Beyond Rangoon

THERE YOU GO. Such a lovely score; it truly holds a special place in my heart. I believe I bought the milan release at amazon when I was about 16 years old, and of course fell in love immediately. There’s just nothing to dislike here, especially at a perfect (if I remember right) 30-odd minutes. Of Zimmer’s “asian” scores, this one takes the cake, ranking higher than stuff like Black Rain, The Last Samurai, etc.

Actually, I’ll be a little more honest. Though I bought ‘beyond rangoon’ around the age of 16, the reason this score is sooooo dear to me is, well put simply, the final, aptly titled, gargantuan final track. Which, I must say, I happened to discover when I was either 13 or 14 years old, thanks to (god damnit) Christian’s review waaaaaaay back in the day, of which the only thing I recall is his utter verbal salivation regarding this epic track. Being so young with no job and little money to buy soundtracks, I snagged the mp3 somehow (back then it wasn’t so easy, kids), and for at least a year, it became a reoccurring motif in my household. Not gonna lie, I was 14, an Italian, adolescent cockroach.. and almost EVERY, SINGLE, NIGHT I would put track 8, ‘Beyond Rangoon’ on repeat, and not only would it allow me to blissfully drift away into slumber by night’s end, I think it somehow channeled the Tao itself with its peculiar asian ambience…. let’s just say, I got a lot of “things done” with this haunting, SEXY atmosphere; again an italian (or any) teenager is probably already prone to such doings, but I swear, this was just the coolest, most erotic, sexual track I’d ever heard. Is it really sexual? No perhaps. BUT for whatever reason, it got my juices and imagination (yeah that part of the imagination) flowing like no other, and oh was it… exciting. 😛 perhaps growing up with a large group of korean friends/neighbors for most my younger life, I really had a particular weakness(fondness) when actually hearing anything remotely asian sounding that was simultaneously, excellent (it’s not that common a thing, asian music that reaches some of the heights Zimmer does here. what makes those sin-filled memories even more sentimental, is… well, for the past 10-12 years now, I’ve done 95% of my music listening on headphones. But in those days, oh the innocence, I would blast away all film music on speakers at the highest of volumes, windows open, door closed (like I said, I had to ‘get things done’ :D), clearly (beyond) audible to my parents and brother sleeping in the rooms across me, and there was never a single moment where someone told me “turn that sh*T down”. including the neighbors which never complained, and god knows the houses to both sides of us (one of which was, incidentally, an asian couple) could hear my racket. Long story short, the track ‘Beyond Rangoon’ repeated ad ad infinitum during that year basically gave me and my family something not unlike an opium high, sheer relaxation and transcendence, not unlike I’d imagine what that old brother morphine does… only without any drugs. That’s the power of (one!) Zimmer.

Jason, I think that post is going into the dictionary as the definition of Too Much Information. :vomit:

Re-reading that rather vapid last post of mine, I must say the only really sad part of it is filling James’ review with irrelevant nonsense. but I still stand by some of its CLAIMS, if only because any music that is both sophisticated and erotic should be heard by as many people as possible; my original comment was bloated, maybe, but also sincere, because of the thousands of hours of film music I’ve nurtured myself with, not much of it would rank as highly as the aforementioned title track of this score. the kindly “vomit” response was enough to send me off on a shitter of a rant like that. my only other real hesitation from my comment is… well I really HOPE Edmund is a brit (somehow I got that impression or remember him posting the fact in his INFOz somewhere). otherwise I’m an idiot.

but emma watson is hot (if a wee bit on the young side).

🙂 I am large portion idiot than, as I don’t think studying in Wales would quite give you the qualification… so you’re basically just a german-american predator out to take advantage of those cute, naive young english GIT’S.

so let’s just take everything I said about england/the british and instead assume James (limey b) suffers from said complexes.

Above I mentioned that Zimmer’s Rangoon score is surely some of the best asian music out there, and stand by that, as since there is so little great asian music out there, it has a certain higher priority to be heard.

Well this piece here, by two separate artists collaborating together for a single album — both Japanese (and from Japan) –; one an individual “prodigy” who goes by the name ‘World’s End Girlfriend’ and the other a group/band of Japanese musicians (two male/two female, I believe) called ‘Mono’ (both artist and the band being in their young to mid 30’s, I believe), resides in the “post-rock” genre. It was written/composed in 2007, the album entitled “Palmless Prayer: Mass Murder Refrain”, a five track symphony, of which this track, “Trailer 4” is one.

And I must say, it eclipses even the best asian film music I’ve heard, Beyond Rangoon included (as well as Tan Dun’s timeless;imo; ‘Crouching Tiger’ and anything by that MV-horse(#!!) Steve Jablonsky, and probably everything Joe Hisaish ever wrote… who/what else am I missing?). One benefit of straying from film music and into a few other musical realms is finding the occasional gem such as this, and though both artists are technically ‘post-rock’ as said, their music (and especially this) is much more classical sounding in nature. In fact if one comparison had to be made, I’d say it echoes some of the styling of Elliot Goldenthal. At any rate, film music aficionados should take to it pretty easily, I’d imagine. Maybe.

Jason – like me, it looks like you’re an expert on Asia. Were you in Laos?

By the way — dunno why I didn’t spam/plug this earlier — this is a short video I made some five odd years back, with one of my favorite tracks from (one of) the above mentioned/linked Japanese artists, World’s End Girlfriend. And no, there’s no anti-;NORTH;Korean sentiment here; it’s just a stupid computer game (made by New Zealand’ers no less) that was known (at the time) for its amazing graphics engine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8835wKIRhI

poop