Various Artists: T2 Trainspotting: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Polydor)

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T2 Trainspotting reunites the horribly duplicitous skag-addicted non-heroes of the first movie about twenty-somethings trying to get off heroin in Edinburgh, and finding that they have nothing very much to put in its place. In that film, audiences often hid their under the seats, unable to watch scenes about dead babies and diving into gruesome lavatories. Now it’s the sight of desolate men’s faces that made me want to look away: stunned by the realisation that their lives are coming to an end.

But despite the subject matter, history has been good to everyone concerned with that first film and everyone concerned has found it to be some kind of launch pad for their careers – from the cult writer of the novel Irvine Welsh to director Danny Boyle (also Shallow Grave, The Beach) to Ewen McGregor (who got his first major recognition from this film), to the wonderfully menacing Robert Carlyle (Begbie) to the bands that appear on the soundtrack.

It’s hard to separate the original film from the soundtrack and from the legend that both became.  Even if you cringed at the films – and there were many moments – you most likely had the soundtrack in your collection.  Next to Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs it was a ‘must have!’  Check the back of your glovebox, I bet a copy of the CD is still there.  The film’s OST was probably one of the very few collections to be completely ‘All killa – no ‘firkin’ filla” – as our old mate Begbie might say.  It was a set that totally summed up music in the UK and in club culture during the latter part of the 1990’s and for me, it was a slice of my generation (although I never tool the drugs, it was definitely my own personal soundtrack).

Even Sleeper’s remake of Blondie’s Atomic was brilliant, perhaps even enhanced by the nightclub scene and the use of subtitles to emphasise how bloody difficult communicating in a disco really can be.  And, of course, who could forget the reinjection of blood into Iggy Pop’s career, thanks to the overwhelming success of his Lust For Life.  Even the decidedly average Underworld were saved from the sale bins because of Born Slippy, which went on to be their template for future works and coined the catch cry (‘Lager/Lager/Lager’) from pub sing-a-longs to Ibiza and back again.  More than anything else the Trainspotting OST took rave culture into the mainstream.

“Nostalgia: that’s why you’re here. You’re a tourist in your own youth,” announces Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) midway through T2 Trainspotting, lashing out at his estranged mate Rent Boy Renton (Ewan McGregor) and bemoaning the last two grim decades of his life since the gang’s heyday in 1999.  He thinks back on their wasted youth identities as drugged up nihilists, wasters and grifters, and residents of Irvine Welsh’s particularly grim trashcan view of 1990’s Scotland.  T2’s central premise comes from the original Trainspotting movie, attempting to modernise it and to look at what has become of a group that should never of made it to the future.  Like the T2 film, many of the original artists and their friends have also found their way into the future to provide for this sound track.  And it’s a fitting reunion.  The music follows suit.

Underworld opens this OST with Slow Slippy, a revisit of the original Born Slippy, slowed down, perhaps as a nod to the retardation of our characters caused by the ravages of time and substances.  The trademark ‘Lager, Lager, Lager, Lager” war cry is replaced by gentle, sunrise synths – perhaps a morning after reference to the pensive homecoming themes in the film.  Iggy’s Lust for Life, which opened the first flick, accompanied by Renton’s famous ‘choose life’ speech and television larceny sprint, gets a gnarled remix from the Prodigy.  They are the perfect on screen characters to remake this one.  Punky, 19990’s digital bovver boys they slice up a peppy group yelp between Mr Pop’s vocals and though the scuzzy synth thrum tapers off into a back alley somewhere to ‘coke out’, I expect.

Underworld’s Rick Smith, T2’s main incidental music composer and the soundtrack’s curator, throws in his own offering: Eventually But (Spud’s Letter to Gail), which is a lovely, glacial runoff of an ambient ballad that folds in some of the sombre dialogue from the film’s more poignant moments.  It’s a little like the diatribes that appear in the other great soundtrack of the 1990’s Pulp Fiction – but more intergraded.  Blondie returns, almost as a character (given their song Atomic (covered by Sleeper) was so loud in the first film’s nightclub scene that it had its own cameo.  But this time the straight version of Dreaming is nothing special.  In the film it no doubt sits we amongst the action but unlike Atomic, it’s just a dated 80’s tune, discarded from the jukebox and added to boost sales. You may wonder what happened to Lou Reed’s Perfect Day.  That one gets a piano reprise in the T2 film, although it’s not included here.

You may also remember being in awe and simultaneously grossed out to Renton’s fantasy swim through the waters of the “worst toilet in Scotland” accompanied by Brian Eno’s trippy piece Deep Blue Bay.  T2 has its own hauntingly beautiful Silk by indie rockers Wolf Alice.  And in other scenes there’s still enough manic, drugged up energy in Whitest Boy On The Beach (Fat White Family).  It’s most likely the best song to be in line with the original film’s soundtrack agenda.  If there was a sell out, then it has to be Queen’s atrocious Radio Ga Ga, which is always a cheap camp shot for any movie scene.  The music directors of this movie have really taken the record company bribe on this one and not bothered to search for better choices.  But having not seen the film yet I hold my full judgement in reserve – hopefully the music really does fit the scene.  We will tell in time.

The addition of Cockney Rappers Young Fathers here is a nice touch – a subliminal message about balancing the art of growing old disgracefully with the gentle art of maintaining your adult responsibilities.  They get three songs, three social comments on living in the decade of Brexit and Trump:  Get Up (A neuw-dad rocker), God Only Knows (about responsibly) and Rain or Shine (also about responsibility).

Hip-hop is absent from the first film but is likely to work well in T2, given its current proliferation in the UK.  Apparently, it colours the scene where Renton reunites with Begbie – an appropriately violent encounter.  Welsh drum’n’bass DJ High Contrast whip up a fatalistic film opener in Shotgun Mouthwash, which is clearly a different direction than the first film.

So, does the T2 OST live up to the legend of the first (or even the second edition Trainspotting #2 – more songs)?  Will this be another seminal stand alone and together collection? Mmm.  Hard to tell until I see the film.  But as a curated work, it does seem a little underwhelming – especially since two of the tracks (Queen and Blondie already sit in my collection – filed under 80’s party time).  While the album itself is an enjoyable listen, I wonder if it will ever be as epic as the first.  I think not, partly because in this day and age of digital downloads there’s no need to purchase a set like this outright.  You can pick off the favourites and leave the rest.  Why pay twice for Queen, for instance?  And since the songs are individual elements you can switch the order and change the feeling and meaning of each song and its impact on the next as you go, at will – all diminishing the curatorial value.  Finally, the first soundtrack was surprising.  I don’t think that magic can ever be recreated but as it stands, this collection is a good summary and it won’t put me off going to see the film.

Tim Gruar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKaapCcMjYI

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