what did they look like? ships? motorcycles?
November 30, 2010 3:42 PM   Subscribe

To whet all of our appetites, here is a 21-minute Tron Legacy soundtrack medley. (SLM_)
posted by luvcraft (34 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
I love the opening sample of Flynn handwaving the entire Tron mythos and making everything totally plausible in a few sentences.
posted by luvcraft at 3:43 PM on November 30, 2010


Oh please tell me that's not MySpace's new logo. That's worse than SyFy.

...actually, it's not.
posted by Mwongozi at 3:44 PM on November 30, 2010


The whole thing leaked like 2 weeks ago.
It's a passable, if pretty unremarkable, score.
It has a bit of an early 80s Carpenter / Vangelis thing goin on but for the most part the Daft Punkyness that everyone is salivating in anticipation over is mild and superfluous.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 3:48 PM on November 30, 2010


What Senor Cardgage said. There's only one track that sounds sufficiently Daft Punk-y.
posted by cell divide at 3:58 PM on November 30, 2010


Yeah, agree with Cardgage, Daft Punk didn't get to shine on the new soundtrack. It's a shame because the Wendy Carlos soundtrack for Tron is such a unique, signature piece of music.
posted by Nelson at 4:01 PM on November 30, 2010


MySpace changed their logo (and overall look, plus the more recent Facebook + MySpace "mashup"), and the soundtrack leaked over a week ago. I like cinematic scores, and that's what this is.

All the same, I'm looking forward to a re-dubbing of the new Tron movie with earlier Daft Punk tracks. If no one else does it, I'll give it a try.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:08 PM on November 30, 2010


And here are 101 Tron: Legacy pictures (jump to the vehicles).

This photo makes me think that those Tron kids threw a disc on Old Man Carruther's lawn again.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:15 PM on November 30, 2010


I think everyone was expecting a Daft Punk's next dance album, hence the disappointment.

Also: the reason the rest of it doesn't sound very Daft Punky is probably due to the lack of sampling, most of the sounds are original synth lines (at least they sound that way). Thomas Bangalter likes to take 2 second samples of something and construct a whole song out of it. ( Example )

After listening to the soundtrack, there are definatly some parts i want to sample and loop, and set to some really crappy Roland Tr-909 drums. Yeaaah.
posted by hellojed at 4:19 PM on November 30, 2010 [2 favorites]


What is it with descending minor scales and suspense/action films?
posted by klausman at 4:20 PM on November 30, 2010


The fact that it's a score is probably why it's considered by some to be unremarkable and understated. I like it since it only amps up my anticipation for the film, which I'll be seeing in 3d whilst stoned out of my gourd.
posted by triceryclops at 4:23 PM on November 30, 2010 [2 favorites]


Maybe I'm just an old fogey, but I still prefer TRON by Wendy Carlos. YouTube search reveals a few tracks.
posted by linux at 4:54 PM on November 30, 2010


Tron should have been given to a Japanese director to make in Detroit and Daft Punk should have been sequestered in an enclosed pyramid with bullet-proof glass walls silently looping Avatar backwards on plasma displays, with a sampler, a sequencer, a small hammer, a plaster cast of Jay-Z and a few crates of obscure records.

or not...
posted by panaceanot at 5:02 PM on November 30, 2010


Maybe I'm just an old fogey...

Same here. I like Daft Punk just fine, but this feels like being told that Blade Runner II will have the music scored by Royksopp: fun, but not quite nearly the envelope the way the original did.
posted by lekvar at 5:23 PM on November 30, 2010


The Glitch Mob Rerezzed video is more fun.
posted by poe at 5:41 PM on November 30, 2010


A friend of mine who's a big electronica guy (but also likes soundtracks) said you could get a decent Daft Punk EP out of the soundtrack album. I guess he was a bit more optimistic than cell divide.
posted by immlass at 6:29 PM on November 30, 2010


I understand what some of you are saying, but I still feel that the score was somehow neutered to make it more conventional. I wasn't expecting a dance record or even samples, but just more hard core sounds. Unrealistic, I know, because most of the audience apparently would not be comfortable with ear-splitting stuff and needs watered down typical H-wood score music. Although, as noted here the original score was really interesting.
posted by cell divide at 7:15 PM on November 30, 2010 [1 favorite]


Before everyone gets all "it's just not like ye olden days," keep in mind that original score for Tron featured a pretty schlocky song by Journey.

It only played over the closing credits, but title was worked into a key part of the dialogue, when Flynn is getting ready to hack the MCP and says "There's no problems, only solutions."

Wendy Carlos was groundbreaking, but let's not kid ourselves about soundtracks.
posted by zota at 8:42 PM on November 30, 2010


less obnoxious view of the player @ http://www.myspace.com/239705355/music-player
posted by milnak at 8:47 PM on November 30, 2010


I posted this earlier but Jason Bentley of KCRW, and the music supervisor of Tron 2, did an interview with the director about the Daft Punk soundtrack. There are some shorter video excerpts of the hour-long interview here.
posted by euphorb at 9:52 PM on November 30, 2010


Thanks for the post! I enjoyed listening to it as background music while I puttered about the kitchen. But all in all... it's pretty underwhelming, and doesn't sound particularly Daft Punk-ian. I rather think it sounds like a bastard hybrid of some Moby B-sides and a Jason Bourne soundtrack. But I don't blame DP; Disney has become notorious for not getting the best out of their artists lately. If Armando himself was alive today and doing soundtracks, he'd probably be ill-served by Disney as well.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 10:04 PM on November 30, 2010


what did they look like? ships? motorcycles?

I guess it *IS* a series of tubes then.
posted by falameufilho at 10:50 PM on November 30, 2010


Between this, Trent Reznor's The Social Network mix, and Hans Zimmer's Inception soundtrack, my only interest in this year's Oscars is who wins Best Original Score.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:18 AM on December 1, 2010 [2 favorites]


it's all right...i was expecting a fuckton of samples from the original soundtrack though...the light sailer and original theme had some gorgeous motifs...
posted by sexyrobot at 1:24 AM on December 1, 2010


Ya know, when the first Tron Legacy trailer came out 10 months ago or whenever that was, it looked pretty damn awesome. It looked like they made it for the fans and the cult following of the first film, but now the new trailers look like Twilight in neon- they're marketing it to the teen crowd with all this dramatic romance emo shit. It looks weak. And Jeff Bridges was barely in the new trailer at all. I'm starting to think they missed the point of a Tron sequel. Maybe that's just the trailer they made to pander to the mall crowd...I hope.
posted by Liquidwolf at 6:01 AM on December 1, 2010


I'll listen to this on the ride to work and pretend I'm on a lightcycle and not a D train.
posted by ritualdelohabitual at 7:31 AM on December 1, 2010


I'm getting more and more scared about Tron: Legacy. The first set of trailers was FUCKYEAH DAFT PUNK FUCKYEAH 2010 STYLE UPGRADED GRAPHICS FUCKYEAH MODERN SENSIBILITY and then the second set of trailers was OLIVIA WILDE OK UNCANNY VALLEY CGI JEFF BRIDGES MAYBE ITS SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE THAT OK AT LEAST ITS DAFT PUNK FUCKYEAH and now the latest version is all UNCANNY VALLEY PROBABLY NOT SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE THAT DAFT PUNK NOT GIVEN CARTE BLANCHE TO GO APESHIT OLIVIA WILDE APPARENTLY HAMMING IT UP NEW GUY JUST LOOKS PERPLEXED SIGH THERE GOES MY CHILDHOOD
posted by felix at 8:26 AM on December 1, 2010 [1 favorite]


If they don't use the name 'Walter Carlos' in the credits, it's not retro. Simple.
posted by spamguy at 9:40 AM on December 1, 2010


Daft Punk made some good dance tunes, but they are basically two DJ's making simple music with samples and technology they didn't create. Their real art is hype and marketing, certainly not music composition.

Listening to this preview, I hear a lot of simple loops of cliched techno sounds, distorted 303 clones, etc. It seems like a boring trick repeated for 20 minutes, indifferent loops either played in childish crescendos and decrescendos. Pom pom pom, popopo pom pom pom POPOPO POM POM POM etc. The best moments sound like Hans Zimmer rejected cues from Inception and The Dark Knight, quiet filtered pulses looping ad infinitum. Not much originality or craft going on here.

Also, if there ever was a soundtrack where a real orchestral performance should have been rejected in favor of a 100% synthetic musical performance, it was this one.
posted by jchgf at 10:01 AM on December 1, 2010


That interview with the director is interesting:

"Yeah we did some of that with the light cycles, we actually tuned the frequencies of the bikes in with the key of the score. We were always cognizant of that with a lot of the environmental sounds in scenes before the score comes in that we would tune either the room tone, or the sound of the vehicle or the sound of the atmosphere into the key that the score would eventually come in to so that it all came out of that sound bed. That was something we talked about from the very start and because we started so early we were able to plan that."
posted by nushustu at 12:06 PM on December 1, 2010 [1 favorite]


Before everyone gets all "it's just not like ye olden days," keep in mind that original score for Tron featured a pretty schlocky song by Journey.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Tron, taken as a whole, is a deeply flawed movie. But it was also pretty daring, stylistically and technically. At this point I've stopped being excited about Tron: Legacy because I don't see that same spirit in the trailers; I don't see anything forward-looking or innovative.

For example, in the first movie, the Atari 2600-style game graphics were reinterpreted into lightcycles and programs fighting with data disks. In the new movie, slick 3D graphics have been reinterpreted into... slick 3d graphics. The first movie was scored with music that you simply didn't hear on 99% of the radio. The new movie is scored with music that's pretty ubiquitous. (Is that because popular music is following Daft Punk's lead or is it because Daft Punk is unoriginal? I leave that as an exercise for the reader)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to piss on Tron: Legacy and I'm not trying to say that anyone is a bad person for being excited about it or the soundtrack. I'm saying that, for all its flaws, Tron defied conventions. Tron: Legacy looks like it just wants to be a Hollywood movie.
posted by lekvar at 12:32 PM on December 1, 2010 [1 favorite]


Is it possible to defy conventions when making a sequel of a movie that is best known for the fact that it defied conventions? I'm not trying to be snarky; I just don't know how they could do something groundbreaking in a sequel like this.

OTOH, as has been posted elsewhere, they HAVE defied conventions in this new film, by handing the reins to a $200 million film to a guy who has never made a feature-length production. That seems insane to me, and I'm not sure that's ever happened before.
posted by nushustu at 12:57 PM on December 1, 2010 [1 favorite]


@sexyrobot: I agree. I keep waiting for a Daft Punk song built entirely out of samples from the original Wendy Carlos soundtrack!
posted by luvcraft at 12:58 PM on December 1, 2010


Is it possible to defy conventions when making a sequel of a movie that is best known for the fact that it defied conventions?

I'm sure it is. How, exactly, would it be done? Well, If I could tell you that I'd be making a lot more money than I am now. I'd start by ditching the rebellious motorcycle-riding teenager. I also think I'd hand the score to musicians who can think outside of 4/4 and 200 BPM. But in the end, I'm just some guy on the internet with an opinion.
posted by lekvar at 1:43 PM on December 1, 2010


Anyone know if the track Fragile is fake?
posted by shortfuse at 7:10 PM on December 1, 2010


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