Eliza's recent three week trip to Bali coincided with the 2000 film The Beach being shown on TV last weekend (she said they screened it at the beach cinema in Bali, to an audience of western twenty somethings in paradise- someone in charge of the film programming has got a sense of humour given how the film turns out for the main characters).
The Beach is a 90s classic, a novel by Alex Garland turned into a film with something of an all star cast- directed by Danny Boyle and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton and Robert Carlyle along with a slew of recognisable faces. The story is about the search for an earthly paradise where western travelers can live idyllically, everyone seeking some kind of turn of the millennium spirituality, that ends in violence, betrayal, shark attacks, cannabis farmers and the breakup of the island community. On release the film received mixed reviews, some of the book's commentary and subtleties lost on the big screen but that's often the way. No one in the film, despite being beautiful, tanned and photogenic, is particularly nice and in the end they all seem to largely get what they deserve.
But the film isn't really what we're here for on Saturdays, it's the soundtrack and the soundtrack has got plenty going for it. As well as a complete score by Angelo Badalamenti, there is this song, the gorgeous number one single and comeback for All Saints, the William Orbit produced Pure Shores...
Orbit's liquid production style is all over the song, a relation to Madonna's Ray Of Light from two years previously, a dreamy, ambient sheen with tons of delay and FX.
The soundtrack is crammed with late 90s names, mainly from the dance world- Leftfield, Moby, Asian Dub Foundation, Faithless and Orbital all appear along with the Hardfloor's blinding remix of Mory Kante's Ye Ke Ye Ke. Blur and Barry Adamson both crop up and Brutal by the recently reformed New Order (their comeback album Get Ready didn't come out until 2001). Brutal is perfectly serviceable New Order I guess but also a bit of a smoothed out, edges sanded down version of the group.
The hidden gem of The Beach soundtrack is by Underworld, their eight minute masterpiece 8 Ball one of their best songs. Crunchy/ radio static percussion, a guitar riff and Karl's multi- tracked vocals, a medication on a homeless man using an empty whisky bottle as a walkie talkie and with a flaming 8 ball tattooed on his arm. The song builds gently, the 4- 4 rhythms rattling onward and bursts of feedback juddering out against the shimmering, ambient backdrop. Eventually, after a wonderful breakdown and finger picking guitar part, Karl meets a man who 'threw his arms around me' and they laughed and laughed. It's beautifully done and very affecting.
James Lavelle and DJ Shadow's Unkle are also on the soundtrack, at the end as everything goes to pot. Lonely Soul was one of the standouts on the 1998 Psyence Fiction album, a record with some serious special guests- Thom Yorke, Badly Drawn Boy, Kool G Rap, Mike D, Mark Hollis and Richard Ashcroft. It was listening to The Verve's A Northern Soul that sparked the idea for the album in Lavelle and Ashcroft and Unkle recorded Lonely Soul in 1996.
Shadow's foreboding samples, drums, and production, the sense of space, the edge of darkness feel, all make Lonely Soul a bit of a late 90s classic. Wil Malone's cinematic strings fill the second half. Then there's Ashcroft's lyrics and vocal, streets ahead of much of the songs he recorded for Urban Hymns, the sound of a long dark night filled with drama.
2 comments:
I’ve not read the book and I wasn’t that much of a DiCaprio fan at the time, but I saw The Beach on TV sometime last year and I found it a much more rewarding experience.
The soundtrack has always been pure gold. Vanessa QuiƱones (Espiritu) popping up as a guest of Dario G on the track just before 8 Ball was an unexpected bonus.
I’ve been listening to Underworld a lot in the past week or so. Incredible music.
Underworld are something else aren't they.
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