Klimek - Movies Is Magic

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  • "Cinema is the ultimate pervert art," claims Slavoj Žižek, the Slovenian philosopher whose work inspired Klimek's new celluloid-obsessed full-length, "it doesn't give you what you desire, it tells you how to desire." Through its tricks and techniques, cinema creates new, unforeseen fantasies, or in other words, as the album title says here, Movies Is Magic. Sebastian Meissner's first album under the Klimek guise since 2007's Dedications, Movies explores the ability of ambient music to participate in the cinematic production of fantasy. Across ten tracks Meissner dissects the body of film music, laying bare its pulpy organs, taking pains to rearrange them into new uncanny forms. The resulting imaginary soundtracks revel in suspense, menace and drama, all those effects that can take an object on the screen and render it mysterious and sublime. All manner of classic film music tropes appear here abstracted into a haunting dreamscape, in which lush layers of sampled instruments move over one another in airy, dynamic interplay. Fluid cascades of woodwinds, brass and strings contain snatches of sound unmoored from melody hanging in space, languid and sensual, before vanishing into silence. Orchestral phrases ebb and flow, calling out to one another across an ethereal space. The prominent use of harmonica on several tunes most explicitly recalls classic Ennio Morricone soundtracks. "Exposed to Life in its Brutal Meaninglessness" and "Exploding Unbearable Desires" both waft across a reddened, arid mesa, evoking a kind of metaphysical spaghetti western, rich in the Texan desolation that backdrops films like No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. The track titles make up a catalog of dark emotions: confusion, betrayal, lament, anxiety. The tunes they name, however, are as calming as they are unsettling. Take for example, "Greed, Mutation, Betrayal." While a heavy voice intones "I'm a coward, put your knife in me," flamenco horns stretch a single note into a trembling force waiting to explode. Such an atmosphere can work to relieve tension in the listener just as much as it can produce it. Therein lies the compelling force of film music that Klimek so artfully releases from its formal constraints—its ability to cast the listener into deep emotional uncertainty, and at times into ecstatic concisions of pleasure and pain, serenity and horror. Not content to rest on his laurels, Meissner has taken a confident step forward in a new direction. My one minor gripe about the album: The truncation of "True Enemies and False Friends," which lacks the aching horn section on the lengthier "Yesteryears Suite" version included on Kompakt's Pop Ambient 2009. Movies doesn't suffer from this abridgement however, remaining a rewarding, fully-realized contribution to ambient composition.
  • Tracklist
      01. Abyss of Anxiety (Unfolding the Magic) 02. Exposed to Life In It's Brutal Meaninglessness 03. Exploding Unbearable Desires 04. Pathetic and Dangerous 05. Greed, Mutation, Betrayal 06. A Lament 07. True Enemies and False Friends 08. Sound of Confusion 09. For Whom the Bells Toll 10. Tears of Happiness (Dismissed Into Mundanity)
RA