The Machine (Metropolis Rescore Project)

The Machine (Metropolis Rescore Project)

I am an eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, I am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see. -Dziga Vertov

This is my complete score synced up to video for the infamous scene the machine.

You might be tempted to see this part of the movie as cheesy. This seems a little over the top and prototypical to us today, because it actually was the prototype.

It's a great scene too. The thing I love most about the scene is that it manages somehow to evoke the drama of cascading epiphanies -- from the personal "oh my god I'm part of this", to the univeral "the whole world is wrong" -- in a visceral way, with no dialogue, and very limited visual detail.  Amazing stuff, and fun to write for.

You, In the Machine

Big Cycle Beat

"If you can't build a robot, be a robot" -Abe Simpson

I really love working on Metropolis. There's a surreal aspect to crawling inside the universe of a film older than my grandmother, and seeing our own world through the lens of it's view of the future. Seeing how accurate it was in some respects, is what takes it right into the spooky.

This is a quick bounce of an early version of my score for this famous scene ("the machine").  Got to finish some writing on this, then sync it up to the video. See also: Clockwork Daydream (Intro & Opening Scene)

The Mars Underground Metropolis Project

This seedy-looking woman is not who she appears to be. She is, in fact an identity thieving robot sent by wealthy industrialists to infiltrate a gang of union thugs by impersonating their leader.

This is Maria from the silent film, Metropolis.

I have taken on what is by all accounts an insane, and daunting project. The Mars Underground (my electronic side project with Bryan) is going to re-score this most iconic, inexplicably beautiful (and the more I watch it, the more I realize -- also prophetic in many ways) science fiction film from 1927.

This is our score for the title sequence and opening scene:



Yes, this has been done before. No, I'm not trying to jock Georgio Morodor's style. I just really, really like this movie. It's creepy in that old timey way, and basically this film visually articulates my relationship to computers perfectly.

This is going to be awesome. Music for the next scene is already half written. It's like the project has a will of it's own.

Clockwork Daydream

Big Cycle Beat

This is a track that I cooked up last night with Bryan Bacon. We've been talking for some time about getting an electronic side project together under the name The Mars Underground. I don't know if that will necessarily grow out of this, but it's a pretty damn cool track, all the same.

I was going to make a joke and call this "chillstep" because it's basically chillout electronica, but I added the dubstep bass, because I just bought NI Razor, and I wanted to play with it. Razor can do a whole lot more than wobble basses, but it does make building really great ones stupidly easy. Anyhow, out of curiosity, I googled the term "chillstep", and sure enough ... there actually is a such thing. Proving again, that if synths and a drum machines are involved then someone, somewhere has described it by taking any adjective or noun from the dictionary at random and slapping "-step" on the end.