Tag: Eduard Artemiev

Sweet Fellas’ “I’m More Afraid to Lose My Job Than I Am of Dying” is a Beautifully Stark Ambient Commentary on Modern Life

The title of Sweet Fellas’ song “I’m More Afraid to Lose My Job Than I Am of Dying” is a poignantly bleak summation of life for many living under late capitalism. When the piece begins its bleak drones have a textural and tonal sweep, drift and flow that expresses what sounds like social bonds and one’s own psychology eroding and dissolving. In that haze of sounds there is a slowly evolving melodic figure, perhaps a piano processing minimal chords and faintly resonate like the flickering embers of hope in a devastated landscape. It has an emotional resonance with Tarkovsky’s 1979 existential and beautifully bleak masterpiece Stalker and Eduard Artemiev’s film score as a cutting through of values and aspirations we’re often told matter when deep down we know that life should be more than fulfilling the third rate technocratic goals of an oligarchy whose demands are baked into the social fabric. Listen to “I’m More Afraid to Lose My Job Than I Am of Dying” on Spotify and follow Sweet Fellas on Instagram.

Fatima Al Qadiri’s Score for Atlantics Embodies the Complexity and Tragedy of the Film

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Fatima Al Qadiri Atlantics soundtrack cover (cropped)

Senegal born, Kuwaiti raised composer Fatima Al Qadiri brings the gravity of her experience with war and post-colonial history to her darkly evocative soundtrack for the critically acclaimed 2019 movie Atlantics. The movie, marking the directorial debut of Mati Diop, is the story of a woman in a suburb of Dakar, Senegal who falls in love with one of the construction workers that have been building a futuristic-looking tower although she is betrothed to another man. The track “Boys in the Mirror” is imbued with that sense of melancholic longing, conflicted emotions and portents of tragic endings. The linger keyboard melody is reminiscent of Eduard Artemiev’s beautifully brooding and desolate work for Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979). The depth of tone, the suggestion of texture and an organic flow that courses through your mind, haunting it long after. Listen to “Boys in the Mirror” on YouTube, stream Atlantics on Netflix from November 29 onward and follow Al Qadiri at the links provided.

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