Posted on: January 16, 2008 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

OST: Into The Wild / 2007 Lakeshore / 36 Tracks / http://www.intothewild.com / http://www.lakeshorerecords.com /

For those that do not know Michael Brook, ey first made a splash in the music industry in 1985, when U2 used eir “Infinite guitar” to make the distinct sounds that were commonplace on their seminal “The Joshua Tree”. Brook also worked on Peter Murphy (Bauhaus)’s  1995 album Cascade, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s 1996 work “Night Song”, and has produced albums for individuals such as The Pogues, Jane Siberry, and Mary Margaret O’Hara. The score for “Into The Wild” represents another in the line of shortly-spaced works in Brook’s discography; the score for “An Inconvenient Truth” was released in 2006, “Into The Wild” was released in 2007, and the upcoming score for “Americanese” is slated to be released in 2008.

For those individuals that are not familiar with “Into The Wild”, it discusses the life and times of Emory University student Christopher McCandless. After finishing up school, ey gives all eir money away to charities and decides to move out to Alaska, “roughing it” with little more than a rifle, a camera, some camping gear, and a few books. The score as created by Brook fits the action of the film well.  A number of tracks during the middle of the CD have a calmness to them that represent quite well the cold outdoors. Perhaps what is most interesting about the score is the affective qualities that Brook imbues to this disc. This means that during a song like “Wayne’s Arrest”, things seem to have an otherworldly feel to them, while “Chris’ California Trip” seems to have a drawn-out, slow style to it that mimics the track’s title.

The shortness of some of these tracks is stark at points; it feels that during some of these compositions, that Brook is cutting the natural progression of the song off at the knees. While it makes sense that ey is doing that (because different scenes start and end at different times), one begins to want an expanded set of music that allows Brook to spread eir wings. A highlight of this score has to be “The Rapids”, a song that blends more tribal types of music with a Stevie Ray Vaughan like sound, which is then tweaked considerably with the inclusion of an electronic type of sound. The resulting track plays on a number of different musical styles and will undoubtedly keep individuals interested in what Brook has up eir sleeve for the next twenty or so tracks.

Top Tracks: Wayne’s Arrest, Starving

Rating: 7.3/10

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