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Comments about the Soundtracks (with emphasis on Moroder's)

There are many different soundtracks for Metropolis:

1. The original soundtrack made in 1927 by Gottfried Huppertz;
2. By Giorgio Moroder (see further comments bellow), for his own 1984 re-release;
3. By Galeshka Moravioff, used in one of the variants of Filmmuseum Munich restoration;
4. By Martin Matalon, used in another variant of Filmmuseum Munich restoration (see note);
5. By the Club Foot Orchestra. So far as we know, there is not a video release which uses this soundtrack; They use the 80-minute Moroder version when they perform. You may buy their CD and hear to it while you see Moroder's version (with its sound turned off);
6. By After Quartet. They use the 80-minute Moroder version when they perform. Their CD was to be lauched on May 2000;
7. By Joxan Goikoetxea, a Basque musician;
8. By Dan Schaaf;
9. By Mute Life dept., a Portuguese group, for the Filmmuseum Munich version, for live performance at 'Porto 2001';
10. By Jeff Mills (available in a CD produced by Tresor);
11. By Peter Osborne, for JEF/Eureka current 139-minute B&W version;
12. The somewhat homogeneous instrumental music of JEF's "first" 139-minute B&W version;
13. The instrumental/wordless vocal soundtrack of the 90-minute B&W version as once released by Kino International;
14. The piano soundtrack of the Japanese release of the 90-minute B&W version;
15. Music played live by the Alloy Orchestra (see note);
16. This site suggests playing the album "Kid A" by Radiohead along with the film.

(you may want to see Covers of released VHS, Laserdisc and DVD versions)
As we already said in the main page, Giorgio Moroder's soundtrack was by far the best we have ever heard - the music is very beautiful alone, and it's a perfect match to the movie's scenes.

My personal opinion about some of the other soundtracks:

1. The Club Foot Orchestra's is also a good one. The fact that it does not have any lyrics can be considered either as a positive or as a negative aspect;
2. The soundtrack of the 139-minute version, combined with the slow-speed of that version, makes the movie sleepy;
3. The soundtrack of the 90-minute version makes the movie somewhat depressive, and sometimes looks like as a soundtrack of an horror movie, while sometimes look like the soundtrack of a Tarzan episode;
4. The soundtrack of the Japanese version of the 90-minute version is not properly a soundtrack. There is just a piano being played at the background, with no relation to any music scene.

Some comments about Moroder's soundtrack:

Moroder's soundtrack is available in CD. The problem with it is that it is very different from the soundtrack as it actually appears on the movie. For example, "Love Kills" sounds much better in the CD (in the movie it is played briefly), but "Here's My Heart" sounds much livelier in the movie, where it has two different versions.

Even more important, some very good (and important) themes that appear in the movie (there are more than 15 independent themes, plus variations) are not in the 10-track CD (and this was not because of the CD available space). Three examples: the theme heard when the "Garden of Pleasures" is shown; the theme heard when Rotwang is fighting Maria; and this theme:

So what did I do? I copied the soundtrack from a stereo video to a minidisc. In the minidisc I was able to divide Moroder's soundtrack in more than 60 tracks (!) giving a name to each one - "City Sounds", "Josaphat is dismissed", and so on.

The soundtrack as heard from the VHS tape and from the LD is not exactly the same! When  heard the soundtrack from the Vestron Laserdisc release, we were surprised: it's mixing was different (sometimes very different!) from the mixing of the Roadshow tape we had bought in Australia. Some instruments appear in one mixing but not in the other...

In general, we prefered the soundtrack from the VHS tape, because it sounded richer and more natural. In the tape music seems to be produced by an orchestra; in the Laser Disc many sounds seemed too "synthesized", too artificial. Now we wonder if there are just two mixings of the soundtrack (not counting the third mixing used for the tracks that appear in the CD) or if there are more...

In Moroder's version, there is just one music by Freddie Mercury, vocalist of Queen. This music plays during less than 2 minutes in the entire movie. Queen's clip for the music "Radio Ga Ga" uses many Metropolis's scenes, but Queen does not play music in Moroder's version and "Radio Ga Ga" is not part of the soundtrack.

CD with the "original" soundtrack of the Moroder version		CD with the alternative soundtrack by the Club Foot Orchestra

Bellow we listed the tracks that appear on Moroder Soundtrack's CD.

1	LOVE KILLS	Freddie Mercury
2	HERE'S MY HEART	Pat Benatar
3	CAGE OF FREEDOM	Jon Anderson
4	BLOOD FROM A STONE	Cycle V
5	THE LEGEND OF BABEL	Giorgio Moroder
6	HERE SHE COMES	Bonnie Tyler
7	DESTRUCTION	Loverboy
8	ON YOUR OWN	Billy Squier
9	WHAT'S GOING ON	Adam Ant
10	MACHINES	Giorgio Moroder

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