Cliff Martinez - Solaris - Original Soundtrack

What can I say... Other than, Wow! This release isn't holding a 4.9 for nothing. A much over looked ambient score that was written by an ex-member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers for a film losely based on a Polish authors very good Sci-Fi book!? Sound odd? Yeah... Well it kinda took me by surprise too.

At the time, having just read Frank Herbert's epic and somewhat lengthy masterpiece, Dune, a friend recommended that I read a book written by a Polish author by the name of Stanislaw Lem. Feeling somewhat blown away by Herbert's amazing story telling, I figured it would pale in comparison, much in the same way an old Mini Metro might do if one had just driven the new Audi R8. So I decided to leave it for a while... Then, as if by coincidence, a film by the same name, directed by the infamous Steven Soderbergh (Michael Clayton, A Scanner Darkly, Good Night Good Luck, Sex, Lies, and Videotape to name a few of the films he has produced) came out. Realizing that this was based on Lem's book, I immediately hired the movie and watched it... And not just once. Nor twice! But three times in a row... And it wasn't for the story line either!

While Soderbergh's adaptation of the book pretty much focuses solely on the relationship between the main character (Kris Kelvin) and his deceased wife, often to the exclusion of many of Lem's other themes, I feel it is important to know something about the film's plot in order understand what it is trying to portray, as the score beautifully reflects the relevant emotions embedded in the films story and totally make it what it is: the story is guided by the music, which in turn is guided by the film... Yin and Yang.

Soderbergh sets the story in the future, and centers it around Kris Kelvin, a psychologist based on earth. When he is asked to go to a planet far away in order to investigate some bizarre happenings on an observatory outpost, he carries nothing more with him than his entire life's experiences. As with the film, Lem's clever narration suggests that humans are studying the planet, but in actual fact the opposite seems to be the case: the titular alien planet, Solaris, is examining the secret and often guilty thoughts of human beings. Soderbergh centers this idea around the relationship between Kelvin and his deceased wife. All their secrets and thoughts are given physical form on the space station which orbits the planet, and as they come back to life, they haunt the observatory's inhabitants, often to profoundly disturbing effect. Both the novel and the film are pervaded by a powerful and moving poetic sense of remoteness, loneliness and illusion, which is beautifully and intensely invoked by the film's musical score... Memories from the past, rippling over the present's conscious train of thought, like rain drops on a clam lake in spring time, bring into focus our own realities.

Who could write such intense moving music??? I would have initially hedged my bets with composers like Steve Reich or Philip Glass. But... Having been throughly hooked in by this soundtrack, I just had to get the CD and find out. And having acquired it and listened to it several times, I couldn't help noticing that it wasn't Reich or Glass, but this "chap" called Cliff Martinez, who had written the score. Curious as to what other stuff he has done, I punched his name into Google and did a search. And ex drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers (1984 - 1986) kept on coming up. But this was an ambient score! It just couldn't be the same guy. So I figured this was another Cliff Martinez... But after continued searches, nothing yielded an further clues... So decided to read "this other guy's" resume. And in so doing, realised (to my total surprise) that it was the very same Martinez who had played in the Chili Peppers!!!

What more can I say other than Martinez has created an amazing masterpiece of languid melodic dreamscapes that glitter to rainy days and afternoon dreaming. While it can be listened to in context with the film or without it, I'd recommend the later... Simply by itself... As it's pure tonal timeline invokes deeply personal spaces from which to reflect the markings of our experiences over the canvas of our own minds.

What a glittering jewel of sound design you have bestowed upon us, Mr Martinez!!! Rock on!