[microsound] children of men/futuristic music

[Graham Miller <grahammiller@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

just saw the absolutely mind-blowingly good sci-fi 'children of men,'
one of the most impressive pieces of dystopian sci-fi i've seen in
ages. 'code 46' meets 'saving private ryan' meets '28 days later'. i
can't say enough good things about this film. go see it. thank god
for proper science fiction. it comes so infrequently. but when it
comes it gets me so excited about the possibilities inherent to this
genre. this guy should direct neuromancer and get aphex twin (or
sutekh) to do the score:)

anyway, without giving anything away, i was particularly impressed in
one scene in which the michael caine character plays some 'soothing'
diagetic music from the near-future (roughly twenty years from now)
for the main protagonist, clive owen, over his stereo, after a
particularly traumatizing string of events.

having just (well a year ago) completed a master's thesis on exactly
this kind of thing (thesis in a nutchell: why don't sci-fi films ever
try to imagine what the music of the future might sound like?) i have
to say that this incidentally tiny sequence is really one the best
attempts at imagining or designed a style of music that does not yet
exist.  i can't think of any film that has really tried to do this
and succeeded the way 'children of men' does.

i've only seen it once and intend to check it out again, so this
description only comes from my muddy memory but basically it is a
kind of über-heavy musique concrete of screaming and machine gun fire
not all that far removed from say, public enemy, in terms of that
kind of intensity and sonic politic. it really blew my mind.

has anyone seen this movie and remember that scene? any thoughts?

g.

p.s. also check out the sounds of michael caine's (jasper) alarm
system in the movie. cool stuff too in terms of totally original
sound design.
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