I don't know that there's really much I need to say about "Escape From New York." It's a stone-cold cinematic classic any way you look at it, deservedly ranking with John Carpenter's best and most interesting films. In Snake Plissken Carpenter found his ultimate John Wayne-aping antihero, and with good friend Kurt Russell the pair made cult film history. Equally notable and iconic is the film's pulsing synth score, composed as usual by Carpenter himself, a syrupy trudge through post-apocalyptic New York's diseased underbelly of miscreants, throwaways, and sociopaths. The music in the film is as important as any of its quirky characters, a constant sonic accompaniment to the parade of despair and violence that Plissken encounters in his bizarre journey into the night.
In working with the score I have sought to bring out the dread and foreboding felt in the film, and like most of Carpenter's work, the work lends itself best to some seriously deep and suffocating drone ambient. Like Carpenter himself, I worked fast and with little reflection on the work-it's all about getting into a mood and sustaining it. There is little melody or emotional reprieve here, just nostalgic whisps of memories from before the world went to shit and a seemingly constant sonic reminder of its current barrenness. The first seven discs of the rework are the soundtrack proper done in heavy glacial drone mode; the final three discs are an extended, ultra-destructive three part HNW suite constructed from myriad sonic elements of the film. It's one of my most massive and engulfing sets. If there truly is any escape, you won't find it here.
Packaged in a painted box with a paste-on cover and an insert, with the ten discs housed in six DVD cases (three singles, two doubles, and one triple), each with different artwork. $75 ppd. in the United States, $88 rest of world.
ORDER HERE: www.altarofwasterecords.storenvy.com
