Philip on Film: Filmworks by Philip Glass

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The best-known soundtracks of composer Philip Glass have stood the test of time extremely well. Today, we associate Koyaanisqatsi as much with Glass’s vast soundscape as we do with director Godfrey Reggio’s haunting images. Philip on Film gathers three complete Glass scores–Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Dracula, along with selections from La Belle et la Bête, Anima Mundi, Kundun, Mishima, The Secret Agent, The Thin Blue Line, and a handful of short films.
The Glass trademarks–those machinelike arpeggios; that familiar, if odd, electronic keyboard sound; the influence of non-Western vocal techniques–are all here. Glass has forged his own unmistakable style of epic-sounding minimalism, but it never gets stale. A few unreleased tracks on Philip on Film will serve hardcore Glass fans (who probably already own most of these works), including “Facades” from Godfrey Reggio’s Evidence and a track each from Atom Egoyan’s Diaspora and Peter Greenaway’s The Man in the Bath. –Jason Verlinde