VARIOUS
ARTISTS
Wings
of Desire (Der Himmel
über Berlin) Soundtrack
MUTE 1988
The
Wings
of Desire (Der
Himmel über Berlin) soundtrack isn’t
bad at all. The Jurgen
Knieper pieces sometimes get a bit ethereal in an Eighties
sense - but are ideal for a German movie based on Rilke’s
Duino
Elegies (Duineser Elegien) - and contain a similar
spacial aesthetic which compliments Wenders'.
Some spoken parts consisting of Peter
Handke's text remain on the album as well. The good
stuff confirms Wim Wenders’ excellent taste in music much
more than, say, Until
the End of the World. There’s a fun Laurent
Petitgand track that I swear I once heard at a circus
in Budapest. There’s also some fine material by Laurie
Anderson, Tuxedomoon,
and Crime
and the City Solution. But the highlight here is definitely
the two Bad Seeds songs. It is impossible to forget “The
Carny” if you've heard Your
Funeral My Trial
– here it functions as an obvious tie-in to the circus performer
(in the movie its on her turn table). The plot of the narritive
lyrics runs like something that could've been penned by Faulkner
if he was hired to script an Irwin
Allen disaster flick about a circus caravan gone to
hell. The grotesqueries and musical leitmotifs are a bit overcooked.
But like the lineage of flood folk songs that Cave referenced with
the Bad Seeds superb "Tupelo,"
there's plenty of water and biblical allusion to save it. Due to
all of the overkill of generic circus music and freaks and geeks-themed
lyrical material, cinema, poetry, and prose to come since, it doesn't
age as well as I remember. But that's not Cave's fault. The song
nonetheless possesses undeniable power.
But with no
further ado, the reason that I’m writing about this soundtrack
at all is the new version of “From
Her to Eternity” recorded specifically for the
movie. The original, on their first album by the same name, definitely
goes down in my book as the second-most-intense Bad Seeds recording
I've heard (see
the Tender Prey review if you haven’t guessed what’s
first). Here, on Kid Congo Powers’ first
taped outing with the band, while much of the same nervous energy
of the original remains, it’s totally reworked for live rock
instrumentation. So while the song as a whole sounds a little less
experimental, it drives much harder. Furthermore, this is some of
the most unusual and powerful dual electric guitar work you’re
likely to find anywhere. If you want a representative moment of
the power of the Blixa
Bargeld/Kid Congo Powers guitar team , this is the
one.
Hear
Kid tell you more about the filming of Wings of Desire and
the recording of "From Her to Eternity."
Go
back to Kid Congo Powers' Discography, Pt. 2
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New York Night Train , 2006
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