Dead Man (Music From and Inspired by the Motion Picture)

• Track Listing

Vinyl LP pressing. Director Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, Broken Flowers) describes his meditative 1996 post-punk Western, Dead Man (starring Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Billy Bob Thornton, John Hurt, Iggy Pop and Robert Mitchum) as, "a black-and-white-psychedelic-micro-epic which uses the genre of the "western" as a point of departure." Accompanying the cult film is a haunting and poetic instrumental score composed by Neil Young and performed entirely solo, mostly on electric guitar. The only vocal contribution is by Depp, whose reading of segments of William Blake's poetry is integral to Young's largely improvised pieces here. Says Jarmusch of Neil's efforts: "What he brought to the film lifts it to another level, intertwining the soul of the story with Neil's musically emotional reaction to it - the guy reached down into some deep place inside him to create such strong music for our film." "Recorded over multiple sessions in a San Francisco warehouse, Young's score for Dead Man was recorded entirely to picture. Equipped with an arsenal of instruments, he stood surrounded by screens of varying sizes as they played an early cut of the film from start to finish. The live-wire music that bellowed from his Gibson Les Paul "Old Black" was, for the most part, an extraordinary act of improvisation." - The Criterion Collection.

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