Jeff Mills to release a new version of film soundtrack for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
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Detroit techno icon Jeff Mills readies new film soundtrack entitled ‘Metropolis Metropolis‘ that is coming out on March 2023 via Axis Records.
This exciting soundtrack for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is quite different from his previous work on the film released back in 2001. Designed as a symphonic electronic orchestration, this unique approach is more abstract and addresses more dimensional aspects of the film.
“The last two previous versions made back in 1999 and in 2010, I thought it was time to revisit the film since so much had changed in the world and with people (in general). This new soundtrack is more emotional and deeper.” said Jeff Mills.
The triple vinyl set was produced in 6 extended chapters, together you can hear all the various musical influences in Mills’ work in the past 22 years.
‘Metropolis Metropolis’ is going to be released in Triple Vinyl, CD, and Digital Formats on March 3rd, 2023 via Axis Records. Highly recommended vinyls to have in your collection. Full details below.
The Concept behind this album:
Jeff Mills & Metropolis
Jeff Mills released his first soundtrack for Metropolis in 2000. Praising the film’s “timeless message of solidarity,” Mills stated that his objective was to “reintroduce and educate the theories and ideology” of Metropolis to the youth at the end of one a and beginning of a new one. Mills wrote a second soundtrack for Metropolis in 2010. This is the third. These are not drafts of a single work in progress, but entirely separate compositions, with original music, and each written from a different and unique perspective.
The 2000 soundtrack was released from the perspective of a spectator watching the screen.
The 2010 soundtrack was from the perspective of the characters in the film watching the spectators watching the screen.
This 2022 soundtrack is from the perspective of Metropolis’ machines and technology and composed as a “symphonic electronic soundtrack,” played by an orchestra of machines with a conductor presiding.
As an electronic symphonic music creation, Mills proposes a few interesting points in the schematics of this new album. First, the positioning and role of the listener as the soundtrack is based on the environment of the scenes, rather than pure transcription. Second, as a storyline that takes place in the year 2000, the choice of sound elements refer to some future commonality and foresight between the genres of Classical and Electronic music – between man and machine. And third, in many parts of the soundtrack where sounds are played in unison. This is symbolic of the hopefulness the storyline works towards.
Mills has performed the scores many times over the years, “from large auditoriums to churches to projections on garage doors. But with every showing, there is always the understanding that its important to show this film to the public. That it’s not just a movie — it’s more about lessons about the human spirit that every one of us should be reminded of.”
The Movie:
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis takes place in an eponymously named city at some point in the future (the years 2000, 2026 and 3000 have all been referenced by various entities connected with the movie over the years). Society has become intensely stratified, the elites of the city living decadent lives at the top of gigantic art deco skyscrapers. The workers, on the other hand, trudge robotically from factories to their homes in an underground city. Health, fresh air and seemingly even happiness are the privilege of a well-born elite.
Metropolis is a movie about people vs. machines. But the machines of Metropolis are not evil. Unlike the vast majority of dystopian films produced in its wake, the machines of Metropolis are just tools. There’s no surveillance tech to be found in the film, no torture devices, no malignant computers murdering people with cold calculating logic. People, however, are doing those things to each other. It’s people that are pushing other people into the machines’ jaws of death. The Maschinenmensch is a terrorist but only because it is in the hands of terrorists; it’s only doing what it’s told. It calls on the workers to riot and plunge their world into chaos not by attacking the ruling class of Metropolis but by demanding “Death to the machines.”
Metropolis isn’t a story of technology escaping from the control of men. It’s about technology very firmly in the control of men — heartless men severed from all morality. This is the meaning behind the film’s epigram — that the mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart — and one of the reasons the film’s message has continued to endure. It’s never been about overthrowing the robots or waging war against machines. It’s about the people controlling them, how we lose our sense of solidarity in an industrialized society and how we can get it back again.
Axis Records and Dweller Festival present:Jeff Mills METROPOLIS cinemix: Jeff Mills plays live to Fritz Lang’s Sci-Fi masterpiece “METROPOLIS” (1927) from his upcoming “Metropolis Metropolis” soundtrack album
Date: February 22 (Wed) 2023 Location: Anthology Film Archives, New York
