RED DESERT Re-IMAGINED by Cathode Ray Tube

I first discovered the film Red Desert on a cold winter’s day after watching several documentaries. It seemed like a perfect addition to the day’s viewing as well as expanding my knowledge of Italian new wave films which is woefully inadequate. 

Red Desert is the story of a woman trapped in her own mind’s terror following a car accident. The bleak industrial landscape of post-war Italy is reflective of her fractured mind and nervous state. As we follow her through the film her situation becomes more and more troubled especially after meeting “L’uomo” played by Richard Harris. It ends inconclusively with our main character in no better place than when she started which is about as much as you can expect from an Italian art film. 

It’s gorgeously filmed with each scene framed beautifully. The landscape is as much a part of the film as the actors. Monica Vitti is as stunning as she is skilled at her portrayal of a woman slowly going mad. The color is vivid even when so many scenes are of the bleak industrial landscape of early 1960’s Ravenna, Italy.

Someone much more versed in film could say so many things about it better than I can so if you want to read more about it check out these fine write-ups:

Criterion: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1491-red-desert-in-this-world

Film Stage: https://thefilmstage.com/a-closer-look-at-michelangelo-antonionis-red-desert/

The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/dvd-of-the-week-red-desert

Red Desert is a spacious film both visually and aurally. There’s lots of landscape even in the cramped, industrial passages. There’s sparse dialogue for the most part. And the soundtrack is virtually non-existent but for some passages of exquisite electro-acoustic synthesized warblings of Vittorio Gelmetti. I fell in love with it immediately and watched it a few times over. And the more I viewed it I noticed certain things about the film, how the soundtrack was for one thing so sparse as to be nonexistent. The more I watched I was intrigued by the idea of creating a score for it. 

Sacrilege, I know.

And yet… I couldn’t stop myself. So, I began to imagine who might create a soundtrack for it and what they’d do. Then again if anyone’s going to do it I suppose it’d have to be me, right? 

Not gonna lie: it takes balls to dare and re-score a classic film with an already renowned (if extremely minimal) score. As I wrote in the liner notes for the Bunnyhead OST on Component Recordings (LINKY) I love soundtracks. It’s always been a dream of mine to score a film all by myself. So taking a classic film and creating my own score is the next best thing while also highly unorthodox (and possibly illegal though I claim fair use in this case).

Re-imagined soundtracks are nothing new, of course. Queen, The Grateful Dead, Cabaret Voltaire, and Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto to name a few have taken on re-writing the scores of classic films. And I wanted to go somewhere different and weird with Red Desert (as if those two words weren’t already firmly embedded in the descriptions of the film). Eventually I settled on this highly unlikely but very amusing premise:

What if Richard H. Kirk and Rammellzee were to steal a time machine then go back to 1970’s Dusseldorf, break into Kraftwerk’s infamous Kling Klang studio and record the score for Red Desert 

Sure, I know, The Simpson’s already did this. Or was it an episode of The Sopranos? No? Well, after that well it practically wrote itself. 

Not. 

But it gave a me a framework to start from. It was an interesting challenge to create music to fit the tone of the film and various scenes. For instance, a long time ago I read an interview in The Wire with Jim O’Rourke where he talked about interpreting what “gestures” or sounds might mean spooky, sad, scary, happy, etc. based on social agreement and common fears, phobias, etc. I often think of that but especially when I was composing music for Red Desert.

Then I expanded on these ideas further by incorporating some different versions of my existing material which I felt worked well with the film. I tend to think most of my music is the score to scenes of my life, anyway. What was even more interesting was some of the original files for tracks were lost so either I had to re-write them entirely which yielded new tracks or worked the older versions into the score.

For the purpose of this collection I’ve chosen the full versions of songs as opposed to pieces of them (“cues” as they say in the biz). There’s so much happening in these that one would never get to hear otherwise so enjoy the full monty (This also means if you want to try and view the film whilst playing the soundtrack alongside it ala Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon you’ll be out of sync and playing the movie a few times over)!

In a few places I’ve left the original score intact out of respect for the director and composer as they are critical to the film as a whole. That may seem a little odd but then so am I. 

Overall it’s been an interesting experiment which I hope others will enjoy. Call it sacrilege, call it defamation. I call it a loveletter to film and original scores. 

Here is as good a place as any for acknowledgements so without further ado, thanks be to:

- Deftly-D for wanting to put this out on Voidstar and believing in the insanity of this project. 

- My pal Jay for hearing me out despite being a diehard fan of the original film as is without some yahoo messing it up with his beep-bopp-boop soundtrack.

- My wife Alice and my kids Sophia and Ellen for enduring multiple viewings of my rough cuts of the film with my score. Not easy considering it had no subtitles and is entirely in Italian. 

- Robert Galbraith for his excellent mastering work.

Be well and rock on!

- CRT

August, 2020

Scarborough, Maine, USA, Earth Planet