Music Composed by Nathan Larson
Rating: **

One sad fact that lovers of both film and film music have to accept very early on is that the best films and the best film scores very rarely find each other. If you want to hear a great film score today, you tend to be stuck sitting through a film like Final Fantasy or The Village to hear it. If you want to see a great film, more often then not your best bet is with the independent cinema, where film music is very rarely treated with any serious consideration. With the exception of the great efforts put forth by Carter Burwell, Jon Brion, and the brothers Danna, it’s rare that a great independent film is actually accompanied by a great score. Perhaps due to budgetary limitations, perhaps due to the fact that the only thing independent film makers seem to understand about film music is that films are supposed to occasionally have music in the background, art-house film music tends to consist of a few meandering chords slowly churned out of a synthesizer, existing only for the sake of being there. This is not music that one would ever expect to find a commercial CD release, and it’s hard to believe that this is music that anybody would ever desire to find on a commercial release. Apparently, however, composer Nathan Larson has contributed enough of this slowly churning music to the independent cinema to constitute this compilation release, Filmmusik (you know that Larson must be a daring and unconventional artist because he turns convention on its head by spelling “music” with “k”).

I can’t imagine that taken individually, any of Larson’s film scores would get the slightest stirring of attention, but the man has had the good fortune to get himself associated with several independent films that have actually received a good deal of critical attention, such as Boys Don’t Cry, Dirty Pretty Things, and The Woodsman. Cues from these scores, along with cues from less famous films, are scattered throughout this album. And scattered is a key word here, because Larson does not even bother grouping cues from the same film together, with cues from films like Boys Don’t Cry and Prozac Nation arbitrarily spread across the entire album. This would make for a disjointed listening experience if there were any discernable differences between the cues, but Larson’s anonymous mulling is uniform enough to make the listening experience consistent, if nothing else. A rock musician with no training in traditional film scoring, Larson writes scores that are heavy in ambient electronica and light in substance or any discernable musical impact. I suppose his chill and polished approach can be pleasant and relaxing if you’re in the mood for something light to occupy the background, but it’s a bad sign when “pleasant” and “relaxing” are apt adjectives to describe the music behind a bleak piece of violent trauma like Boys Don’t Cry or The Woodsman. Even the occasional songs with lyrics that punctuate the album blend into the background without making any ripples on the surface.

Albeit there are a few modest exceptions, though they come in the oddest places. Despite the wide range of truly fine films that Larson has worked on, the two most interesting cues on his album are both from films directed by Hollywood uber-hack, Joel Schumacher. Larson’s cue from Phone Booth (a brief contribution to a score by Harry Gregson-Williams) is a moderately entertaining and upbeat bit of urban techno, while his suite from Schumacher’s Vietnam War epic, Tigerland, features a refreshing passage of traditional Vietnamese percussion and violin. They don’t shake the world apart, but they add a little variety that would benefit the album if the variety came more frequently.

But without these brief moments, we’re left with a homogenous wall of meandering sound to fill out 40 minutes. I truly wish I had kinder words to say for Filmusik, because it’s so rare that music from such an obscure source finds a commercial release. I’m happy that Nathan Larson managed to get this album out there, and I’m sure his mellow indie electronica has an audience somewhere. I just can’t imagine that anybody weaned off orchestral music is going to be part of that audience, and ultimately the album just about sums up every reason my ears slump over with dread every time I set foot inside an art-house theater. (Originally published May 16, 2005).

Music Composed and Performed by Nathan Larson; Enginneered by Carl Glanville, Andy Richards, Bill Emmins; Produced by Nathan Larson; Availability: In print; Label (Catalogue): Commotion Records, (CR006); Release Date: April 5, 2005

01. Prozac (3:05)
02. Boys (1:11)
03. Operator (1:40)
from the motion picture Phonebooth
05. Tigerland (4:30)
from the motion picture Tigerland
05. You Can Take What’s Left of Me (2:59)
06. Night Basketball (0:42)
07. Fiction (2:05)
from the motion picture Storytelling
08. A Softer Night (1:09)
09. I Want Someone Badly (3:02)
10. The Fawn (1:23)
11. Small Town Jail (0:57)
12. Mommy, Are Angels Dead (1:04)
13. She Might be Waking Up (2:46)
14. Le Pont de la Tristesse (1:03)
from the motion picture The Chateau
15. Mom’s Mercedes (3:15)
16. Balcony (0:37)
17. Dirty Pretty Things (1:42)
18. Departure Lounge (2:28)
19. Last Lines (2:26)
20. Walter (2:23)
from the motion picture The Woodsman
21. Something Like Love (3:32)
22. Rape and a Burning Polaroid (1:21)

1,10,16,21 - Prozac Nation
2,8,11,22 - Boys Don’t Cry
13,15,19 - High Art
6,12 - Lilja 4-Ever
17,18 - Dirty Pretty Things

Total Playing Time: 45′20