SOLARIS (1972 OST)

It's impossible to tell the tale of EDWARD ARTEMYEV, one of Soviet Russia's top electronic performers without explaining the context of his musical development. ARTEMYEV owed much of career to Yevgeniy Murzin, the engineer and mathematician who had spent years constructing a music synthesizer called the ANS which is a photoelectronic musical instrument which made it possible to obtain a visible image of a sound wave as well as synthesizing sounds from an artificially designed sound spectogram. The name ANS was derived from the occultist and theosophist Alexander Nikolayevich Scriaban who was also famous for his development of an atonal dissonant musical system and was influenced by synesthesia.

One of the drawbacks with Murzin's technological breakthrough was that he was unable to find a musician with a fertile enough imagination to unleash the unexplored possibilities that were lurking beneath the surface. Luckily in 1960, Murzin met ARTEMYEV who was a 22 year old graduate from the Moscow conservatory and found that ARTEMYEV was exactly who he was seeking to master the subtleties of his new creation. Although other composers such as Stanislav Kreichi, Alfred Schnittke, Edison Denisov and Sofia Gubaidulina are credited as using the ANS in their musical performances, it was really EDWARD ARTEMYEV who pushed its boundaries into the world of experimentalism and the avant-garde and thus became one of the greatest Russian composers of electronic music and is best known outside of Russia for his soundtracks for the Soviet films "Siberiade," "Stalker," "Burnt By The Sun" and this one, SOLARIS.

The film SOLARIS came out in 1972 and was a science fiction piece directed by Andrei Tarkovsky who would employ ARTEMYEV's soundtrack talents for many of his films. The plot of the film centers around a space station orbiting the fictional planet SOLARIS where scientific missions have been postponed due to the crew suffering from emotional breakdowns. The film was instrumental in bringing a greater human touch to sci-fi which were notorious for being technologically oriented and losing the emotional connections of the characters. The film itself is considered an all-time classic and one of the most far-thinking and original films to emerge out of the Soviet Union. The film was released in an unusual manner as well having appeared at only five theaters in the entire USSR in 1972 but remained in theaters for 15 years without any breaks. All of this has given it a cult status where it still remains in the present day.

While the film is an indisputable classic, the soundtrack on its own without the context of the film is arguable another matter altogether. In my opinion film music is often only interesting in the context of the film itself and has been specifically designed to heighten emotional reactions during the viewing. There are of course exceptions but i find soundtrack music more often than not fails to stand on its own merits and without this codependency isn't exactly a compelling listening experience without the visuals. I very much find this to be the case with SOLARIS due to the fact that the electronic music is rather abstract and only amplifies the plot of the movie. Without these anchors for experience the soundtrack itself comes off as a jumble of random movements with some fortified with J.S Bach organ pieces such as his "Ich rf' zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BMV 639" which can be heard strewn about the album's run.

While taken in context with the film, ARTEMYEV scored big time in crafting a mind-bending score that reinforces the starkness of the film's intensity. In order to really comprehend this soundtrack though, you'd really have to experience it in the context of the film first otherwise this may come off as avant-garde mumbo jumbo. The soundtrack is the perfect display for the full potential of the massive ANS synthesizer and unfortunately the only prototype of the ANS was destroyed shortly after this soundtrack was recorded which adds another level of mystery to the entire situation. Generally speaking the music involved her involves ambient tones and textures and although ARTEMYEV wanted to perform an exclusively ambient soundtrack, Tarkovsky wanted tidbits of recognizable music included. If this soundtrack wasn't weird enough, it wasn't even officially released when the film debuted in 1972 but quickly emerged as a bootleg. There seems to be various releases over the years including a Columbia Records vinyl release in 1978 as well as a TCMP CD release in 1995 but this soundtrack wouldn't find a so-called official remastering until 2013 in Russia on the Мирумир label which added 10 minutes of ambient sounds to the more standard 40 minute runs of the various preceding examples.

For those who are enthralled with dark ambient music steeped in electroacoustic bleakness with only occasional references to more standard Western classical sounds, you might find this a lot more appealing and as i stated this is a wonderful soundtrack in conjunct with the film itself but as a stand alone musical experience i can't say this one light's my fire like it seems to do with many. This is definitely a Russian classic that should be experienced simply because of the historical relevance but if you don't find this soundtrack music to top your list of progressive electronic releases don't feel bad. You're not alone. It also seems that there are at least 7 different album cover that have been released but personally i like the one with the giant space station tunnel and the bright yellow letters spelling out SOLARIS. Interestingly enough despite being completely Russian, both film and soundtrack, this has never been released with the Cyrillic alphabet or with Russian track titles to my knowledge anyways.

3.5 but rounded down