Rage, Rage...
By TIM DAVID HARVEY
Dylan Thomas's 1951 villanelle 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night' is a profound poem urging a resistance against the reaper in the "rage, rage" refrain. A father's timely advice to his son it was famousely used in Christopher Nolan's inspired 'Interstellar' starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain and Michael Caine. It also serves as symbolism here in Max Richter's latest album, 'While The Flood Rages', as the last half of the album, featuring the legendary likes of 'A Sweet Air', 'Dawn' and 'My Body Is My Earthly Ark', sounds like it could have been used, like Ludwig Göransson, in the stead of Hans Zimmer's incredible soundtrack, because Lord knows the maestro is oftentimes busy.
Nothing can replace the Hans on the time of that soundtrack. And Max Richter's latest scale, following the portrait of 'In A Landscape', feels worryingly about our "place in the dirt", post-apocalyptic. All the way down to the Muse like amazing album artwork of a structural future-scape with "love" written like a sign, or cry, for help in the frozen tundra below. Actually, 'While The Flood Rages' and its 'Wave After Wave' cautionary tales we should 'Tell The Bees', whilst 'The City Was A Chaos' is actually inspired by the testament of the legendary 'The Handmaids Tale' author Margaret Atwood. Fitting after we've just finished the Canadian icon's 'Book Of Lives' 24-hour 'Memoir Of Sorts' amazing audiobook. Highly recommended like her hot off the press Substack page and feed. An Orwell for our time. Influenced by the 'Alias Grace' writer's 'MaddAddam' trilogy. Field-recorded elements of her dystopian trilogy incorporated into the British/German composer's own three-act structure of work.
'On The Nature Of Daylight', the 60-year-old composer's magnum opus has been used in everything from Scorsese and DiCaprio's shuddering 'Shutter Island' (mixed with the great Dinah Washington's 'This Bitter Earth'), to Richter's own scored single and an utterly raw and moving music video, featuring your very own June star of 'The Handmaid's Tale', Elizabeth Moss. Most recently, however, it gave us the most touching moment in Shakespeare's Globe Theatre for Chloé Zhao and Jessie Buckley's 'Hamnet' adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's beautiful book. Yet 'The Flood Rages' takes us even further into the heart of mother earth. Spearheaded by the single of eleven-minutes, 'Now We Can Sing', offering us a Noah like way out of this rising ride and all the trouble of a world at war today that doesn't seem to subside.
A classic collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor makes this all feel even more like a stirring soundtrack with absolute urgency. The advance of technology in the age of A.I. The fall of nature in our wounded land. And not to mention, we as a people and our resistance to all of that. These themes and ideas are explored in the sonic soundscape of Max's latest epic effort. Not to mention, one of his best yet in quite a year for the man who would have already been legendary if he took time off work during COVID-19, instead of spending time working in his home studio for music that echoed the times we have, are and continue to live in to this day and accelerated age. Powerful and profound, it's a necessary percussion, punctuating all we're living through as we speak in an album that really does so, without so much as a laced lyric. Orchestral and choral, taking us to an electronic church in the wild, the light is still alive in a man standing at the edge of the flood until it recedes. Raging against the machine, Max Richter is in control of his narrative in the eye of the storm. It's time, for the world, that we were, too.
Playlist Picks: 'Wave After Wave', 'The City Was A Chaos', 'Tell The Bees'.
Spin This: Max Richter - 'In A Landscape'.
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