Tekkonkinkreet and Plaid

Notes for The Barbican by Michael Arias

Music will be a very important aspect of Tekkonkinkreet, adding weight to exposition and momentum to action, but also underscoring the larger themes of the film. For Tekkon’s first act, the music should have an analog, old-world feel, to complement the nostalgic ambience of the Treasure Town we see in the opening scenes: the yakuza underworld, the street urchins’ hand-to-mouth existence, the multi-ethnic/multi-cultural potpourri of Treasure Town’s streets and various factions and tribes. As we move into the second act—Snake’s act—old world analog will give way to newer, alien, synthetic forms: minimalist breakbeats and dissonant post-techno sounds. When the action picks up and we descend into White’s and Black’s respective madness, the music will drive us forward with increasingly rhythmic trance-like elements. As the film’s various conflicts are resolved, and balance between opposing forces achieved, an altogether new type of music—a soothing and harmonious hybrid combining elements of the old and the new forms—will take over. This music will echo fragments heard over White’s dreams of ocean paradise and apple trees.

— Tekkonkinkreet Director’s Notes, January 26, 2004

This grandiose prose was the first of many directorial dispatches to Andy and Ed (together, Plaid). But Plaid’s music was part of Tekkonkinkreet long before they were officially involved in, or even aware of, this project. In 1998, I was in Tokyo leading a small, handpicked team of artists in developing a screen version of Tekkon, when the young carpenter building our office furniture (yes, really) handed me a pair of tickets to a local Plaid gig and a copy of Plaid’s first full-length effort, Not For Threes. And, though eventually this seminal incarnation of Tekkon fell apart, and our little pilot crew disbanded, Plaid’s music embedded itself in me and insinuated itself deep into the fabric of Tekkonkinkreet. Plaid’s creations—dynamic, cinematic, oscillating beguilingly between moody and whimsical extremes, always wonderfully evocative—these were the de facto soundtrack for Tekkon, from the beginning (even while the prospects of ever getting the movie green-lit seemed dauntingly dim). So, years later, when Tekkon was finally reconstituted, it was only natural that I cold-called Plaid and begged them to score my movie.

It’s rare to begin work with composers until late in the filmmaking—music is so often an afterthought! But having early input from Andy and Ed really helped give voice to the story’s characters and themes, when our visuals were still in a very raw fœtal state and the only other concrete reference I had for animators and artists was Taiyo Matsumoto’s manga original itself. Indeed, when it finally came time to record voices for Tekkon, the two things I always carried into the vocal booth for discussions with actors were my copy of the manga (dog-eared and bristling with post-its) and my iPod (replete with Plaid’s back catalogue and work in progress for Tekkon).

Music speaks to our emotions (Kahlil Gibran rightly called it “the language of the spirit”). Deployed in the service of the filmmaker, music can create or amplify, even subvert, shifts in mood and ambience; music can reveal a film’s subtexts, illuminate hidden contours; and—less subtly—music can deliver a punch to the gut if that’s what’s called for. Music can yank at our viscera, well beyond the reach of words and images. Plaid’s Tekkonkinkreet (their first film score ever, by the way) does all that, and so much more: It fills in the spaces between the pixels, adds fire to the drama, and brings Treasure Town to life.

Michael Arias, October 4, 2013, Tokyo

Life in Treasure Town can be both peaceful and violent. This is never truer than for our heroes, Black and White, two symbiotic street urchins who watch over the decaying metropolis, wrestle their own internal demons, and do battle with the cops, old-world yakuza mobsters, and an extraterrestrial real-estate tycoon and his murderous flying henchmen, all vying for dominion over Treasure Town’s ramshackle streets. Tekkonkinkreet is a humanist fable—a story of contrasts, brotherhood, and the redemptive power of love.