had already satisfied themselves with the DVD
rip of the music, it should be no surprise that the album did not come
close to selling out as quickly as some had anticipated, and copies
remained on sale for less than $20 in 2009. As for the contents of the
2008 expanded product, nearly every major cue from the score is compiled
into a well-rounded, if not perhaps overextended view of the score.
Davis' material is obviously interesting enough in each of its minutes
to retain attention from an intellectual standpoint, but there is some
redundancy in the added music. Finally heard on a legitimate release is
the plethora of rhythmic slapping, tingling, and wavering that
accompanies Morpheus' crew as they maneuver or snap to action ("Switch
Out" and "Whoa, Switch Brokers"). A better sense of propulsion is
conveyed on this product, with rhythmic urgency translating to even the
cues of minimalistic volume. Among the most important additions to the
original album's material is the traumatic "Nascent Nauseous Neo," the
Japanese-flavored "Domo Showdown," the rhythmically dense "Switch Out,"
and the pair of lengthy climax cues, "That's Gotta Hurt" and "Surprise."
Enthusiasts of the sequel scores are treated to another hint of the Neo
and Trinity love theme in the middle of "Switch Out." Still, if you
tally all of these important additional cues, you end up with an
optimized album running at far less than an hour in length, which would
perhaps be the most comfortable compromise for an already difficult (and
for some people, nearly intolerable) listening experience. Warner
Bothers handled the commercial album situation a bit better with the
sequels, addressing the finer balance between score and song especially
in The Matrix Reloaded. On the whole, while The Matrix is
a fine and original score for its film, it's by far the least enjoyable
of the three entries on any of its albums. @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
- Music as Written for Film: ****
- Music as Heard on 1999 Album: **
- Music as Heard on 2008 Album: ***
- Overall: ***
Bias Check: |
For Don Davis reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.2
(in 10 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.02
(in 43,934 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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1999 Album Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 30:11 |
1. Main Title/Trinity Infinity (3:53)
2. Unable to Speak (1:13)
3. The Power Plant (2:40)
4. Welcome to the Real World (2:25)
5. The Hotel Ambush (5:22)
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6. Exit Mr. Hat (1:20)
7. A Virus (1:32)
8. Bullet-time (1:09)
9. Ontological Shock (3:31)
10. Anything is Possible (6:48)
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2008 Album Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 77:54 |
1. Main Title/Trinity Infinity (3:49)
2. Neo on the Edge* (3:23)
3. Unable to Speak (1:13)
4. Bait and Switch* (3:15)
5. Switched for Life* (3:35)
6. Switched at Birth (2:40)
7. Switch's Brew (2:26)
8. Cold Hearted Switch* (1:38)
9. Nascent Nauseous Neo* (2:05)
10. A Morpheus Moment* (1:30)
11. Bow Whisk Orchestra* (1:03)
12. Domo Showdown* (1:14)
13. Switch or Break Show* (1:04)
14. Shake, Borrow, Switch* (0:33)
15. Freeze Face* (1:48)
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16. Switch Woks Her Boa* (2:03)
17. Switch Out* (2:56)
18. Boon Spoy* (1:06)
19. Oracle Cookies* (1:26)
20. Threat Mix (5:24)
21. Exit Mr. Hat (1:16)
22. On Your Knees, Switch* (4:45)
23. Mix the Art (1:27)
24. Whoa, Switch Brokers* (4:01)
25. No More Spoons* (1:00)
26. Dodge This (1:06)
27. Ontological Shock (3:29)
28. That's Gotta Hurt* (5:16)
29. Surprise!* (4:04)
30. He's the One Alright (6:47)
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* previously unreleased |
The 1999 album was advertised by Varèse Sarabande as featuring 24-bit
digital sound. The insert for that product, however, offers no extra information about
the film or score. The 2008 Varèse Club album contains lengthy notation about
both the film and score, though it concentrates heavily on Davis' career rather than the
construction of the music. The packaging creatively uses a green spine accent rather
than the maroon usually seen on Varèse's products, an obvious nod to the color
of the code in the film.
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