Music from Vanilla Sky (Various Artists, 2001)

Yep, that's a picture of Tom Cruise on my perfect little blog. Yay, randomness. I'm seriously amazed by anyone who can sustain a daily blog posting rate for longer than a year. By gum, the year has just two weeks to go and we are going to finish this beast!

As you probably know, I consider most soundtracks composed of pop songs (as opposed to original scores) to be glorified mix tapes. In fact, I would call them unsolicited mix tapes, given to you by somebody who doesn't know you very well as inevitably includes multiple WTF songs that you hate and routinely skip over. The Vanilla Sky soundtrack, which tries to be all weird things to all people, weird or not, is guilty as charged here.

I was a little surprised to read the overwhelmingly positive reception of the soundtrack, with Wikipedia even citing it as a reason for the success of the film (an English language remake of Abre los ojos). Maybe I need to see the movie for it to make sense, but it just seems like an uncomfortable mix of classic rock (Peter Gabriel, Todd Rundgren), "modern" rock (REM, Radiohead), and full-throated electronica (Leftfield, Looper). Maybe they are hoping that it will encourage people to diversify their listening interests, but it seems like fans of these genres like to keep to themselves. As in full evidence here, I obviously veer about different styles, though I have particular preferred flavors. I'm not sure the rest of the world consists of such diverse listening behaviors.

Possibly of interest is the "original" song included here by a certain Julie Gianni, which is the character played by Cameron Diaz. At least one other song (Paul McCartney's, the title track) probably was recorded expressly for the movie. It sounds like a bonus track to his album Driving Rain and is fairly standard Paul fare.

I swear someday I'll watch all the movies I have the soundtracks for. Most of them were plucked out of freebie bins. Compared to the others, this one is probably not too bad.

Tijuana Sessions, Vol. 1 (Nortec Collective, 2002)

Another one selected from the freebie pile that was a pleasant surprise. It turns out remixing drum rims, tubas (and other horns), accordions, and other distinctly south-of-the-border features is pretty cool. Sometimes referred to as "tech-Mex", the Nortec Collective merges Norteño and techno, as their name suggests. It's a combination of individual artists (Bostitch, Fussible, etc.) working under a common name in various arrangements, so it's sort of an compilation, but not quite. I honestly don't know a whole lot about how exactly it works and when the Collective is in effect or spread out among its constituents, which seems to be more the case in recent years.

The first track, "Polaris" by Bostitch, has been used in at least a couple TV commercials, and I was probably one of the few watching that said "hey! I know that!" It's probably the most illustrative of the style of the album overall, though many of the other tracks favor a more techno sound with extra synthesizers, whereas on "Polaris" you can really get a feel for the source material. If you don't like it, then the album is probably not for you.

Adultered: The Remix Project (Don Tiki, 2004)

Egad, I'm so far behind thanks to Turkey Day, but I've made it to last month of the year, and I'll be damned if I'm going to fall down so close to the finish line!

Thankfully (for me), I don't have a whole heck of a lot to say about this album, retrieved from the freebie bin at work around ten years ago. Generally I'm remix-averse when it comes to source material I'm familiar with, but genres like death metal (Fear Factory), exotica (Don Tiki), and norteno (Nortec Collective)? Well, let the drum loops begin!

Adulterated works from the source material of the first two albums. The tracks generally flow from one into another, so the album is more of an overall listening experience. The group (who's membership can best be described as fuzzy and free-flowing) released one more album five years later, but it seems like their focus was more on live shows in Hawaii. In fact, Hawaii would prove fatal to one of them, Fritz Hasenpusch, who attempted to climb a very aggressive (and off-limits!) hiking trail on Oahu in 2012.

Leftism (Leftfield, 1995)

Your iPod never forgets, assuming it has 160 GB of storage. I went through a brief but intense interest in electronica (the term I'm using to cover the vast array of other terms also used). Back at the first bookstore I worked at, a co-worker furnished me with some of his favorite albums to start my education. Since this was well before the whole "I can just rip it" days, I didn't have the patience or time to make a copy, so I gave them a few listens at home and in my car and then returned them.

A few years later I was on the dating scene and met somebody that was really into the genre. Not wanted to appear like an idiot, I immediately sunk what little funds I had into actually buying the music so that we'd have some kind of reference point for our blossoming relationship. Well, after a few dates, that relationship was completely DOA (she cheated, then tried to make amends, concluding with our final date happening the same week and a much more interesting date with the woman whom I would ultimately marry). However, Leftfield and its ilk lived on to this day.

So what can I say about Leftfield? Eh, not much other than what you can read about on Wikipedia. It's hard to believe this album is nearly 20 years old. I mean, think about what 20-year-old music was in 1995. Anyway, one interesting thing I learned through the years was that the "foreign language" on the track "Afro-Left" was all made up. One other Leftfield track sneaked into my library, a track from their second album called "Afrika Shox" which was included on the Vanilla Sky soundtrack.