The The - Muscle (soundtrack) - CD hardback edition - Cineola - Out Now
Siblings Matt and Gerard Johnson continue their fruitful creative relationship with perhaps the latter's most disturbing yet engaging film to date and a matching soundtrack to boot. Already embedded in British film-making history for its brutal psychological storyline, pin-sharp acting (esp Craig Fairbrass as the manipulative mind and body ripping trainer Terry) and glorious monochrome cinematography of Newcastle and Gateshead, Muscle shows some serious, well, muscle with its accompanying music from The The.
Like Matt's previous soundscapes on Gerard's other top-notch movies Tony and Hyena, the underlying moods with Muscle revolve around tension, menace, sleaze and humanity, laced with a glimmer of hope and a whole chunk of melancholy. Despite closing the film during the credits, sprightly retro electro-pop sweetener and RSD single I Want 2 B U opens the door to this hardback CD book edition (again issued on Johnson's Cineola imprint) and almost lulls you into a false sense of security. It's a pop song. Johnson is vocalising again. Hurrah!
But there the radio-friendliness ends and its back to sinister atmospherics, dread-filled electronica, wide-eyed ambience and the sort of lounge-jazz touches you'd hear in the bowels of hell. Or, at the very least, the back alleys of a dystopian urban jungle filled with crooks, crimelords and utter scum. With Muscle, we're dealing with a few of the latter in the guise of a body-building underworld, yet in amongst the fearful themes, much of the film's soundtrack is beautiful and not always about trepidation and fear.
Velvet Muscle Scream sounds too elegiac to be accompanying somewhat excessive house orgy scenes, but in the context of watching its drug-addled and drunken host swaying and bobbing to its subtle rhythms and trademark Johnson backing, it all makes sense. Last Night Never Happened, Jumbotron and Just Good Friends are also more in keeping with wistful melodrama than the very strong possibility of someone getting totally psychologically destroyed. Downright scary soon arrives in the form of Bestiality Brothel and Vicious Circles while a bonus mangled rework of the single rounds off what is the perfect foil for a must-see film. The book includes images from the film, outtakes and sleevenotes.
9/10