I suspect many electronic music aficianados have the soundtrack for the film The

Revenant on repeat who havent even seen the film. Any new Alva Noto/Ryuichi
Sakamoto collaboration will get the attention of lovers of minimal electronic
achievement, with good reason.
And The Revenant might just be the perfect landscape for that collaboration. Its
marathon portrait of bleakness and intense, lonely revenge make the film a platform for a
perfect Alva Noto/Sakamoto score.
Carsten Nicolais long-running collaboration (as Alva Noto) with Ryuichi Sakamoto has
been a benchmark in what electronic/acoustic synthesis can be. But even as a fan of their
creative intersections, this soundtrack is special. It is an essay in texture, one in which
eventually the boundary between acoustic and electronic disappear.
This interplay cant be called new any more. Electronic sounds shares a timespan with
the history of cinema. From the Theremin to the ANS Synthesizer (see Tarkovsky) to
Louis and Bebe Barrons homemade electronics to Wendy Carlos to Vangelis, film has
often been the medium through which the world has come to know electronic sounds
most adventurous sounds for the first time. The big screen led the home stereo.
But, its a shame that after those leading-edge moments of cinema, we havent seen
synths as the norm so much as the exception. Moreover, the fusion of synthesis and
acoustic sound in film still seems a rare feat even though it ought to be the perfect
place to execute that synthesis, even for general audiences.

That means pairing the right people, though, not pairing the right technology. And this
seems as good an example as any. Im surprised when Nicolai and Sakamoto are called
unlikely. Perhaps in pre-unification Germany, peering into the future, the artistic
couple would have been historically or geographically improbable. (Its not that the
DDR was universally disconnected from the globe electronic composers in the right
positions had unique access, though perhaps not the band of East German brothers who
started Raster Noton.) And that happy fall of the Wall here is hugely welcome.
But aesthetically, the combination seems rather inevitable. These are two minds who
exemplify minimalism at its most essential and versatile, each comfortable across media.
Sakamoto is at the apex of his economy in the music for The Revenant. The thematic
gestures in the string writing are as suspended as a breath caught in frozen air, as aching
as a sigh. (Listen to Hell Ensemble or The Revenant Theme.) The constantly
downward-descending modal minor writing is endlessly unresolved, balancing on edge.
It is unmistakably Japanese, but also recalls baroque laments, an unending spiral descent
of incalculable despair. Oh, and somehow this sparing handful of notes is oddly
hummable. That melodious romanticism, if stripped down, gets clawed to the bone as
the plot progresses.

But even before getting to the electronic contributions, the recording production and
orchestral writing are themselves purely timbral in a way familiar to synthesists. In more
incidental moments, glassy string textures seem themselves to be almost electronic
pure surface, almost unmoving, executed expertly by Berlins Stargaze orchestra.
Stargaze themselves are ideally tailored for the project, in contrast to the epic Hollywood
contributions last year of the LSO to wars in the stars. Like the composers, stargaze are
comfortable with music classical and new, electroacoustic avant garde and pop as well
as the usual sustain this string harmonic without us hearing any bowing for as long as
the director damn well pleases acrobatics.

Multi-instrumentalist Bryce Dessner (known to hipsters more for The National) fits
nicely into this ensemble as a co-composer and member of the band. In fact, its not hard
to imagine Sakamoto/Alva Noto/Dessner in future.
But aprospos to this site, lets talk about electronics.
Raster Noton, the label Nicolai co-founded, celebrate a big landmark anniversary this
year. And they come from roots in a Communist-era scene that meant scrounging
electronics wherever they could be found, rather than the conspicuous consumption of
pricey gadgets, displayed in lavish studio walls like hunting trophies. (Not that theres
anything wrong with that, but you get my point.)
Whats beautiful about Nicolais understated contributions to this record, as with past
Raster Noton efforts, is that electronics can be naturalistic.
So, when we talk about The Revenant being shot in natural light, with no CGI, an epic
wilderness expedition in itself, we can also be encouraged that electronic textures dont
feel out of place.
Here, electronics dont represent alien flying saucers or futuristic cities or the insides of
computers or pounding nightlife. They add colors and textures that blur easily with those
in the orchestral score. They reveal the weight of moments of emotional desperation, of
passion, and do so as economically as the string textures.

The coexistence of electronics with scored material is very much by design. As Nicolai
told WXQR:
Specifically for this movie, because I knew its was going to be a classical score, I tried
to record electronic music in a way that sounds very organic, that sounds kind of

acoustic rather than electronic. So, I really tried to change the electronic sound in such a
way that it could easily work together with the classically-recorded score.
The Dream sequences the two make together, with glacier-sized reverbs full of icy
noise and urgent rhythmic pulses, are exquisite. As always, Nicolai lets the aesthetic of
the medium be part of the timbral message.
But its interesting to learn that in this case, vintage DDR hardware or some elaborate
software concoction arent the tool of choice, but iPads. The focus directly on sound
itself seems to fit the score. Again, talking to WQXR:
For this, because I needed to be very flexible, I was basically arriving with many
software-based synths and I did everything with basically one laptop. I composed
everything inside that laptop, or sometimes I recorded weird sounds from natural things
or iPads; I used a lot of iPads as well. Sometimes, I wanted to use just a simple recording
of a stone or something, so I needed something of that quality of sound, so I just
recorded it and used it and processed it so you cant really hear that original sound inside
it. I would know that for a specific moment that I would need something like that quality
of sound.
Worth reading that whole interview:
Interview: Alva Noto on Co-Scoring The Revenant [WQXR NYC]
Or listening:
But I think its worth climbing up on the mountaintops (ahem) and talking about the
significance of this sort of work. We need to begin to appreciate electronics as an
essential element in orchestral writing, in scoring. Its lazy to call the synthesizer
synthetic, to call the computer artificial. We need a reckoning for how they fit into our
culture.
And while the film is about loneliness, this kind of attention for the medium shouldnt be
quite so lonely. So Im glad to have this work as added inspiration. It does so much with
so little, it makes a lot of us want to do more.
For more on this collaboration in general, Red Bull Music Academy have an extensive
interview with both artists: