Know The Score: El‑P on 2002’s Solaris

Pio­neer­ing rap­per and pro­duc­er El‑P’s music has always felt cin­e­mat­ic. A big por­tion of the artist’s solo mate­r­i­al is root­ed in post-apoc­a­lyp­tic themes that explore the hol­low­ness of late cap­i­tal­ism, with songs like ​‘Dead Dis­nee’ and ​‘Delore­an’ clear­ly made by a keen stu­dent of John Carpenter’s They Live.

His frag­ment­ed beats surge with the urgency of a chase sequence in a Mad Max film, help­ing to illu­mi­nate night­mar­ish flash imagery such as drones con­duct­ing a ​“mechan­i­cal fox hunt” over Brook­lyn, or wag­ging fin­ger tips capa­ble of con­duct­ing MRI scans. He’s the clos­est thing rap music has to Philip K Dick.

El‑P is also one half of Run The Jew­els, along­side rap­per Killer Mike. Arguably, the duo’s music is under­pinned by a lot more hope than El‑P’s solo work, push­ing the idea that the evil in Amer­i­ca can be over­come by peo­ple from dif­fer­ent walks of life (El‑P is white and from New York City, Mike is black and from Atlanta) com­ing togeth­er. With its ref­er­ences to police bru­tal­i­ty and the idea of top­pling despot­ic world lead­ers, new album ​‘RTJ4’ might just be this year’s most social­ly rel­e­vant release, with El‑P pro­duc­ing a record that not only sounds like the sound­track to a rau­cous par­ty at the end of the world, but also the fuel for a protest movement.

“With ​‘RTJ4’, resis­tance comes in the form of me and Mike’s friend­ship. We want­ed to make this cin­e­mat­ic album where the anti-heroes sur­vive and speed away into the sun­set,” El‑P says. ​“The thing I am most proud of about ​‘RTJ4’ is you don’t walk away from it frown­ing or feel­ing down, even when the odds often feel insur­mount­able. The idea was that if we’re going down then we’re gonna go down swing­ing, and I think there’s a real beau­ty and rel­e­vance to that right now.”

Despite the fact that El‑P’s music is often the antithe­sis to still­ness, his all-time favourite film score, Cliff Martinez’s com­po­si­tion for 2002’s Solaris, is above all sooth­ing. Steven Soderbergh’s divi­sive remake was some­thing El‑P was grate­ful to dis­cov­er while expe­ri­enc­ing the hang­over from hell. ​“I had par­tied all night and I was com­plete­ly destroyed. It was one of those clas­sic hang­overs where you spend the whole day locked on the couch and rent a movie. The music was so soul-cleans­ing that I imme­di­ate­ly bought the sound­track and just played it on a loop for 10 straight hours. To be hon­est, I kind of nev­er stopped.”

Every­one has that one record they turn to when­ev­er life becomes a bit too much; the famil­iar­i­ty of the music pro­vides us with a nec­es­sary emo­tion­al reset. For El‑P, that record is Martinez’s Solaris score. ​“This music just became the sound­track to my life. To this day, I can­not fly with­out lis­ten­ing to ​‘Will She Come Back’ as the plane takes off. The music touch­es on stress, but also stress res­o­lu­tion. It’s per­fect to lis­ten to when you just want to lev­el out.”

Soderbergh’s film fol­lows psy­chi­a­trist Dr Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) as he inves­ti­gates a space expe­di­tion to Solaris, a strange neb­u­lous-like plan­et that’s some­how capa­ble of embed­ding itself into the human sub­con­scious, turn­ing people’s desires into real­i­ty. This results in Clooney hav­ing inter­ac­tions with his dead wife (played by Natascha McEl­hone), with Mar­tinez com­bin­ing elec­tron­ic and clas­si­cal instru­men­ta­tion that feels like it floats search­ing­ly in and out of the narrative.

It’s easy to see why Martinez’s score made such a big impres­sion on El‑P; the music feels med­i­ta­tive and dream­like, as ver­dant synths bloom and a Cristal baschet (which El‑P tried to buy after watch­ing the film, but balked at the $50,000 price tag) purrs at a fre­quen­cy that doesn’t quite feel of this world. Noth­ing is how it seems in Solaris, and this is evi­denced by the way the score and the uncon­ven­tion­al sequenc­ing reflect the splin­tered emo­tion­al state of Clooney’s char­ac­ter. Yes, it’s a film set in space, but it’s more about the spaces in the human mind and how we choose to fill them after expe­ri­enc­ing loss.

“I love that even through the dread, there’s this under­cur­rent of hope that exists with­in the film’s music,” El‑P says. ​“Cliff hints that this is a hope­ful sto­ry through the res­o­lu­tion of his chords and there’s this gor­geous alche­my to the music. It’s what makes it feel dif­fer­ent from Tarkovsky’s adap­ta­tion [of Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel].”

He adds: ​“I believe that sci-fi is a vehi­cle to exag­ger­ate the human expe­ri­ence and make a state­ment about it. This film isn’t about space, it’s about loss. But even though the film is embed­ded in sad­ness and fear, Cliff nev­er makes you feel despair no mat­ter how tense things get. His music beau­ti­ful­ly car­ries you through this thing and doesn’t drop you on your head, and that’s a mas­ter­ful thing to be able do.”

Inter­est­ing­ly, El‑P sees par­al­lels between the work of Mar­tinez (who, inci­den­tal­ly, was inter­viewed for this series), and the way rap music is con­struct­ed. ​“With Solaris, Mar­tinez com­bines steel drums with these long string chords that swell through the music. All of the notes are syn­co­pat­ed through delays. A lot of these choic­es don’t make sense – just like the world of Solaris doesn’t. Sam­pling and com­bin­ing things that aren’t nor­mal­ly drawn togeth­er is fun­da­men­tal [to being a rap pro­duc­er], and Cliff works like that too. As a pro­duc­er, your ears get taint­ed. I’m able to fig­ure out and recog­nise a process when I lis­ten to most types of music, but I could nev­er real­ly pin this one down, and I love that.”

While Run The Jew­els has tak­en up a lot of El‑P’s time in recent years, he has start­ed to make fresh moves into film scor­ing. First there was the leak of the music he sub­mit­ted for the trail­er for Blade Run­ner 2049. Though it was ulti­mate­ly turned down, its fre­net­ic pace chimes with the eyes-in-the-back-of-your-head para­noia of Rid­ley Scott’s orig­i­nal. ​“I want­ed to tap into the spir­it of Van­ge­lis’ score,” he explains. ​“Maybe in anoth­er real­i­ty that gig was offered to me. I hope that some­day I get my hands on some­thing of that magnitude.”

Then there was Josh Trank’s Capone, which may not have been warm­ly received by crit­ics but does at least fea­ture an emo­tion­al­ly res­o­nant score by El‑P. Rather than being embed­ded in the Pro­hi­bi­tion era, the restrained music is root­ed in dis­so­nant elec­tron­i­ca that suc­ceeds in tap­ping into the lone­li­ness and dis­af­fec­tion that comes with being a noto­ri­ous gang­ster past his prime.

“How do I make a peri­od piece with synths?” El‑P says of the start­ing point for his Capone score. ​“How do I use a fuck­ing Yama­ha CS-80 on a peri­od piece about a syphilitic Al Capone shit­ting his adult dia­per and hav­ing all these dis­con­cert­ing flash­backs of his vio­lent past while alone in his house? The music you hear shows what’s inside Capone’s heart. I didn’t want this music to be its own char­ac­ter, but more of a narrator.”

There’s even a lov­ing ref­er­ence to Cliff Mar­tinez in his Capone score. ​“The wind chimes that you hear on the song ​‘Lit­tle Italy’ were def­i­nite­ly a homage to Solaris,” El‑P reveals. ​“I knew I want­ed to incor­po­rate my own ver­sion of that dis­parate, ethe­re­al bell sound, which echoes with­in this big open space and is so often Cliff’s trade­mark. I want­ed to cre­ate a piece of music that bled into every moment. Learn­ing how to play a wind chime was so much fun too!” He says it would be a ​“dream” to one day work with Mar­tinez and learn from his process.

Look­ing ahead, El‑P says that ​‘RTJ5’ will hap­pen but ​“only when the time is right”. He admits that the self-iso­la­tion pro­to­cols brought about by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic have impact­ed his and Mike’s work­ing rela­tion­ship, with the pair very much fans of being in the same room togeth­er and ​“feel­ing each other’s ener­gy” opposed to email­ing vers­es, which is some­thing El‑P says they will nev­er do. He’s excit­ed to tour the ​‘RTJ4’ album in 2021, but jokes that these shows might have to fea­ture ​“per­son­al mosh pit bub­bles” for every audi­ence mem­ber in order to pre­vent the spread of germs.

What­ev­er the future holds for El‑P, you can be sure Martinez’s Solaris score will be play­ing in the back­ground. ​“I remem­ber buy­ing the Star Wars vinyl as a kid and it hav­ing such an impact on me,” he con­cludes, ​“but there’s still no piece of music in my life that I have lis­tened to more than Solaris. There are records I hold in high regard, but this one has stuck with me and pushed me to grow as a pro­duc­er. The music is med­i­c­i­nal. It shep­herds you through these com­plex emo­tions, but does it in a way that feels respon­si­ble. It acknowl­edges pain, but also takes respon­si­bil­i­ty for not shat­ter­ing you. I can’t envi­sion a day where I won’t turn to it for inspiration.”

El‑P’s Capone score is out dig­i­tal­ly now, and avail­able to pre-order on vinyl at pro​duc​tomart​.com