J. Spaceman/Sun City Girls: Mister Lonely Soundtrack

Label: Drag City

Harmony Korine has always relied heavily on music for sculpting the feel and identity of his movies. It’s hard to imagine the images Gummo or Kids being half as effective without their tumultuous scores. Korine’s latest work Mr. Lonely is a damaged film loosely centered on the misadventures of a commune full of celebrity impersonators, and the soundtrack follows suit, hopping genres and styles through demented interludes and ambient longer songs. Spacemen 3/Spiritualized headman J. Spaceman and ethno-musicology appropriators the Sun City Girls never collaborated on any of the music for the film, (which would have been a whole other experiment) but the two entities compliment each other surprisingly well over the course of the soundtrack. String-heavy numbers like “Garden Walk” drift through random moments of dialogue into soft psychedelia from SSG like “3D Girls” and feedbacky tape collages of cut-up flute on “Panama 1”. A roller coaster of sprawling theatrics and calming ambiance, and a listening experience equal parts disturbing and enlightening as Korine’s films. (Fred)