300: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Written by Mark Osborne
Published on 03/22/2007
Originally from Binary Culture / [the-lowdown.net]
http://www.binaryculture.net

Enter the year 1999. The Matrix splashed onto movie screens that spring. Shortly after, the United States was rocked by the most shocking act of violence by minors in memory when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a rampage through Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Following that, Fight Club premiered in the fall. All three events combined to create the most tumultuous and revolutionary year of the decade for the film industry, even rivaling the impact of the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC.

We remember the changes to the landscape in terms of how we examine and portray violence in our media, we remember the changes in filmmaking technology, and we remember the culture of blame and finger pointing about the causes of violence. What gets left behind is the fact that The Matrix and Fight Club sewed the seeds of a revolution in scoring motion pictures; streamlining and integrating contemporary electronic music into filmmaking seriously for the first time since all that shitty synth shit back in the late eighties.

While the first Matrix movie largely relied on a conventional score, electronic influences and samples were writ large across it, most notably in “I Know Kung Fu.” Even the electronic elements of the soundtrack were carefully and artistically woven into the soundscape of the film, going beyond simply playing in the background or being used for a conventional montage. The best instance of this would have to be The Prodigy’s Mindfields transitioning into the insistent blare of Neo’s alarm clock.

David Fincher took this one step further by approaching The Dust Brothers to compose the entire score for Fight Club, the first of its kind for a movie on that scale. While the score itself was incredibly manic and rarely relented from it’s breakneck pace, it proved once and for all that electronic music had to be taken seriously for it’s ability to evoke mood and atmosphere, especially in the context of a movie score. The album is rare and likely never sold big, but it belongs in the record collection of anyone who takes scoring seriously (far more belonging than Moby’s hot and cold I Like to Score).

The next big breakthrough came when Marilyn Manson collaborated with Marco Beltrami to score the Resident Evil movie. The results of Manson’s creative insight and experimentation with physically disorienting frequencies married to Beltrami’s knowledge and experience in conventional scoring resulted in a unique and remarkable achievement that added infinitely to the atmosphere of the movie, making it far more claustrophobic and urgent than a conventional instrumental score could have ever hoped to achieve.

The final major step in bridging the gap to Tyler Bates’ remarkable achievement on the 300 score was The Matrix Reloaded, which took the spirit of the collaboration between electronic and symphonic elements pioneered and tested by Manson and Beltrami and applied them to a far more mainstream sound in the form of the collaboration between electronica giant Juno Reactor and composer Don Davis. Their biggest achievement on the Reloaded soundtrack was by far Mona Lisa Overdrive, the accompaniment to the climactic car chase sequence the Wachowskis built their own highway to film. Regardless of all the technical work that went into staging the unprecedented sequence, without the snarling beautiful menace of that particular track, the sequence would have lost the vast majority of its bombast.

And so, nearly a decade later, we arrive at Tyler Bates’ score for 300 which truly sounds like a distillation of all that came before it in the battle for the legitimacy of electronic music samples and philosophy in movie scoring. As I digest it, I find myself picking out loops, samples, and instruments from various familiar places. A drum beat that sounds remarkably similar to one in The Matrix Reloaded, a screeching guitar in time with some Mediterranean instrument I can’t quite place just like something out of the Prince of Persia game score, the razor like trepidation and unconventional samples that call up memories of Resident Evil, chanting that evokes Gladiator. Bates has woven an incredibly unique tapestry out of tried and tested techniques and sounds, that rather than sound recycled or stolen, come across like the elements in an Amano painting; elegant and recognizable pieces that come together to form an unmistakably unique gestalt-like whole.

According to director Zack Snyder, who previously worked with Bates on Dawn of the Dead, he consulted the composer before beginning casting or even storyboarding the film. As a result, the score set the pace for the production and feel of the movie, which is a unique experience; given that much of the time the score isn’t even considered seriously until post production.

The score itself is perfectly suited to the tone of the film, incorporating an eclectic range of instruments to express the various layers of the film and its source material. There’s heavy, WWE worthy nu-metal guitars that pay tribute to the chest beating appeal of the film, the obligatory Sword and Sandle chanting and mournful wails, as well as a heavy dose of Middle Eastern and Indian influences to evoke the Persian side of things. It’s a very self aware, post modern affair. You’re getting the whole experience of the film fed back to you through the score; not just telling what the screen is showing but entering into a dialogue with you. It’s acknowledging that any time you see a guy with a Greco-Roman beard and a sword yelling a lot, you think of Russell Crowe (although that will now be open to debate thanks to Gerard Butler’s fan craze inducing theatrics), it’s roaring “Fuck yeah!” along with you at the exuberance of the violence, and wailing at the injustice of it all.

Of course it’s important to note that as of the writing of this review, I still have not seen the movie. I’d say that it’s an incredible testament to the deliberateness and effectiveness of the score that I can so clearly make out what it’s telling me about the movie it’s supposed to go with. For that reason I wouldn’t hesitate to use the word operatic in describing it not only for how epic it sounds, but for the narrative qualities of it as well.

At the end of the day though, what justifies (the purchase of) a score album isn’t necessarily or even usually how well it fits the film but how it fares as a listening experience all of it’s own. For example, as appropriate and excellent Hans Zimmer’s Gladiator score was, I only really listened to the damn thing a couple times because it couldn’t really do much for me outside of it’s original context whereas the scores discussed in the opening of the review, for the most part, are catchy and engaging enough on their own merits to fit comfortably with the rest of my music library. While I have to admit that Philip Steir’s remix of To Victory, clearly made to be appreciated more like a traditional techno single than a score piece, will be in far heavier rotation than any of the original score tracks, I’m damn sure that the 300 score will prove to be a wise investment. Chances are it’ll find itself a niche in my library as one of the albums I put on while I write. Not just any music is epic and manly enough to inspire my poison pen.