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The previous three Improved Sound Limited CDs (LHC 7, 9 and 12) were re-releases of vinyl albums, remastered with extreme care (and with respect for the aesthetics!) especially for this project. But this CD is completely different. "Road Trax" is a genuine first release of Improved Sound Limited music from three films (if you include the bonus track, the "o.k." vignette, it's from four films). While the previous CDs contained predominantly songs of the band, 39 of them, here we find different musical forms: mostly instrumentals, fragments and "songs without words".
In one way or another, film music was always part of the band's output. The first CD included music from the film "Der Graben" (The Ditch), directed by Michael Verhoeven. And the third CD "Rathbone Hotel" featured the song "Suicide Road", the vocal version of an instrumental piece from the Wim Wenders film "Im Lauf der Zeit" (Kings of the Road). The next CD in this series, "The Final Foreword", will be devoted to the soundtrack to Verhoeven's "Engelchen macht weiter...".
Why is this album called "Road Trax"? Simply because the music is about being on the road, or at least it conveys a very mobile feeling. "Kings of the Road" is a classic road movie, and long stretches of the music for "Soweit das Auge reicht" (As Far as the Eye Can See) are in the same spirit. "Das Brot des Bäckers" (The Baker's Bread) has a much different content, but the main character, played by Bernd Tauber, clearly seems to be a man in this tradition. It's no coincidence that in the film, he keeps listening to music in this style, for example the title song from the Improved Sound Limited album "Catch a Singing Bird on the Road" .
Acoustically, the music reflects the feeling of being on the move. It is a companion for long journeys, whether with the film camera or in a car. Moving at a slow pace, it portrays long and wide spaces, breathes melancholy, distance and boundlessness. You know and feel that the journey is the destination, no matter how lonesome it may be. The order of the tracks happens to be chronological, but it was first assembled by the band itself as music for their own travels, accompanying them to their next destination. Maybe this helps explain why "Road Trax" is one of the most coherent and homogenous albums I know of, although the tracks originate from different films and periods.
Reports in the press about films with music from Improved Sound Limited were numerous and uniformly positive. Typical is the following quote from the non-conformist Karena Niehoff, writing in the newspaper "Tagesspiegel": "The music of the German band Improved Sound Limited gets to the core of the film and becomes absorbed into it. Sometimes, in anger, I would like to hack this damned magnetic, addictive 'romantic' sound out of the film soundtrack, like a bloated leech from my skin. But then, I would have removed the substance and raison d'etre of the whole film, and left it to suffocate in its own breath."
More CD releases from IMPROVED SOUND LIMITED will follow!
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