TRON Week – Daft Punk’s Soundtrack

GeekDad Tron Week, images from Disney

When I first heard that there was going to be a sequel to Tron I was very excited. When I found out that Daft Punk were going to score it, I think it’s safe to say I was even more excited. I’ve been a fan of the French duo since I first saw the video for their breakthrough hit ‘Da Funk‘ back in 1994. It featured a guy in a dog suit, with a broken leg, carrying a beatbox and walking around the streets of New York. It was directed by Spike Jonze and the song drifts in and out of the background as the dog has conversations with people on the street, very much like a soundtrack. I was hooked the first time I heard that dirty, detuned TB303 riff bubbling up.

The Tron soundtrack is their first new music since 2005′s Human After All (not counting remixes and live stuff) and part of the reason for this long hiatus is because they’ve been working on the soundtrack almost as long as the film has been in production – even before the script was finished. Legacy director Joe Kosinski met with Thomas Bangalter & Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo early on and they started writing the music as the script was being finalised and the storyboarding and pre-visualization on the movie was beginning. This meant that the moviemakers were able to play the actual score on set during the filming. Apparently, while Daft Punk were filming their cameo appearance one of the cameras broke down, so while it was being fixed the cast and crew were treated to a warehouse DJ set, with everyone in full costume. Awesome…

The soundtrack was officially released on the 6th December and is available in all the usual formats, but in what seems to be typical these days, you need to buy several version to get all the tracks.
The iTunes version has two bonus tracks, ‘Father and Son‘ and ‘Outlands, Pt. II‘. Amazon MP3 have an exclusive version which features an extra track, ‘Sea of Simulation‘, not available elsewhere – apart from the soundtrack to original movie as it seems to be a cover version! And then there’s a European double CD special edition with 5 extra tracks and behind the scenes videos.

Whichever one you go for though, you won’t be disappointed. Daft Punk have created a beautiful blend of classical orchestral instruments and their synthesised electronic counterparts. At certain times you can almost forget that they’re more famous for techno/house/dance music as the strings and horns of the orchestra carry the music, lifting you up, before a huge synth stab drops in and you feel the bass reverberating in your stomach.

Many of the tracks echo elements from Wendy Carlos‘ score to the original film giving a nice bit of continuity to it all, but Daft Punk have taken them and brought them up to date in the same way the look of the film has evolved.

‘The Grid‘ features a great ‘setting the scene’ sample from Jeff Bridges and some awesome synths. ‘Recognizer‘ is a great example of the combination of the orchestral and the electronic. A short, but strong, strings loop building to a crescendo with the horn section, all underpinned by thundering bass and a timpani beat. ‘Arena‘ has a fantastic synth stab on a loop, and a snare beat reminiscent of the Terminator’s theme. ‘Rinzler‘ combines the strings loop with the snare beat and adds a fabulously squelchy bassline. ‘The Game Has Changed‘ combines elements of everything that’s gone before into one of the most ‘song’-like tracks on the album and is one that scored most of the trailers that seem to have been around for ages now.

Daft Punk's cameo in the movie

The next three tracks bring the pace down a bit and increase the amount of strings, and are much more like a traditional movie score because of it. ‘End Of Line‘ brings back the synths into and some fantastic little 8-bit bleepy samples. Very 80s, very video games, very Pong. The single ‘Derezzed’ is pure Daft Punk, fast, energetic and very electronic, it such a shame that it only lasts 1 minute and 44 seconds. In fact that would be my biggest criticism of the the soundtrack – not enough of the tracks break the three minute mark. I love to hear some of them fleshed out into 4 or 5 minute floor fillers – by the the duo themselves, as opposed to some of the awful “remixes” that have been cropping on YouTube for months. ‘Solar Sailer‘ could easily become a chill out classic with it’s arpeggiated synths and bassline blending beautifully with the strings. This is in stark contrast to next track, ‘Rectifier‘, which has very ominous string stabs, evoking a feeling along the lines of the classic Psycho riff.

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Even without seeing the film you can almost feel the tension and visualise the battles happening while ‘Disc Wars‘ and ‘C.L.U.‘ are playing out before the ethereal, moving, ‘Arrival‘ slows the pace down again. I’m starting to get too much of an idea of what is going to happen in the film now, especially as the next track is called ‘Flynn Lives‘, which gracefully builds the strings back up, all the way to the fade to black moment when the end titles start rolling. And what a tune they’ve got to play them out. All of the best elements from the entire score in 3 minutes 18 seconds. The detuned 303 is back, along with the epic synth chords and thundering timpani, all backed with that wonderful string section, and the horns coming in for the finale. I’ll certainly be sitting in the cinema to very end, just to hear it played very loud and in surround sound.

Of course, that should be the end of it, but if you manage to get hold of all of the various versions of the soundtrack, there are actually another nine tracks to enjoy. They’re mostly orchestral, but with some more great synth and wobbly bass action, particularly on ‘Castor‘ and ‘Sea Of Simulation‘.
Hollywood Records have a mini mix of the album available for streaming over on MySpace if you still haven’t made up your mind.

So, I’ve gone from being excited about the movie, to being excited about the soundtrack and now the soundtrack is making me even more excited about the movie. It’s not the best soundtrack of all time – I think it’ll take a lot to beat Vangelis’ Blade Runner score for me – but in my opinion it could be up there with the greats.
Roll on December 17th.

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