The value of a soundtrack to a piece of art can't be understated, though an exact percentage can't be given. Track selection counts as much as original scores in my opinion - both require an immaculate understanding of what fits, and I'm not going to argue that coming up with an arrangement is harder than crate digging - that's for someone who's done both to comment on. What would Reservoir Dogs be without "Little Green Bag" or "Stuck in the Middle with You", or Drive without "A Real Hero" spawning countless Gosling imitators as they drive into L.A. as the sun sets?
However, one type of soundtrack that gets overlooked is video game soundtracks. An absolutely wrong track choice can ruin the playability and story of a game. (Seriously, how are you supposed to continue playing a game when that comes on?) Though many people probably knows iconic themes as the Route 1 Pokemon theme or Dire Dire Docks from Super Mario 64 (yeah, it's mostly Nintendo), there are some great OSTs that can stand alone that have come out over the years. One of my favorite OSTs that sounds along the lines of Drive's 'Outrun'-style theme is Furi'ssoundtrack. Though I've never played the game, the tracks quite obviously tell a story of slow buildups to massive fights breaking loose through frenetic synthesizers and fast-paced, driving percussion. The slower, more repetitive tracks imply some sort of staged fight, which I find particularly nice to listen to while working on particularly dragged out tasks, like working out. The soundtrack evokes a more fully formed version of, say, a Dragon Ball Z soundtrack, which, while evoking similar feelings of immense conflict awaiting, is ultimately too repetitive to listen to like an album. As such, I consider a lot of the Nintendo music mentioned above to be a collection of themes, not soundtracks.
I habitually drive with one hand, though I never grew up driving a stick shift car. The car I learned to drive on, and what eventually became my first car, was a mid 2000s Chevy Impala. I would perennially cycle through my 12 presets, being too young to have a CD collection and having too old of a car to have an auxiliary input. I still remember the cycle - 90.3, 91.1, 93.3, 94.1, 94.9, 96.5, 98.7, 99.3, 101.1 (my favorite - oldies), 102.5, 105.3, and, if none of those had anything on, I had the 12th preset as 88.7 so I could seek for a station manually that had something bearable playing. Above all, I hated the station identification messages, the nonsense chatter between songs, and the ads, which would all play at staggered intervals between different stations, so I'd constantly have my right hand on the switches, making sure I didn't catch a glimpse of ad or garbage pop, due to my steering wheel not having audio controls.
Some people have prayer, some have meditation, and others have yoga. When I was alone in my apartment, my relaxation activity was to drive around Liberty City in whatever car Niko Bellic had just stolen to listen to the radio and check out the city I'd never drive in. I never skipped the ads and dialogue - if you've ever played Grand Theft Auto, you know that's part of the attraction of the radio. While Radio Los Santos from San Andreas is the most well known GTA station, my absolute favorite station is easily Vladivostok FM, because the curated music fits the game's theme perfectly, and attempts to amplify the player's engagement with Niko as a character. Nowadays, when I drive a car, I instantly shut off the radio, connect my phone, and listen to GTA stations in the car - ads included.
It feels slightly off, like taking back roads to avoid traffic but extending your drive by the same amount of time, or eating a Beyond Burger with essentially the same health profile as a regular burger, or swimming in a pool in Hawaii. Perhaps having the same experience but with our own insertion of perceived convenience makes all the difference?
Enter Hervé Falciani, who constructed some tale about a secret agent group called 'The Network' that seems remarkably dubious, yet was responsible for one of the biggest banking data leaks in history.
Hervé Falciani's Great Swiss Bank Heist (New Yorker)
Banking's self-proclaimed Edward Snowden actually wears the moniker quite well. Given that his only logical motivation for his actions would be to make money for a new relationship, one wonders how plausible his denials of that being his primary motive are. Why would someone upend their life so thoroughly, though, without a grand narrative at stake, real or fake?
Thankfully, we have a decidedly real grand narrative to look at, in the story of Nicola Gobbo.
Lawyer X - Melbourne (California Sunday)
While the subject is going to be attacked in book-form soon enough, the grand narrative at stake, though real, begets the question of, "was it worth it?" If something is worth it for a period of a decade, then it all becomes undone, one might be prone to answer "no", but look at how Tiger Woods turned out in the second half of his career. If something undoes the fundamental principle of client-attorney privilege for a decade-long utopia, it probably isn't, and the focus turns to how something could have gone on for so long.
Sometimes, grand narratives can work against you. Take the case of Tom Hayes, the so-called mastermind of the LIBOR-rigging scandal that ended up necessitating the renaming and retooling of all products tied to it. All the public will ever want is a face to be behind bars, but why this particular face? David Enrich takes on the unenviable task of trying to explain how the inner workings of financial liquidity and structured products can somehow produce nuance in defense of Tom Hayes.
The Spider Network - David Enrich
And now my narrative-themed narrative ends, as I attempt to get back on a weekly schedule!