Ready to return to “Sin City?” Varèse Sarabande is readying a new expanded CD and digital edition of the original motion picture soundtrack to Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s neo-noir “Sin City,” along with the first-ever vinyl release of the soundtrack.
The album features music by Rodriguez, John Debney and Graeme Revell, who each scored the three different chapters in the hyper-stylized comic book adaptation. You can pre-order now, with the vinyl arriving on March 27 as a regular “blood red” translucent pressing, with limited edition variants available from Barnes & Noble, Mondo and Enjoy the Ride. A deluxe expanded edition of the score, with the complete original score cues by Rodriguez, Revell and Debney, along with new liner notes, will arrive on CD and make its streaming premiere (wherever you stream your music) on April 24.
If you never saw “Sin City,” it was truly unlike anything at the time, utilizing cutting edge “virtual production” methods to put its eccentric cast of hard-boiled characters (essayed by Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Benicio del Toro, Clive Owen and Rosario Dawson, among many others) into the world of Miller’s iconic black-and-white comic book series. Miller and Rodriguez were joined by “special guest director” Quentin Tarantino for single scene. It was the first – and last – time that he used digital cameras.
“’Sin City’s’ visuals are as important as the story,” Rodriguez said in an official statement. “That’s what you fall in love with. This would be the first time you’d see Frank Miller’s art move, and that’s what I pitched to him.”
According to Varèse Sarabande, the directors created a singular world “where rock and roll could co-exist with pulsating synths, seething guitars, erotic Spanish percussion and a lush symphony, all dancing and shooting it out to Rodriguez’s atmospheric melodies and expressionism.”
“What I loved about ‘Sin City’ was that its noir is post-modern and punk rock. I thought the sound needed to take chances like that too,” Rodriguez added.
“Sin City” incorporated three stories from the comic books—“The Hard Goodbye,” “The Big Fat Kill” and “That Yellow Bastard”—with each composer working on a different section, with each given just two weeks to complete their part. Rodriguez handled “That Yellow Bastard” himself, with Revell taking on “The Hard Goodbye” and Debney doing “The Big Fat Kill.”
“Robert really wanted this to be uncolored and unfinished, which is where Graeme and I came in,” Debney said in a statement. “That we’re in black and white so much of the time, and then there’s splashes of red, yellow and white, was visually musical. It’s that look which dictated what came out of our souls. At first, I wondered how this was all going to work. In hindsight, that was the brilliance of Robert, because he wanted individual ideas. What came out was just spectacular.”
The film was a big hit at the box office and spawned a single, long overdue sequel (“Sin City: A Dame to Kill For”) many years later.
And if you want the full “Sin City” sonic package, it’s best to go with the two-CD set. “The first disc collects the original score as heard in Varèse’s initial 2005 release,” while the second disc “presents a remastered, complete presentation of the original score cues by Rodriguez, Revell and Debney that expands the atmosphere-drenched, grittily evocative soundscape of the directors’ modern noir classic.”
The new liner notes feature exclusive interviews with Rodriguez and his other composers detailing “the unique creative process that resulted in a blazingly distinctive noir soundtrack.”
“’Sin City’ remains one of my favorite scores because I’ve always wanted to do something film noir,” Rodriguez shared. “It was a game changer because it had geek-centric DNA. No film noir had an opening like this because ‘Sin City’ had a comic culture behind it. We were being faithful to something that was visually striking in a medium that few other people were using.”
Sounds like a soundtrack to kill for.
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