A Netflix “Dark” Soundtrack for Purchase on iTunes

Here’s an (unofficial) soundtrack album for the 2017 Netflix series “Dark,” for iTunes downloading:

  1. “Industry” – Mire Kay [iTunes $1.29]
  2. “Anthricite Fields: IV. Flowers” – Julia Wolf, Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Bang on a Can All-Stars & Julian Wachner [iTunes $0.99]
  3. “The Look of Love, Pt. 1” – ABC [iTunes $1.29]
  4. “Familiar” – Agnes Obel [iTunes $1.29]
  5. “Keep the Streets Empty For Me” – Fever Ray [iTunes $1.29]
  6. “Me and the Devil” – Soap&Skin [iTunes $1.29]
  7. “Enter One” – Sol Seppy [iTunes $0.99]
  8. “Es wird ja alles wieder gut” – Detlev Lais [iTunes $0.99]
  9. “When I Was Done Dying” – Dan Deacon [iTunes $1.29]
  10. “I Ran (So Far Away)” – A Flock of Seagulls [iTunes $1.29]
  11. “Wishing Well” – Stomper feat. Lucy Topps [iTunes $1.29]
  12. “Cow Song” – Merideth Monk & Collin Walcott [iTunes $1.29]
  13. “A Quiet Life” – Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld [iTunes $0.99]
  14. “Goodbye” – Apparat & Soap&Skin [iTunes $1.29]

The above is based substantially on Cinema Lumina’s streaming Apple Music playlist, with Marcin Tomaszewski’s Spotify playlist, and the sleuths on Tunefind.

Play time is a satisfying 1 hour 2 minutes, and the total cost a less-so $16.86. If you’d like to save a few bucks, I’d recommend omitting the just-barely-a-song “Cow Song,” the unintentionally creepy postwar German hit “Es wird ja alles wieder gut,” and ’80s crap “The Look of Love” and “I Ran.” (Nostalgia? I was there, Gandalf! In the 1980s. I was there when the strength of men failed…)

Besides the (unavailable) score itself, there are some omissions. On the out-of-place counterpoint song front, I prefer the Flock of Seagulls song to “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” by Dead of Alive [iTunes $1.29] simply because it’s less annoying (and lacks even the freaky faux-sincerity of ABC). It also appears only briefly as music heard by characters, in continuity. Likewise “Irgendwie, Irgendwo, Irgendwann” by Nena [iTunes $1.29], old standby “Shout” by Tears for Fears [iTunes $1.29] and the two barely-heard generic metal tracks, “Rücklauf” by Marathonmann [iTunes $1.29] and “Pleasure to Kill” by Kreator [iTunes $1.29]. Roomful of Teeth’s odd experimental vocal track tends to fade into the general noise ambiance of the show’s sound mix, but the track is “Partita: III. Courante” [iTunes $0.99]. Likewise Ben Frost’s pleasant but forgettable “Snow” [iTunes $1.29]. Finally, there’s a Mimi Page track supposedly called “Nightfall,” but I haven’t been able to locate it.

Spacehog

I would say the top five Spacehog songs are, in order:

  1. The Meantime
  2. I Want to Live
  3. Beautiful Girl
  4. Mungo City
  5. Zeros

Émilie Simon

Bertrand Russel: Why don’t I know this?

G.E. Moore: Because philosophers think it’s mathematics and mathematicians philosophy!

     ~Logicomix

French musician Émilie Simon. Writes and performs in English and French. Writes and performs her own songs. Massively popular in France, released in the U.S. Wrote the soundtrack for the French release of March of the Penguins. Sweet, biting, smooth, electronic. Why don’t I know this?

Aside: The video for “Flowers” itself is brilliant; as near as I can tell it was directed by a collective called No Brain (viciously crap website here). Whether it’s a hybrid of stop motion and computer animation or just computer animation with far too much work put into making it look like stop motion I can’t decide from the YouTube video. Obviously the website is no help.

Click around on YouTube a bit. These songs are viciously good for French pop music. Why don’t I know this in the U.S.? Why haven’t my tracking cookies surrounded me with this? Has Simon been shuffled into the same hole all electronic music seems to fall into right now? Do we really need that much more room for Stefani Germanotta’s particular brand of gaga desperation?

I expect a response from high-level authorities.

Freezepop’s Future Future Future Perfect Album

I’ve got moods for Freezepop, and I consider that progress as a human being.

Future Future Future Perfect is their latest album. “Do You Like My Wang?” and “Afterparty” are absolute abortions, “Ninja of Love” and “Brainpower” are merely tired, “Do You Like Boys” and “He Says She Says” are cute enough, while “Swimming Pool,” “Less Talk More Rokk,” “Pop Music Is Not a Crime” and “Thought Balloon” are each excellent.

Freezepop is gen-x (anyone who got to ride the dotcom bubble) smitten with hipster (mop-topped little douchebags) — kids older than me crushing on kids younger than me. It is a little creepy, and at its best that’s why it works. There’s an undeniable distance in line two of “The music is loud/ The kids are so young/ All over the world/ They want to have fun.” It’s the sense of loss of a geeky girl who got cool too late in life for her dancing queen moment. The game of scenesterism has the same rules as Logan’s Run.

The juxtaposition of self-awareness with cutesiness is inherently pathetic. (You’ve been reading the Space Toast Pages.) “Frontload” gives away a desperation musically that the simple take-me-out-tonight lyrics try to conceal. “Swimming Pool” paints a nostalgia so heavy it smothers. The sense of being in the right place spatially but not temporally is what rescues Freezepop from its more precious moments. Future Future Future Perfect is at its best when it acknowledges that cutesy self-awareness really betrays a painful desire to be wanted.