release date: May 24, 2005
format: digital
[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,08]
producer: Robin Guthrie
label: Rykodisc - nationality: Scotland, UK / USA
Collaboration album by Scottish guitarist Robin Guthrie together with American composer Harold Budd. The album is not an official soundtrack but the actual film score album for "Mysterious Skin" (2004) by Gregg Araki. The soundtrack has also been issued and is somewhat different with music by various artists of dream pop and shoegaze including original compositions by Sigur Rós, Slowdive, Cocteau Twins, Ride and Curve. Harold Budd is renowned for his contributions as jazz avantgardist and composer of music described as minimalism and / or neo-classical, and here he has composed 15 tracks together with Robin Guthrie.
Musically, it doesn't fall far from Guthrie's solo debut Imperial (2003) as it's first and foremost instrumental and ambient music relying heavily simple music structure based on guitar and piano / keyboards with some occasional drum programming as additional instrumentation.
The album is their first in a series of collaboration works, which came to an abrupt end with Another Flower (2020) as Harold Budd died from COVID-19, Nov. '20. Actually, Guthrie and Budd already met back in 1985 when they worked together on the album The Moon and the Melodies (1986), which is released as a collaboration work between Budd and the Scottish band Cocteau Twins - as Budd's first encounter with popular music - credited all four and to the individuals of the band: Simon Raymonde, Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie. So, Mysterious Skin: Music From the Film is realised some 20 years later; however, the two have made several other albums together, e.g. After the Night Falls and Before the Day Breaks both released simultaneously Jun. 2007.
This film score may work on a completely different level while accompanied with images and dialogue from the film, but as a stand-alone work, it's a difficult listen.
[ allmusic.com 3,5 / 5 stars ]
