Program #107, June 6 2002: Soundtracks strike back, part 3 of 3.

To conclude our three-week block of springtime soundtrack programs, this week's major selections -- all from films that enact some form of what is typically called "science fiction" -- hark back to the old Speculative fiction/experimental music series: here are depicted alternative futures, cautionary tales refracted through tropes of the extraordinary, fables for a new millennium and an old. We also began (by virtue of Sakamoto's soundtrack for the film version of Margaret Atwood's dystopian The Handmaid's Tale) the primary segue into the eight-part Harnessings of the Sacred series, beginning next week with the opera version of that book. Finally, we continued last week's thinking-out-loud about various questions called up by use of soundtracks with some Asian connection: the Sakamoto work is the scoring of an American nightmare by a Japanese man, while the Japanese nightmare that is Akira (back so soon by popular demand!) is given life by an eclectic interweaving of instruments and styles that is refreshingly not centered on "east-west" dialogue, but rather a pan-Asian sonic dialogue. With hope, all these missions synergized: displacement and decentering, dialogue and recrystallization, old sounds and new juxtapositions.

And all of that preceded by the soundtrack from a 1960s short subject, which featured the budding talents of Jim Henson, of Muppets fame. All this, and proto-Muppets, too?!? Sometimes, life can be good.