Thursday, March 24, 2011

Tron Legacy Reconfigured sort of review, or, Jeff Bridges gives you the business

I AM LISTENING TO THIS AS I TYPE THE WORDS YOU ARE READING RIGHT NOW

UPDATE: Looks like Disney is starting to take these off Youtube so the videos below might not work. Trust me though, these songs are totally worth getting when the album comes out for real on April 5th



I can never imagine being a music critic. Movies and video games sure. I have a lot to say about them and most other nerd things. But with music all I can ever come up with is something like "I like it, it sounds good. I don't know. I don't like lyrics. Robots". That and the admittedly small number of album reviews I've read seem a tad more pretentious then the already pretentious writing style of most other media critics.




So, with that context, some music I think sounds good is the music of Daft Punk, particularly their ridiculously awesome soundtrack to last year's Tron Legacy, a movie I recognize as not good but still enjoy mostly because of the soundtrack.

Since it was a soundtrack though, and not just a collection of typical Daft Punk house music (oh god that was a kind of critical observation) and with both Legacy and the original Tron coming out on 5-disc Blu-ray soon, Disney commissioned various techno musicians dudes, with awesome names like Com Truise, that I've never heard of, and Moby, to remix the album into what I assume is more typical Daft Punk music.

It doesn't officially release until April but all the tracks are on Youtube and it's been the soundtrack to my spring break blogging binge. The result is as awesome as expected and weirdly enough, the less I liked the original song, like "C.L.U." or "Arena", the more I like it's remix.

However my absolute favorite is still "The Grid", featured above, with all of its Jeff Bridges "digital frontier" "computer motorcycle highway nonsense" and triumphant variation on the reoccurring Tron Legacy "theme" which isn't as prominent on this album (and there's another one).

It's also kind of telling that "Derezzed" and "End of Line" both got two remixes since those songs were already sort of techno to begin with. Compare that  to my favorite song from the original "Encom part 2", featured below, which features more orchestral elements (I did it again, darn).




Why is Tron barely a character in a movie named after him?




So while I feel the longer original might be slightly better, I like that I can at least dance to this album. It also partially justifies my continued investment in a franchise I'm not sure that I even like. Stuff like this is a good enough reason on its own for Tron to keep on being a thing. Hopefully future movies and cartoons and games and whatever else become good enough to both settle my internal conflict as well as deserve music like this.

Jeff Bridges, just cuz



And there ends my weird, pseudo-first, and probably last, attempt at reviewing music. Maybe that Columbia seminar was good after all, even though the kids at that thing are what turned me off doing stuff like this in the first place. Thanks Michael Lydon!

2 comments:

  1. That was a good summation of the new CD, I downloaded it, but I still kind of prefer the original. Go figure.

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  2. Thanks for the comment. I like the original too but they both have a purpose

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