Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Tuesday Tunes: Fight the Future

It probably hasn't escaped the notice of readers that there is a new X-Files flick out this week. No, really, there is.

So I figured I would dig out the album from the last time round. Not the film score, 'The X-Files: The Album', which apparently features music inspired by the first X-Files film.

It's a mix of big names (The Cure, Foo Fighters, Noel Gallagher, Sting) and slightly more obscure artists (Soul Coughing, anyone?).

The European release opens with a variation on the X-Files main theme in the style of Tubular Bells, which actually makes more sense when you hear it, and closes with The Dust Brothers rendition, both of which I think are pretty cool in their own ways.

In between you get a selection of post-grunge rock tracks (although the Foos are in melancholy mode for Walking After You), pretty typical Bjork fare in Hunter, and the slightly more ethereal vocals of Sarah McLachlan's Black. Noel Gallagher's contribution is an (overlong) instrumental piece, so thankfully no annoying Mancunian whining. (Yes, I was definitely a Blur person.) More Than This is not The Cure at their most depressing, but it's no Friday I'm in Love.

Only a couple of the songs appear briefly in the film or over the end credits, but there's actually not much that brings the X-Files directly to mind, except possibly Filter's One, and One More Murder by Better Than Ezra. But it's a nice selection of tracks, with some great artists who lurk on the fringes of my music collection - The Cure and Foo Fighters in particular are sadly underrepresented in my CD cabinet. The only track I would skip is Sting doing Invisible Sun with Aswad. I don't need Sting in my life, I'm afraid.

Oh yes, and there's a subtle hint on the cover: 'Hear the truth revealed at 10:13' which points you to a bonus track revealing some of the mythology behind the movie.


Sci-fi Song of the Week
So, which track from the album am I going to add to the mixtape this week? Well, actually I'm not. I'm going to throw in another alternative version of the X-Files theme which I quite like, by Rugby psychadelic rockers Spiritualized. I haven't heard the Version from UNKLE yet, but currently Spiritualized is my favourite X-Files theme.

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