Third Law

electronic/experimental/imaginary movie score

Rich, atmospheric digital symphonics. Half of acclaimed dubstep duo Vex'd turned to sound design and film score stuff in recent years, and his latest solo album would make an excellent score for a movie about a small crew fleeing a doomed space station far from home. Lots of rumble and drone and large structures collapsing, with some rays of light. Steady foreboding with occasional respites. Big and heavy, and not averse to percussion, but it's totally untethered from even the breakbeat syncopations of weird bass music.

RIYL: late period Autechre, Tim Hecker

1. rising digital cacophony, echoes of something voicelike, rings, static, wind. eventually strings (approximately), and occasional short percussive bursts. keeps threatening, keeps pulling back. scanning. scanning. uneasy calm. 7:57
2. pensive ripples, rumbles and thuds of large machines not far off, occasional low string swells. beeps and tones in conversation. calm but ready. 4:52
3. static cloud ripples with distortion, bouncing ball kick drum erupts*, static transforms to shards of something bright, keeps transforming till it shifts back to static, joined by prefuse-esque syllable loop. all implodes right at the end. 5:47
4. calm reprieve, washes of bass and glassy tones for the first minute and change, then sinister hecker-esque static cloud rises. fades to strings, then strings and static circle one another, other desolate tones off in the distance. percussive sounds start very intermittent and slowly crash in more regularly, along with more sinister static and some higher tones. resolves to very calm and plaintive last 2 min. 8:33
5. more scanning, something gathering and rising out of the calm of prior track, takes it's time growing a bit, but slowly dissipates before reaching critical mass. threatens, stays restrained. 5:08
6. calm carries on for a bit, then percussive rolling alarm (but not shrill), percussion part fades in and out leaving stretches of shimmering digital mirage. static, whirs, a dubby echoing clang (and again faintly later). percussion eventually separates into layers from shimmering alarm, winnows down to thin tone to end. 6:13
7. quiet swell and contraction becomes slow clanking stalk, eventually forms up into sloooow sticky percussive stomp, hollowing out, surrounded by rising ringing static. frantic. rumble and static and string swells consume all. 6:49
8. far off underwater clanks, ringing, distorted breathing and something shimmering and voicelike. rising shimmering scanning and voice. new staticy synth pads gallop in then fuzz out to something indistinct, giving way to a simple clear melodic loop, maybe guardedly hopeful? 6:49

recommended: 4, 3, 2, 7 (2/3/4 makes for a nice 19 min suite)

*cf. "bucephelus bouncing ball" (aphex twin), or "drane"/"drone" (autechre)