Salton Sea
This dank-as-style contemporary film noir features most of the genre's familiar ingredients: murder, creepy characters, narrative flashbacks, an identity crisis or two, and a compelling if twisted subculture, in this case the scaly underbelly of the L.A. some speed freaks call home. While the genre has generally relied on dark jazz shadings--or, in the case of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, a hodgepodge of hellish synthscapes and nostalgic irony gone sour--the presence of Thomas Newman here guarantees something more expansive than clichés, and the young veteran delivers again. Newman's odd, percussion-reliant tack may occasionally be familiar here, but the score's unusually large ensemble allows him a wide timbral palate. He wastes no time infusing the score with jarring industrial rhythms, indistinct ethnic modalities that seem invented out whole cloth, some ofErin Brockovich's spare, Fender Rhodes-driven acid jazz shadings, and great, eerie dollops of the ominous, electro-acoustic soundscapes that have defined so many of his scores, yet without ever descending into caricature. Newman mixes it all into a hypnotic sonic cocktail that's as nervy as it is unsettling, one that zigs when you're sure it will zag, offering up some strangely reassuring musical comfort in a world of moral indifference and dramatic detachment.-–Jerry McCulley