WHAT A BLAST - ARCHITECTURE IN MOTION (OST)

Most of the tracks on this album were used in the 35 minute video 'What A Blast: Architecture In Motion', a documentary of sorts stringing together many clips of building demolition in which much of the music is accompanied by massive explosions and soundbites such as 'You just don't go in and throw pieces of dynamite all over the place - it's long, hard work'. It's well worth a look if still on YouTube, the overdubbing sometimes adds an interesting layer to the music, especially on 'Forced To Surrender' and 'Silver Siren'.

The first five compositions on the album are by Edgar Froese and probably the most interesting. They're also available by themselves in the compilations 'Silver Siren Collection' and 'The Electronic Journey'. 'Stoneyard' isn't used in the video but would make an excellent title theme for a TV series with its funky bassline, percussion loops, dramatic synth and male voice sounds. 'Silver Siren' starts with some quite dark sounds leading to a rich, deep bass line over which female voices and a melody line float accompanied by several layered mechanically rhythmic drum loops. The looped, repeated and distorted vocal clips on the video make it an interesting alternate mix. 'Beauty Of The Blast' has a nice ticking beat to it and quite a lot of layers interweaving with plenty of bass and some older sounding synths. There are great kaleidoscopic effects on the video for this one. 'Dream Sculpture' has a very strange juxtaposition of sounds, opening with New Age like choirs until joined by unexpected twangs, drums, sequencers, jet aircraft and (shock) industrial electric guitar rhythms. Edgar has definitely not gone for any conventional style on this album and it feels like he had a lot of fun putting something together to fit the producer's brief. His final contribution, 'Last Trumpet On 23rd Street' was also omitted but is again very dramatic and rhythmic with more deep bass and classic shrieking synths.

Jerome's tunes complete the album. Only a short excerpt of 'Art Of Destruction' was used for the film's closing credits but it's relatively long on the album. In contrast to his father, Jerome has gone for totally conventional elements of electronic dance music here but by progressing through virtually every cliche one after another the track actually becomes quite varied over its full length and the overall composition works pretty well. 'Forced To Surrender' races along at a breakneck speed with a thumpy bass drum and a load of electric guitar samples producing an effect not a million miles away from early 90s Ministry. The voice clips on the video make it a bit less monotonous but even more reminiscent of 'Jesus Built My Hotrod'. The final two tracks, 'Timesquare' and 'Jungle Journey' are further remixes of the remixes on the first two 'Dream Mixes' albums, quite similar but with a few extra sounds and notably beefed up in the bass to fit in better with the other tracks. I'd say they were improved although these do get the largest number of loud bangs in the film.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised just how good this was for a mere video soundtrack and would agree with one of the experts appearing in the film - 'It actually has a rhyme and a reason for everything that's done'. A great example of how a creative and open minded musician such as Edgar Froese can change their style and embrace new techniques and technology. 4 stars.

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