NEAR DARK (OST)

This is the soundtrack of the horror movie Near Dark. The album has many styles, and it clearly has some elements of albums like Poland, Tyger, Livemiles and Underwater Sunlight. Mainly it consists in floating streams of keyboards and in electric guitar riffs with and without beat. The keyboards are very artificial, not really linear, and the feeling induced can drastically change from one track to another. The music can be sometimes quite scary. There are pop rock bits full of Froese's incisive guitar riffs like on "Good times". There is sometimes a good electronic beat. It is obviously better when you watch the movie.

Another soundtrack of a movie that I haven't seen. I'm starting to think that I've not seen a lot of things in the 80s, maybe the actual cinema was as poor as the actual music, I don't know.

Thinking to a horror movie, "Caleb Blues" is a title that can make you think to the Cajuns in the Mississippi area, voodoo practices and scary thigs of this kind. What I hear, instead, is a MIDI sound playing a sort of B-movie spy-story thing. Let's skip this.

Luckily, the second track "Pick Up At High Noon" is a very scary electronic piece. Full of atmosphere like in the best old TD albums, with sounds and noises that could belong to the Pink Period and a percussive bass played by Edgar Froese. A very good track even if in the second half it becomes more melodic and less scary. The final minutes of the track may have influenced Senmuth.

"Rain in the Third House" is opened by a low-pitched guitar riff but when the keyboards start driving the track they sound like Mike Oldfield. The guitar is distorted and stays in the background and when the drone drumming appears it's fully in the 80s and it fades out, too.... Half good-track.

"Bus Station" is more interesting. I can imagine it as a comment to a horror movie in a situation when something is about to happen. A very enjoyable dark ambient slow track that's also the longest of the album.

"Good Times" features an unusual guitar solo of Edgar Froese. Unusual because it sounds to me as Steve Hackett's most rock moments, like i.e. The Air Conditioned Nightmare or GTR. I don't like it much. If I want GTR I play GTR, not Tangerine Dream.

"She's My Sister (Resurrection I)" makes me think that this was a zombie-based movie. The low-volume acoustic guitar in the background is quite remarkable. Froese plays some bass also on this track that's very repetitive as in the best TD tracks, but seven minutes are not enough so it seems to be going nowhere even after minute 4 when only two bass notes with a difference of an octave remain with the omnipresent keyboards. A quite good track this, too.

"Mae Comes Back" is like mixing Mahler with Jarre with the addition of a bit of late psychedelia. A pity the fadeout.

"Father And Son (Resurrection II)" Leaves me cold (as a zombie, maybe). Less than three neverending minutes.

"Severin Dies" is the darkest track. I don't know who is Severin but this track could stay on Zeit or even on some Vangelis' albums like Heaven and Hell, then the rhythm increases as well as the music that becomes mostly oriental.

"Figth At Down" is even darker. A minor chord like in the old drone times full of orchestral accents and which leaves the listener with the sensation that it's better locking the door. The percussion are obsessive and, thanks God, nothing here sounds like an 80s thing.

Finally Mae's Transformation closes the movie and the album: The horro is gone but many corpses are still around. It has been a hard fight. This is what the music says without lyrics,, more or less.

Essential? of course not. Good? just half. It may be something wrong with me, but it's some time that I can't rate an album more than 2 stars.