Far Out There: Character Soundtrack - Mariska

Okay, now we’re starting to get into the truly obscure secondary characters. You know Mariska, Ichabod’s nitpicking friend? The one with the goggles? She’s got a playlist too! Actually, hers is one of my favorite out of all the Far Out There playlists purely from a personal listening standpoint. It’s also one that I’m gonna have a harder time describing than usual, since most of these soundtracks are built around a connection between the given character and a specific musical genre, and Mariska listens to a genre I don’t think exists outside my own head.

Here’s the deal: there was this whole thing from the mid-90s through the turn of the millennium where a lot of indie acts got big into a sort of Lounge/Exotica revival; think “Lovefool” by The Cardigans or “A Girl Like You” by Edwyn Collins (actually, citing Stereolab or Combustible Edison would be more applicable, but I need stuff normal people have actually heard for the example to mean anything). At roughly the same time, and generally more well known, the whole Trip-hop/Downtempo sound was rising to prominence thanks to the likes of Portishead and Massive Attack and others artists without whom an entire generation of “lo-fi chill relaxation for studying” channels wouldn’t exist. As is often the case, practitioners of one genre incorporate bits of others into their existing repertoire, even if it doesn’t immediately seem like an obvious combination, and that was certainly the case here. As you’ve probably already guessed, there was some overlap between these trends, which simultaneous made no sense and all of the sense. They both drew from a lot of the same jazzy sources –I’ve even the phrase “Lounge” used as a name for both– but they did it to very contradictory ends. The Indie side of things tends to employ these musical tropes to a somewhat campy, almost silly effect; full of swirling mellotrons and gurgling analog synths and reverb-drenched guitar that evokes the mood of some 60s scifi flick. The Downtempo side of the equation, on the other hand, puts those lounge elements to work with a more sexy, seductive aim; employing looping drumbeats and pulsing bass lines to create the sleek, sophisticated atmosphere of the backroom of some fancy nightclub. Conjure up the mental image a guy in a homemade Gorn cosplay trying to look inconspicuous at a cocktail party and you can see why these two musical approaches shouldn’t work together, and somehow also see why it’s kind of awesome. A LOT of artists around the early 2000s stumbled into this sound for a track or two, but nobody ever seemed to assign a specific subgenre to it, which is too bad because I’ve always really liked it. Too slick for Indie, too kitsch for Chillout, and perfect for Mariska.

As I write this, Mariska’s most recent appearances have shown her rather exasperated and annoyed, but between her earlier appearances and what future readers will already know is coming, she’s normally a much more laid back and cheerful character. Mariska’s a bit silly and freewheeling, definitely taking herself and everything else a lot less seriously than Ichabod, so the sillier side of these musical selections obviously make sense. However, she’s also much more relaxed and laid back than Ichabod (when she isn’t panicking over losing a bunch of rich kids, anyway) so the chilled-out grooves of the Trip-hop side of things fits too. Heck, we’ve seen several signs that Mariska really likes to party, and the major precursor to this whole Trip-hop/Downtempo whatever was Ambient House: music specifically meant to be the relaxing come-down after a rave. I absolutely did not have that in mind when I first started putting Mariska’s playlist together, but not that I’ve realized the connection, I’m totally gonna ACT like it was on purpose.

But wait, when are we actually going to bring up any of the SONGS? I keep throwing all these genre names around, but I just admitted that the songs themselves fall into a grey area between the accepted boundaries of the terms, so how is anyone supposed to know what I’m talking about? …yeah, that’s a real problem. Let’s move on to the track list, shall we?

On the millennial indie pop side of things, the most heavily represented band is of Montreal, who have three tracks off the Sundlandic Twins album: brief instrumental “Knight Rider,” lyrical dissonance poster child “I Was Never Young,” and arguably their most famous songs “Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games” aka That Song From The Outback Steakhouse Commercials.  Contemporary indie darlings The Flaming Lips turn up twice with a pair of instrumentals: “Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)” off of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and “Space Bible with Volume Lumps” off the soundtrack to their film Christmas On Mars. And I just want to stop for a second and say that this paragraph is one of the most ridiculous and best jumbles on nonsense I’ve ever typed out. Knowing that this is the sort of word salad I put in my head on a regular basis explains a LOT about Far Out There, doesn’t it?

Other one-track wonders from the indie side of the equation include “Space Moth” by Stereolab, “Your Lucky Day In Hell” by eels, “Sugar” by April March, and “Working for Vacation” by Cibo Matto (Japanese artist quota OFFICIALLY MET!) There’s also “Gas House Gables” by Mixel Pixel, which is not only the most even split between the Indie/Trip-hop sides of this playlist, but just might be the single most obscure song I’ve put on any character soundtrack yet. The only reason I’VE even heard of them is because I saw them opening for of Montreal once, and I think they’d broken up a few months after that. This pick would absolutely be worth some hipster points if I weren’t fundamentally opposed to that sort of thing.

Flipping over to the Downtempo side, the only artist to show up more than once is Air, who contribute “Surfin’ On A Rocket” off of Talkie Walkie and “Sexy Boy” from Moon Patrol (and no, it’s not in any way related to Shawn Michaels). We’ve also got Hexstatic’s remix of Guitar Vader’s “Perfect Bird,” Lemon Jelly’s “Curse of La’zar,” and “Double Bass” off the first Gorillaz album. Of questionable placement here on the “Not Indie” portion of the blog post are “Submerciful” by chiptune artist Disasterpeace and “Some Things Come From Nothing” by Super Furry Animals, but these particular tracks fit even if the overall body of the artists’ work wouldn’t. Oh, and there’s also “Loose Joints” by dream pop pioneers This Mortal Coil, just to add some historical relevancy to this motley collection of songs.

But yeah, this really is one of my favorite of the Far Out There character soundtracks. There are other playlists with individual songs I like more, but I really love how this one flows together as a seamless piece of background music. All those looping, repetitive beats make stringing multiple songs together a LOT easier than when dealing with a random assortment of rock songs. I now understand the intoxicating power of club DJs!

(This may have been one of the best playlists to put together on iTunes, but it was one of the most frustrating yet to duplicate on YouTube. This whole early-2000s era is a weirdly difficult one to find videos from compared to the older stuff that’s had time to build communities of nostalgic preservationist types posting every little thing for historical purposes. A lot of stuff from that era was either posted officially at the dawn of YouTube, meaning no fans have felt the need to re-post it, even though the original is of terrible quality, OR it fell through the cracks and either never made it onto YouTube at all or did but got deleted, and either way it just isn’t nostalgic enough for any fanbase to put it up on their own. This has always been a problem with all the music video panels I try to help out on –there are SO MANY Girl Rock groups from the late 90s/early 00s that you just can’t find clips of online! – but this is the first time I’ve really been hit with it here. After a LOT of digging, I was able to track down decent clips of most of the songs, although the only way I could find of Montreal’s “Knight Rider” was as a soundtrack to a little time-lapse video test. Speaking of of Montreal, and THAT’S an awkward thing to write, I felt compelled to use the official Polyvinyl Records posting of the “Wraith Pinned to the Mist” video, since it’s a rare case of the official video being unrestricted… even though it’s roughly the roughly the same video quality as a potato. It’s just nice to have at least one or two real videos along with all the still photos. I would have liked to use the video from Air’s “Sexy Boy” but they cut out a good half of the song in that thing, which, obviously, it pretty dang frustrating. Oh, speaking of official videos, check out the clip for Hextatic’s “Perfect Bird.” From what I can tell, all that Astro Boy footage isn’t some fan AMV, that seems to be the actual official promotional clip! I just think that’s really neat. Far LESS neat is “Gas House Gables” by Mixel Pixel, the first song since some of those Japanese songs on Avatar’s playlist that just plain defeated me. Try as I might, I literally could not find ANY trace of the song outside of the YouTube Music posting, which is only accessible in the US and parts of Central and South America. Not even Canada can play this thing! On the one hand, it’s not that surprising. As I mentioned up above, Mixel Pixel weren’t very well known while they were active, but they’re also not old enough for any nostalgia hounds to rediscover them yet. So… um… I guess break out the VPNs if you wanna know what I’m talking about? Sorry, but it really is the best I can do in this case.)

Mariska's YouTube Playlist