I was a teenager riding a bicycle through a neighborhood, when I came across a yard sale. Heard that someone had died. Among their things was a tape of the Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack composed by Philip Glass. Bought it for a couple of bucks, and later that night was blown away by the music. I had heard nothing like it before - it made me shiver with awe and fear. It felt like the dead was reaching out through the sounds. A few years later I watched the film and had a vision of the monstrous beauty, this ancient swarming organism called humanity, of which I'm like a finger or toe, a leaf and flower. Hard to describe the influence this film has had on my view of the world, and what art can do to you - even now it gives me goose bumps remembering that aesthetic experience in my youth.
If you haven't already, I'd encourage you to check out some of Philip Glass's other soundtracks. One I like in particular is The Illusionist.
There's also a very short video game OST of a game called Splice [0], [1] that coincidentally I'm listening to right now which is very similar to Glass's music. My playcount on each of the tracks is literally over 1000, and my playcount on the first track is over 2000 (getting close to 2500 now) because once I didn't notice I had it on loop(1) rather than loop(all) for several days.
It's the only music I'm able to listen to when I have a mild migraine, although when the headache gets bad I require absolute silence.
It was pretty magical. This was 2003 (20 years ago then) in a massive soviet-era concert hall.
It was the first time it saw the film and the live aspect left me a lot of questions whether this is somehow a completely different experience from the actual film.
I've since watched it at home many times and the live-band aspect is obviously immense but the music was pretty close to the film.
I attended the press conference as well and one of his answers really struck me.
He was asked about how he composes film scores and his answer included something along the lines: "I only compose based on the script, I never watch any of the footage before the composition is finished."
I had a similiar experience watching Baraka as a young teen. It had felt like Humanity was some kind of mecanism propelling forward, and I was a tiny gear.
