Graeme Revell - Until the End of the World (1991) Unreleased Score

If you haven't already seen Wim Wender's futuristic globe-trotting road movie Until the End of the World, you really should. I'm having trouble coming up with a good way to summarize this unique experience, so I'll go with quoting this film's Wikipedia entry: "The film takes place in late 1999; there is an out of control nuclear satellite in orbit that is apt to reenter the atmosphere at any time, contaminating large areas of the earth. This has caused an increasing degree of disorder, with large numbers fleeing the likely impact sites. Amidst a traffic jam, the impatient and disconnected Claire Tourneur (Solveig Dommartin) escapes the congestion by driving off the highway...and subsequently has a couple of odd encounters: first with a pair of bank robbers (which leaves her privy to a large amount of cash and a promised cut of it) and then with a hitchhiker [William Hurt] who is apparently being pursued by at least one armed party. Claire eventually discovers, after falling in love with the enigmatic fugitive, that he is the son of a scientist (played by Max von Sydow) and he has absconded with the working prototype from a secret research project. Multiple government agencies and some freelance bounty hunters are attempting to recover it." Sam Neill also stars. The movie goes on to travel quite a path from this point. It's an ambitious movie with big ideas that runs in three movements, each distinctly different. Released at 158m, the longer 280m Director's Cut requires more patience, but is more rewarding. Either are well worth searching out.

Check out the original theatrical trailer for Until the End of the World (released in Germany as Bis ans Ende der Welt), which, unfortunately, doesn't feature any of the score:



Check out this clip of the opening ten minutes of Until the End of the World. This at least features a little of the score and it does an excellent job of giving an idea of what the rest of this amazing film is like:



Wim Wenders picked his favorite bands and then asked the various musicians (in 1991) to try to imagine what music will sound like in 1999. While the movie itself did not achieve much success at the box office, the soundtrack release was quite popular. It stands as an absolute classic of the 1990s, with an incredible collection of pop songs by a superlative group of artists. I've always believed it was the act of looking forward that lent the music its timeless quality. As great as the album is, though, it has always disappointed me that only four tracks, running a total of 4:24, were included from Graeme Revell's evocative ambient score. I've always wished that a second CD of just the score was included, or released separately, but it never came to be.

About nine months ago, while searching for subtitles on eMule, I noticed a file called "Graeme Revell - Until the End of the World.rar". At about 71MB, I figured that it could easily be the normal soundtrack release encoded at 128kbps, but still, I was excited and tried to grab it. I've been trying on and off for nine months to get that file. It would occasionally show up with one user, but was often unavailable entirely. Even when it did pop up, I just never could get it. It finally occurred to me that through eMule I could start a chat session. Once that one user showed up again, I did so and the nice woman from Spain eventually emailed the tracks to me direct.

With nervous anticipation, I extracted the archives and opened the tracks in Winamp. Bingo! Seventeen years later and my wish came true! Finally, an unedited collection of cues created by Graeme Revell for use in the movie! Revell, formerly of experimental industrial outfit SPK, has created a score that, while electronic in nature, has a symphonic sensibility and manages a wistful poignancy that is quite touching. Revell is ably assisted by the haunting strains of cellist David Darling, with some of the tracks featuring the utterly alien sounds of the Aka Pygmies.

The bitrate of these tracks did end up being 128kbps, with no song title or tag information whatsoever. Listening to this collection of tracks and thinking of the movie, it seems to me that these unnamed tracks are sequenced mostly in the order that they appear in the movie. Although the bitrate is low, the sound quality is quite good. My new Spanish connection couldn't tell me anything about the tracks or even provide a cover. As far as Google's search engine is concerned, this bootleg doesn't even exist. I decided I wanted to make my own cover. Initially, I looked at using the movie poster as a start, but I wanted the cover to recall the original soundtrack release, while being a bit different. Using my three-disc Director's Cut DVD, I located and captured the exact same frame used for the original soundtrack cover. In Photoshop I cropped the image and used the channel mixer option to match the color and then added text that mimics the look of the original cover. I'm proud of the result. At first look, it's still instantly recognizable as Until the End of the World, but closer examination reveals a frame opened up a bit with a sharper, more colorful and deeply saturated image.

Minor Update (June 9, 2008): I was able to add track titles for eleven of the tracks, four from the official soundtrack, which I should have done in the first place, and seven from a bootleg of the proposed two disc soundtrack, eventually whittled down to a single disc. Steve Engler, blogmaster of the excellent Eclectic Synthetic music blog, located an archive of these extra tracks on eMule. I matched the tracks to the untitled cues here. Thanks for the heads up, Steve!

Graeme Revell - Until the End of the World (1991)
1. Until the End of the World Cue 1 (2:32)
2. Until the End of the World Cue 2 (2:33)
3. Until the End of the World Cue 3 (0:36)
4. Until the End of the World Cue 4 (1:44)
5. Until the End of the World Cue 5 (1:43)
6. Driving the Stranger (2:46)
7. Until the End of the World Cue 7 (0:47)
8. Until the End of the World Cue 8 (1:33)
9. Until the End of the World Cue 9 (1:34)
10. Until the End of the World Cue 10 (0:32)
11. Until the End of the World Cue 11 (3:22)
12. Until the End of the World Cue 12 (3:21)
13. Until the End of the World Cue 13 (3:21)
14. Until the End of the World Cue 14 (0:29)
15. Until the End of the World Cue 15 (0:54)
16. Until the End of the World Cue 16 (1:16)
17. Until the End of the World Cue 17 (2:26)
18. Cat and Mouse Chase in Tokyo 1 (1:47)
19. Cat and Mouse Chase in Tokyo 2 (0:49)
20. Cat and Mouse Chase in Tokyo 3 (0:21)
21. The Mountain Inn (1:33)
22. Japanese Herb Garden (2:04)
23. Until the End of the World Cue 23 (0:50)
24. Until the End of the World Cue 24 (0:49)
25. Until the End of the World Cue 25 (0:48)
26. Until the End of the World Cue 26 (2:11)
27. Until the End of the World Cue 27 (2:03)
28. Until the End of the World Cue 28 (0:38)
29. Until the End of the World Cue 29 (0:41)
30. Until the End of the World Cue 30 (0:38)
31. Until the End of the World Cue 31 (0:48)
32. Until the End of the World Cue 32 (1:53)
33. Until the End of the World Cue 33 (1:54)
34. Until the End of the World Cue 34 (1:55)
35. Until the End of the World Cue 35 (1:59)
36. Until the End of the World Cue 36 (7:11)
37. Until the End of the World Cue 37 (0:59)
38. Distorted Dreams (6:54)
39. Until the End of the World Cue 39 (1:29)
40. Opening Titles (1:59)
41. Claire's Theme (0:51)
42. Love Theme (0:44)
43. Finale (0:58)
44. Until the End of the World Cue 44 (2:35)

72.7MB RAR archive
MP3: Constant bitrate (128kbps)

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