Philip Glass
The Hours

THE REVIEW

I return to doing my personal "emotional reviews" (I leave the technical ones to the data and knowledge professionals far more prepared than me) this time taking inspiration from a wonderful soundtrack of a stunning and original film despite its complexity. I don't want to talk about the film (which would deserve at least two or three viewings before expressing an objective judgment) but rather about its soundtrack, indeed, written solo by the great genius of Philip Glass, still a master of that electronic minimalism that has already given us great masterpieces in the past.

These 14 tracks are the darkest and most exciting thing I've heard lately from a soundtrack. There is a sense of diffused bewilderment, the foreshadowing of dark omens, and the sensation of tiptoeing on the edge of an emotional abyss, all seasoned with the class and compositional refinement of our own who now signs each of his works in a unique and unmistakable way. The compositions also enjoy a strange effect of spatio-temporal displacement, chasing themes with a Victorian-classical flavor harmonized with our own typical electronic sounds and loops, thus creating themes that are difficult to categorize: "cold" electronic music with early 20th-century Baroque influences or classical music interpreted with electronic instruments?
I happily leave this dilemma to others; for me, it is important to let myself be enveloped by these true "sound films" that infiltrate slowly, subtly and creepily, under the skin, ever closer to the heart, giving the listener a slight sense of "pleasant discomfort" (for this I refer you to watch the film) that at certain moments becomes heartbreaking and inexorable.

A beautiful and intense work, like few others, with moments of True High Poetry.