{"id":140126,"date":"2025-06-19T12:21:01","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T16:21:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panm360.com\/records\/fragments-delta-city-pyramid-records-france-electro-cinema-robocop-verhoeven-benjamin-le-baron-tom-beaudoin-antoine-gandon\/"},"modified":"2025-06-19T12:32:30","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T16:32:30","slug":"fragments-delta-city-pyramid-records-france-electro-cinema-robocop-verhoeven-benjamin-le-baron-tom-beaudoin-antoine-gandon","status":"publish","type":"records","link":"https:\/\/panm360.com\/en\/records\/fragments-delta-city-pyramid-records-france-electro-cinema-robocop-verhoeven-benjamin-le-baron-tom-beaudoin-antoine-gandon\/","title":{"rendered":"Fragments – Delta City"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The movie Robocop <\/em>(Paul Verhoeven’s, in 1987, the original) is for me and many film fans an absolute masterpiece of ultra-violent, and above all deserved, social and political criticism of the Reaganian United States. The warning signs have apparently not been heeded, as the same country, under Trump, seems to be heading even more resolutely in the direction envisaged by the film. That said, the French trio Fragments, made up of Benjamin Le Baron (keyboards, machines), Tom Beaudouin (guitar, synths) and Antoine Gandon (drums, machines) have come up with the idea of reconstructing a whole new soundtrack and playing it on stage in front of the film projection. A cin\u00e9-concert reinvented, in other words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s be clear about this: nothing will replace the perfect symbiosis between the film and the original music written by Basil Poledouris, a jewel of an electro-symphonic mixture, even before it became fashionable. Poledouris’ themes, and above all his mastery of textural contrasts, which he optimises through the possibilities of symphonic ensemble and synthetic lutherie, paint an incomparable visual, emotional and psychological portrait of this award-winning cinematic work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I haven’t seen the film-concert in question with this new music. I’d like to do so in order to reach a more informed opinion. But having seen the film several times, I can imagine this new embrace between the iconic images and the music offered here by Fragments, and I’m guessing a fine aesthetic achievement. Not least because the music itself is excellent. The very 80s synth \u2018colour\u2019 is uniformly applied, and seems to be a perfect conceptual match with the period visited by the script. Which can be a problem, but later on that. The rhythms and melodies form a catchy, sometimes haunting, narrative. A little something of Tron<\/em>\/Wendy Carlos comes through, and that’s not bad at all. In short, Delta City <\/em>is an excellent purely musical composition, and probably a memorable marker in this renewed Robocop <\/em>offering. I’m the first to applaud re-readings of existing works. Art is alive. To immobilise creations in a fixed posture by refusing or denigrating re-appropriations, as certain purists do, is to condemn these jewels to gathering dust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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