Weekly Album: Week of 09/24 - 09/30 - The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

This week I listened to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Karl Bartos. This is a soundtrack for the film of the same name written and performed by Karl Bartos who is a former member of Kraftwerk. This is such an interesting intersection of interests for me, as it is involves silent films and German Kosmische Musik, which are both things I love very much. I will say though, I did not discover it through Karl Bartos, but rather by seeing what came up on Spotify when typing in names of silent films I enjoy*. To start things off, I think listening to this on its own does not really serve the music justice. After all this is a somewhat avant-garde sounding soundtrack for an avant-garde film, so listening to it without the visuals of the film are not what it is designed for. It helps for me that I can picture most of the movie in my head after seeing it several times by this point, but I think if I were to ever listen to this again it would be in conjunction with the film. Much like silent films need music to be properly watched, this needs to the silent film to be properly listened to. With that out of the way, I can actually talk about the music. In comparison to other soundtracks I have heard for this movie, it stays much more consonant musically. The main contemporary soundtrack that I hear for the film is very dissonant and can be very droning at times. Bartos' score here sounds much closer to other film scores I've heard, but not really like most other silent film scores. This is due to the fact that, to my knowledge, all the instruments here are electronic in some way. Which is expected of Bartos knowing his background, but it can be quite strange at times. Some of these instruments sound like very basic midi instruments; I swear some of the songs have the distorted guitar from the Roland SC-55 which is most well known for being the distorted guitar in the original Doom soundtracks (think E1M1 from Doom 1). The music can sound very video game-y at times due to this. I would've much preferred more of the analog sounding synthesized instruments, which do appear on the soundtrack but in shockingly spare amounts. At the very least, the music is interesting to listen to, and it is very cool hearing the repeated motifs throughout the soundtrack especially when knowing what scenes are behind them. I can't say I'll ever listen to this by itself again, I'd have to see how good of a soundtrack it actually is and sync it up to the film. 6.5/10

*Expect a Stavi Rants post about silent films in the near future