Snowdrops: Manta Ray (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Gizeh Records

Soundtracks always pose a bit of a conundrum to reviewers and listeners alike. Do we approach them as stand-alones, reasoning that in being issued as self-contained entities they should be assessed as such? Or do we do a disservice to said projects in not taking into account the films to which they're connected and that presumably would bring clarity to musical presentations that might suffer otherwise? Snowdrops' Manta Ray, the soundtrack French-based keyboard duo Mathieu Gabry and Christine Ott created for Phuttiphong Aroonpheng's award-winning film of the same name, provides an apt illustration: experienced as a stand-alone, the listener's dazzled by musical settings of contrasting character yet struggles to make sense of how they all fit together; with the benefit of film-related background detail and narrative (apparently the film explores issues of borders, belonging, and banishment in its story of two men, a Thai fisher and a nameless stranger), the soundtrack coheres better, even when those contrasting musical vignettes sit side-by-side.

Even without the benefit of Manta Ray's visual content, the soundtrack exudes atmosphere and mystery, in large part because of the unusual sounds Snowdrops coaxes from its keyboards (Ondes Martenot, mellotron, Korg MS2000, augmented Yamaha EZ150, etc.) and through the incorporation of field recordings and, in three of the seventeen tracks, voices. A sense of place is created immediately when nature noises and creatures appear alongside whistling sounds in “Introduction / Gemstones in the Forest,” the impression established that Manta Ray isn't a cloistered studio-based production but rather one dramatically influenced by the geographical locale associated with the film. Much the same is accomplished when the speaking voice of Wanlop Rungkamjad is conjoined to delicate synthesizer and piano musings during “The Monologue.” The presence of real-world sounds repeatedly provides an effective counterpart to the ethereal timbres of the duo's electronic gear.

In using keyboards spanning many decades, Snowdrops also works into the project allusions to key moments in electronic history; one's reminded of the kosmische era during “Storm #1,” for instance; creepier by comparison, “The Mangrove” and “Lights in the Deep” exude eerie, even macabre qualities that brand them as dark ambient of a more recent vintage. The familiar sounds of an organ in “Abandoned Battleship” call to mind an earlier time, too.

Gabry and Ott scored the soundtrack in its entirety except for “Hot Springs” by Thai singer Rasmee Wayrana, which Snowdrops rearranged for the project. Accompanied first by bird chirps and rustling breezes and then keyboards, her quivering, open-hearted vocal helps make “Hot Springs” one of the recording's signature pieces. Memorable, too, is “The Harmony of Rohingya's Voices / Circles,” which pairs the murmurings of Aphisit Hama and Rohingyas voices with cryptic soundscaping textures (piano, sirens, electronics, etc.) for nine intense minutes.

Moments of startling beauty do arise. Pulsations and mournful warblings lend “Weird Dance” an affecting emotional potency, and even when stripped down to a skeletal frame “Losing a Friend to Death” reverberates like a cry welling up from the earth. The penultimate “Storm #3” holds up well as a self-contained electronic meditation, and one imagines it'd be even more effective when wedded to the visual display (at nine minutes, the voices-free reprise of “Circles” suggests it was used to accompany the film credits).

May 2019