Ways to Forget – Clock Opera (2012)

Album artwork for Ways to Forget

The indie scene in today’s music industry is as strong as ever.  What originally began in the 1980s with the rejection of mainstream synthpop tendencies in favor of much rawer, grunge-influenced sound has metamorphosed into a unbelievably diverse collection of bearded, flannel-clad modern musicians.  Of course, that’s a very simple way of describing it, but you get the idea.  The point is that the concept of the highly independent artist who has total control of the creative side of their music.  So now let’s dial our focus in quite a bit and shine the spotlight on a particular group from Great Britain named Clock Opera.

Although the band was first formed in 2009, they did not release their debut album, Ways to Forget, until 2012.  Some would say that three years is a long time to prepare an album, but I would argue that there is no standard duration for such a feat.  The one thing that can be said for certain is that the prolonged wait for the group’s debut was definitely worth it.  After listening to the record many times and letting it sink in, its true potential shines through.  Just as a fine wine matures with age, so too does Ways to Forget reap the benefits of its delayed release date.

Drive (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) – Cliff Martinez (2011)

Album artwork for Drive (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Today’s post is a groundbreaker for Audio Intimacy.  The original score written for the 2011 film Drive, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and starring Ryan Gosling, has officially become the first soundtrack album to be featured on the site.  This summer, I am in Los Angeles interning with a composer for films and TV shows, so it seems only fitting that I expand the blog to include this particular brand of musical expression.  Now that the floodgates have been opened, be on the lookout for more soundtracks to follow this one! With that said, let’s move on to the main event.  The score for this movie was written by Cliff Martinez, former drummer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and current film composer who’s been tearing up the scene for several years now.  What makes Drive unique is the sole use of electronic music in the soundtrack, capitalizing on the strengths for which Martinez has been gaining widespread influence throughout the film industry.

Film music has certainly come a long way since its formative years in the early 20th century, when cinemas would employ in-house pianists, organists, or even orchestras to play live music overtop the mechanical noise of the projector.  It has evolved into a formidable job that fuses together evocative composition, collaboration with the movie’s production crew, and the highly refined skills of syncing audio cues to picture – choosing the exact frame at which to start and stop the music.  Nowadays, just like in any other professional industry, we have developed technology to assist us in accomplishing such a massive undertaking. Electronic music, being a reflection of human society’s adaptation to the digital revolution, has inevitably started to blend with traditional approaches to film scoring, and it is the work of visionaries like Cliff Martinez that has paved the way towards this new period of musical innovation.