If y’all haven’t noticed, the second part of Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” movies has been in theaters for over a week. The absolutely epic nature of “Dune” continues in its second movie and relies heavily on a soundtrack again written and composed by Hans Zimmer, one of Hollywood’s premiere sound designers for blockbuster films like “Interstellar”, “Kung Fu Panda 4” and Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” trilogy.
I can be a very picky person when it comes to book adaptations. Especially for books that are impossible to adapt to a screen perfectly. “Dune” is definitely one of those books. However, the music and cinematography bring the world of Arrakis to life. This is the strong point of the two Villeneuve “Dune” films for me. They are absolutely some of the most beautiful representations of Arrakis imaginable.
“Dune: Part Two” opens with soft sounds and a slowly waking planet and people. Zimmer captured this extremely well with tracks like “Beginnings Are Such Delicate Times”. We slowly traverse the golden path of Paul Atreides becoming the Lisan al Gaib, the prophet and messiah of the Fremen people of Dune.
Zimmer’s soundtrack builds as the tension in the story begins to weave towards war. In “Dune: Part Two” there’s abundant imagery and scenes of the Harkonnen clan on their cold, black sunned planet, Giedi Prime, that Zimmer again captures well with “Harkonnen Arena”. It’s music drowning in fear, violence and greed. I love the way it makes the pasty, bald-headed Harkonnens more treacherous just with some epic music.
The scenes on Giedi Prime are also unique and beautiful too. They are absolutely some of my favorite interpretations from the source material (though I do wish they made Baron and Feyd Harkonnen even nastier like the books). The black and white coliseum scene is the most goosebump inducing gladiator fight scene I’ve seen in a film to date.
In the second half of the film, the music’s rise in tempo with the imminent war helps quicken the heart beat more. There’s a ton of plot points in the book I wish I saw represented in this section of the movie (like Paul and Chani’s child that gets killed and young Alia running around talking at a few months old), but adaptations can’t be perfect. It’d take years to get through a perfect adaptation of “Dune”. I’m satisfied with what I was able to witness in theater, but still longing for perfection even when I know it won’t arrive.
Fear is the mind killer for people that love dictators,
With a sound somewhere between DEVO, Molchat Doma and Portion Control, High-Functioning Flesh is an industrial hall essential.
Much like the word “flesh,” the band’s music is carnal, tactile and vivid.
And as per usual, I found them entirely by accident.
Expanses of “The Flesh”
Often abbreviated to HFF, the band emerged in Los Angeles after Susan Subtract and Gregory Vand attended a Youth Code show.
The band’s debut album, “A Unity of Miseries – A Misery of Unities” came out on DKA Records in 2014. The album struck a chord in the industry with its evocative style inspired by sci-fi, body horror and archetypal punk angst
According to the band, their work “seeks to revive us all from our spectacle-induced coma,” presenting a sobering sound to rend the veil of capitalist monotony.
Cover for “A Unity of Miseries – A Misery of Unities” by High-Functioning Flesh
HFF cites Cabaret Voltaire and Portion Control as major stylistic influences, though the duo certainly brings their own qualities to the craft through elaborate instrumentation and production effects.
“A Unity of Miseries – A Misery of Unities” is a dynamic album, highly tactile and hypnotically raucous through its sprawls of synth, drum and fried vocals. Its industrial quality is heavy-handed and walloping like metal slamming against metal.
HFF’s sophomore album, “Definite Structures,” came out in May 2016 through Dais Records. The album reflects the progression of the band’s electro-industrial style, leaning into further experimentation with sound layering and auditory effects. The album is a kaleidoscope, evoking the brutalist edge of Skinny Puppy.
Cover for “Definite Structures” by High-Functioning Flesh
For this release, the band turned to mellower vocals with less distortion, leaning back into the style explored with their first album.
HFF’s most recent release, “Culture Cut,” came out in 2017. A blind comparison of “Culture Cut” against “Human Remains” would almost suggest the existence of two bands.
Cover for “Culture Cut” by High-Functioning Flesh
“Culture Cut” clearly draws more from the same inspirations as “Definite Structures.”
According to Dais Records, each new release highlights the band’s evoltion “from a handful of lo-fi flashback demos to aggressively realized synth-punk dance floor anthems.”
And Dais Records is wholly correct. The music of High-Functioning Flesh belongs on the dancefloor for leather and PVC-clad youths to gyrate to.
How can you immediately spot someone who’s jumped a dirt bike off a homemade ramp? Play the Minutemen’s “Corona” in a crowd.
Fronted by Johnny Knoxville and supported by a motley crew of Chris Pontius, Steve-O, Ryan Dunn, Jason “Wee Man” Acuña, Dave England, Preston Lacey, Ehren McGhehey, and formerly Bam Margera, among others, “Jackass” started with humble DIY roots on MTV and blossomed into a seven-film franchise, give or take a few.
The only time Spotify has ever recommended anything worthwhile is when the first track of Rei Harakami’s “Lust,” began playing on autoplay while I was sitting in a coffee shop studying. Instantly, I was transported.
With simplistic sounds, Harakami captured a whole mood within his last album. It sounds like laying in a field of flowing grass in early June. The sun is hot, but not too hot, glossing over your skin. You’re in the middle of a big cityscape, possibly central park, listening to the sounds of happy kids playing and shrieking in the background while your eyes are closed, soaking it all in. You walk home the long way, feeling a soft wind against your skin. Maybe you stop and get ice cream from a truck, a chocolate drumstick like when you were little. The sky is bright blue and you feel at peace.
I immediately added the album to my library and it’s been on repeat ever since.
Rei Harakami got his start making music for student films. He preferred the simple sounds of electronic devices over computer-generated sounds, creating the entirety of lust with a Roland SC-88 synthesizer. These intentional, repetitive sounds contribute a lot to the magic of “Lust,” creating sounds that are almost meditative.
“Lust,” was Harakami’s last album, and perhaps his most masterful. My favorite tracks from the record include “come here go there,” “joy,” and “owari no kisetsu.”
Harakami recorded the vocals for “owari no kisetsu” himself. Translated to “season of endings,” the song is a melancholic portrait of leaving something that no longer serves you. “The dawn burns through the horizon,” Harakami sings, “and leaves me with a feeling of salvation.”
These lyrics, to me, perfectly capture why “Lust,” is so addictive to listen to. Harakami has created something that feels like a new day and a new beginning.
If you’re a fan of electronic music and soothing sounds, I’d highly recommend giving this album a spin.
The cover for "それは皆からの秘密です (185.45.195.172)," a hexD DJ mix by Sienna Sleep.
Everyone loves a good intentionally low-quality effect for nostalgia reasons. The sensation ranges from posting movie screenshots run through VHS filters to pressing modern albums onto vinyl to those people on Twitter who post pictures of anime on CRTs. In more recent years, this phenomenon has created a trend of lobit music, made to replicate an era where YouTube uploads were low quality and waiting for your music to download took forever.
The term for the effect applied to music is called bitcrushing, and it’s a pretty simple filter to put on your music. Combined with Gen Z having nostalgia for 360p YouTube videos and now being old enough to put out music, it makes sense why there’s been a surge of it recently.
That said, it’s also existed for as long as people have been able to do it, leading into this brief history of one effect.
