With the Japanese cyberpunk classic Tetsuo: The Iron Man, director Shinya Tsukamoto created not only a noteworthy film work on its own but also inaugurated a world of his devising – the supreme task of the creative artist?
G. W. F. Hegel conceived the aesthetic act as a fundamentally confrontational gesture in which man assertively shapes and orders the world around him according to his own purposes. If that is the case, then the film provides a radical example of this method. Tsukamoto’s world is one in which all familiar constituents of our perception of reality’s structure (including “life”, “nature” and “organic/non-organic”) are broken down into a rhizomatic pool of writhing flesh, steel and metal, to be re-ordered by a demonic, titanic will emerging from unfathomable depths towards some mysterious other that is certainly not human. The film’s antagonist gives our main character a brief glimpse of such a “new world”, and by the end, both of them pledge to bring this vision to life – the price: the total annihilation of the current world; the minimum requisite for the ultimate act of aesthetic assertion and creation.
Naturally, the music, or, shall we say, the sound, is a crucial component in the rendition of such a comprehensive artistic project. The involvement of composer Chu Ishikawa (from the band Der Eisenrost) in Tsukamoto’s film and its subsequent instalments is one of those collaborations where each of the intervening parts complements the other so intuitively that it seems as if the complete vision would have never been fulfilled without this encounter.
We shall thus (mainly as an introductory endeavor) briefly go through the essential musical contributions to the Tetsuo trilogy, which, needless to say, is an obviously recommended stop for hessians looking to expand their cinematic horizons.
Note: the music under discussion is to be found on the “Tetsuo: Complete Box” album; the 1992 release “Testuo” consists of a selection of reworked material from the soundtracks of the first two films.
Tetsuo: The Iron Man Original Soundtrack by Chu Ishikawa
A classic of industrial music in its own right, but only fully appreciated in the context of Tsukamoto’s film, the original soundtrack makes use of a plethora of thematically appropriate sounds (hisses, clanking metal and all sorts of clashing tools) alongside traditional instrumentation to immerse the viewer/listener in the “new world” as it gradually unfolds itself through disquieting moods and bursts of maniac force. Ishikawa manages to extract a strange but compelling musicality from the nearly indistinct lava of machinery noise and related frequencies, carving stern rhythms and patterns in the white-noise face of these harsh and chaotic drones, for long thought to be artistically untreatable (and irremediably opposed to any aesthetic ideal).
The resulting soundscapes are as powerful and hard-hitting as one could expect from this genre and more inventive than most executions of similar ideas. The relentless pummelling of a track like “TD” perfectly evokes the march of infernal mechanical contraptions set into frenetic motion by the antagonist (played by Tsukamoto himself, who had a habit of acting in his own films). The “new world” track (“NW”) appropriately conveys the solemnity that the situation calls for, to which is attached the swirl of metallic sound effects that has become the OST’s viral bedrock. A great part of the endeavour’s success is owed to Ishikawa’s ingeniousness as demonstrated by the apt selection of different materials, including even some more conventional electronic/EBM elements and ambient synth flourishes commonly associated with the art of the film soundtrack, as integral pieces to complete the overall picture. These more modest moments are indeed of importance given that the film’s sense of desolation and apocalyptic flavour already manifests itself in the simple shots of empty streets and suburban edifices before the spastic fits of body-horror, transformation and high-octane battling to the score of rhythmic bashing.
Like in the stop-motion montages of orgiastic convulsive circuitry and alloy, the abyssal sounds that make up the music’s backbone gain form mostly through the vehicle of unnerving melodies and oppressive pounding rhythms, the necessary accompaniment to the film’s tone and its sense of maniac, almost “electrical” energy, resembling a darkly trans-human Dionysian spasm-dance that, by its conclusion, has the protagonist fully convinced and readily enlisted as a harbinger of the New Machine-Flesh.
The lasting impression, in any case, is one of an abrasive but oddly seductive nightmare-scape, feverishly pulsating at machine speed, thus precisely in tune with the film’s purposes (the admirable synergy between image and sound is one of the most important factors of the picture’s overall effectiveness – note that this is one of those films typically referred to by the “surreal MTV videoclip” descriptive, although this is obviously a simplistic label that only scratches the superficial appeal); it is also, by all means, a much more audacious affair than what most similarly minded experimenters were creating at the time. Although rarely noticed or explicitly stated, the influence of what Ishikawa achieved here can be felt in a large number of experiments that came after, the same way Tsukamoto’s unique style would go on to inspire many similar efforts.
Tetsuo II: Body Hammer Original Soundtrack by Chu Ishikawa
In accordance with the second film’s more accessible nature, some of the tracks here, such as the surprisingly catchy “EH”, deliver the type of straightforwardly designed excitement that can be readily expected in a regular video-game or film soundtrack from the time of the movie’s release.
The second Tetsuo film saw Tsukamoto dealing with a more robust budget and some of the trappings of more conventional cinema while retaining all of the obsessions and tendencies that defined the (completely independent) original film and aroused so much fascination; it could be thus described as a more restrained version of the original’s transgressive proposal. And, indeed, the music here also frequently approaches the mode one typically associates with a sort-of-mainstream film score, with swelling strings and percussion working towards a familiarly dramatic crescendo in some of the key tracks. The hint of industrial menace is, of course, always present, even if sometimes just as a suggestion, be it through the martial drumming and harsh textures or the moodier ambiance that remains a staple of Ishikawa’s work on the series.
The visual transition to colour is in a sense mirrored by the musical accompaniment, as we find in this soundtrack a more varied emotional and musical palette, ranging from the almost folkloric-sounding “RP I” to the militaristic march “BF I”, the muscular attack of “SF” or “DP”, or the abounding scrap metal ambient (“SC 1” and “SC 2”) that seems to constitute the aural oxygen of the world that the characters ceaselessly try to inflict upon our unsuspecting reality. This variety is sure to make the soundtrack a more satisfying listening experience as well as serving as a testament to Ishikawa’s ability to adapt the more esoteric elements of his work to a more accessible presentation.
Tetsuo: Bullet Man Original Soundtrack by Chu Ishikawa
An “americanized” entry uncontroversially labelled as the weakest of the series, Bullet Man presents a neutered, commercialized treatment of the previous films’ plot for the first time rendered in the english language for wider market appeal. Ishikawa’s consistent vigour as a composer, however, remains intact. The often short dark ambient passages that make up the bulk of the soundtrack reveal a thoroughly spacious environment from which other sounds emerge and engage in successive layers and engage with each other. As always, a wide array of substances is put to use, granting this work a density and diversity rarely to be found in a type of music often as singleminded as this. Electronic pulses and loops, gentle but sinister synth-scapes, bursts of brute force and an abundance of textures and effects are cleverly deployed in the rich sonic tapestry that sadly has no correspondence in its visual counterpart in terms of quality. Like the film, the OST basically delivers a more modern and technically polished version of what the composer has been exploring since the beginning of the series. The higher budget and “hollywoodized” approach are seemingly reflected in the soundtrack, given the production’s sharp and professional sheen, without sacrificing the creative energy and essential characteristics of the style that has by now become its own insular musical territory – though many excursions by curious explorers have attempted to extract its presumed unique gems and treasures, or simply observe it from afar and take notes.
Theme for Tetsuo: Bullet Man by Nine Inch Nails
This interesting and perhaps unlikely venture shows celebrity musician Trent Reznor at his most experimental, a facet rarely let loose in his Nine Inch Nails oeuvre. A seething wall of thick noise is forcibly made to harmonize with a piano melody that grows into a grandiose (synthesized) orchestral arrangement (stereo)typical of film score music. The track’s drama pretty much boils down to this simple but competently developed dynamic, as the initially difficult marriage is defined by the impatient and abrupt transitioning between sections until a mediating electronic part provides a middle ground until the sweeping finale. Curiously, this was Reznor’s first foray into soundtrack music, before his high profile collaborations with Atticus Ross on the films of David Fincher. A testament to his capacity for adaptation to a manifold of contexts, it’s a pity that the approach and sonic territory explored here have been so rarely indulged in by Reznor in his other projects, as the result is a very compelling piece that not only successfully lends itself to the context he’s been called to contribute to – the track reasonably blends in with Ishikawa’s score – but (in our opinion) also rivals a considerable deal of his other output in terms of sheer creativity and efficacy.
