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Scores

An editorial by Azzam Abdur-Rahman

Do you remember when scores were fun? I forgot. I honestly forgot that. You see after mainstream film stopped trying to make scores interesting and in the rise of films using temp music I honestly just through bombastic Han Zimmer copies were all I’d ever hear again but in the rise of my depression I have watched more films from the 80’s and 90’s and while they were bland for their era the space between when I hear a jaunty blues influence pop line enter the film gives me so much space for character. There is something powerful about that. Music feeling like it’s a part of the story, character in every film not just films like Moonlight, using classical music in a film about a black boy’s experience in sexuality while surviving the cruelties of existence. My Cousin Vinny has a score that by all accounts shouldn’t matter but it does. The film has a quiet by the number score that comes up here and there and if you are looking for it its there but the mounts they want you aware of internal feelings but once it wants you to be reminded “YO WE ARE IN ALBAMA!” suddenly its like a drunken Steve Ray Vaughn comes in riffing with Randy fucking Newman and you can’t help but smile!
God it feels so good to hear something that is interesting. Even re-watching Fight Club, The Dust Brothers score screams at me. It is doing interesting things. Its English dub and Trip-Hop breakbeats. The score is as much unreliable as the narrator is. I am rambling at this point. We need to ask more of our content. You see this pandemic has reminded me that as the film industry changes we need to ask for this back! It is a lot to take on! Hell, this maybe a joke of an article but if anything it could start something!


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