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There are not too many recording artists who can point to the likes of Led Zeppelin, Saul Stokes, John Cage and Nine Inch Nails as direct influences on an album project. On The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo soundtrack artists Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have done just that, and more. This three CD fractured musical landscape follows and expands on their award winning soundtrack to The Social Network. With its sonic stories painted from a darker palette some connection to darkness will help the listener relate more meaningfully to this work. Experiencing this soundtrack is to step into a trippy dream landscape, filled with grown-up lullabies, twisted timbres, quick rhythmic cuts and the dark poetry of industrial ambient music. While trembling sonorities and haunting timbres provide moody accompaniment to the film it was produced for this work stands on its own as a three hour feature presentation of "skull" cinema. From an atmosphere of digital sickness to the building suspense of rising trick sequencer patterns, as well as the elegant melancholy of slowly played piano notes through cavernous reverb, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo possesses a ceaselessly arresting eerie strangeness. This duo's unstoppable imagination moves wonderfully between sections featuring a tumultuous frontal line of sound all the way down to passages of unnerving silences and hesitations. With its complex directness, this music is asking to be closely listened to - which may sometimes seem like a dare. Yet as diverse and shifting as this album is, the music is all connected - and gets to places in our mind that we did not even know where there.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 31 January 2012 |
