Krikor Kouchian

Music For Marty

Genre: EARLY ELECTRONIC / SOUNDTRACKS, ELECTRONIC

Limited Edition LP

Boomkat Product Review:

Shapeshifting Parisian producer Krikor Kouchian summons lavish string and synth arrangements on his score for new documentary ‘Martin Scorsese, L'Italo-Américain’, directed by Yal Sadat and Camille Juza, and now available on a limited edition private pressing.

‘Music For Marty’ is the latest in Krikor’s string of scores for moving image, following ‘Saudi’ (2017), ‘Building Arnold Schwarzenegger’ (2019), and, for our own Editions label, ’Six & Demi Onze (Bande Originale du Film)’ (2020). In major/minor key with the documentary’s themes of a quest for identity - specifically Scorcese’s experience of growing up in a migrant family in Little Italy, and all the associated strands of masculinity, redemption, the violence of the mob - that would colour the pop cultural imagination via his storytelling, the music conveys a profound sense of beauty, bitterness, and deep romanticism.

No doubt ‘Music For Marty’ is Krikor’s most impressive and expansive work to date, speaking to his nuanced emotional register and subtle ability to sneak in traces of more screwed electronic signatures, invisibly lining the seams. He swerves any of the familiar rock or soul motifs in Scorcese’s flicks to inherently focus on how European classical music would be adapted to Hollywood features, implying links to Italian library music and its later use of grandiose synth symphonies.

Severed from the documentary, the 22 themes range from voluminous ambient dub on the opener ‘Little Marty’ to the windswept pomp of ‘Gospel of Greed’ via the brooding might and shearing tension of ‘Every Muscle Must Be Tight’, whose title sounds like one of Scorcese’s directing cues. It’s the likes of his transition from crest-swell strings to romantic flutes on ‘Like an Angel Out of This Filthy Mess’ or the Danny Elfman-scale symphony ‘The Italian American’ that evoke Scorsese’s mood perfectly, avoiding the overly emotional pomp and hollow refinement of the OST new skool.

Limited Edition LP (18)