Friday, May 6, 2016

Cassette Review: German Army "Yanomami" (Sacred Phrases)



When I first press play on "Yanomami" I can hear this sound which reminds me of some cross between the hollow beats of "Pretty Hate Machine" era Nine Inch Nails with spoken words like out of a sci-fi movie.   Dark notes bring me to a place where I'm thinking of both "The Crow" and "Resident Evil" and as I continue to listen to "Yanomami" I can only imagine it as being the soundtrack to some forgotten film.    

It's strange because usually when something is ambient (and instrumental) I like to think of it as being a movie soundtrack, but right into the second song German Army brings out the new wave/post punk singing and yet I'm still hearing a soundtrack for a film I'd watch a hundred times over.    Something like "Trainspotting" or "Tank Girl".   

Synth beats bring out more spoken words and then it becomes quieter, ominous before the singing returns with a hypnotic feel.   Side B has a western samurai drum machine beat shot start to it and it just furthers my soundtrack idea, even when these odd, sort of screwed vocals come out.   Through a lot of lasers comes banging and singing through synth and this is just something you'd appreciate even if it wasn't a movie.

I can't really tell you what kind of movie this soundtrack would make other than the fact that it would be one of my favorite movies.   As I mentioned some movies before, but then if you also consider a movie like "Hackers", it's just that none of those movies are really alike so you have to think of it as having that bit of action, a sci-fi nature, some humor perhaps and just whatever ingredients make for a movie to be one I want to watch all the time (and they are few, but they do exist out there)

In 2016 movies don't really have soundtracks as composed by one artist any more.   Not the way that Queen, for example, set the mood for "Flash Gordon" (another of my favorite movies I could watch over and over, which I also recently picked up on Blu-Ray).   I know that Trent Reznor did the soundtrack recently for "The Social Network" but that felt like more of a score to me than a soundtrack.

As the state of Hollywood (and with it movies) is in decline, it is nice to know that even though we may not get those similar soundtracks we had in the 1990's (And there were even soundtracks which came out in the 1990's and before which were better than the movies themselves) because we're lucky enough just to get one or two decent movies per year now, at least German Army can remind us of when soundtracks were good.

You know, if I had to choose between a soundtrack or a movie I'd probably rather have the soundtrack because often times the sounds can take you back to the images and feelings where as the movie itself sometimes only has pieces of the song in it.    Plus you can't sing a movie in the shower.   So, yeah, I'd say this is the greatest soundtrack to a movie which doesn't exist and for that you should be listening and thinking.  











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