Last week was the premiere of Interstellar…which I thought was pretty good. Yes, it has the same issues that other Nolan Brothers movies have had, but I knew that that was going to be the case going in, so I was prepared. This post is not about Interstellar, though; it is about Inception. Actually, it is not about Inception either; it is about one of the pieces from the Inception soundtrack.
The Inception score seems to be notable for mainly one thing: taking the introduction of Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose” “Non Je Ne Regrette Rien†and expanding it until it is just a bunch of explosive horn blasts. The part of the score that stuck out for me, though, was when Cobb was running through the streets of Mombasa. I had actually heard the entire soundtrack before seeing the movie, so I was familiar with the full version and, to an extent, I was actually waiting for the Mombasa sequence, whatever it would be like. It was like some drum ‘n’ bass track with less drum and more orchestra, and it was my favorite part of the score.
A while later, I heard a mashup with “Mombasa” as the backing track for “What Goes Around” by Justin Timberlake. They do go together melodically and they both have that vaguely Middle Eastern vibe to them, but “What Goes Around” lacks the drive and the force that “Mombasa” has. And it just seemed watered down. So, I decided to see if I could come up with a viable alternative.
I needed to have both a vocalist and a beat that were energetic and fast. At the moment, the only vocal track that I could think of and find was How Low by Ludacris. He is loud and forceful without screaming or growling. His switching between fast and normal seemed smooth enough, if not naturalistic. The percussion sample came from The Perfect Drug by Nine Inch Nails. I am not exactly sure why I picked that particular song to sample other than liking it. I am sure that there were many tracks that I could have chosen instead. Maybe it was the combination of speed, energy, force, and production.
At some point in making the mashup, I decided that the melody sounded a little familiar. So I cut back on the Nine Inch Nails drums a bit and introduced Teardrop by Massive Attack, a track that is probably best known for being on the House television show. What the song lacked in energy (and maybe that clicking percussion seeps through a little too much in the mashup), I feel that it makes up for in providing a slightly fuller sound.
A few weeks after I put this together, my computer broke down. I got a new computer, but I decided against putting all of the cheap sound editing programs on it. Thus, the “How Low” remix was the last mashup that I made.
