Three Ages

A(nother) weird experiment by Jeff Mills, tampering with 'Three Ages', a 1923 silent comedy by Buster Keaton (his first production) and Eddie Cline. The movie follows a simple yet sufficient theme. Keaton tries to win his beloved one from co-star Wallace Beery in three different timelines: in the Stone Age, classical Rome and the Modern Age (the '20s that is). The film besides being funny also gets quirky (in a good way), with all that jumping through the different eras and developing the stories in parallel; you have to like silent films, though.
The release included a CD with the OST and a DVD with a restored version of the original, a Mills interview and some thematic video remixes he did himself on certain film scenes, using a CDJ1000 as controller (there's also a 'making of' on that).

The music is rather typical Mills; techno and atmos, yet obviously less fierce or dark than most of his similar works (say, 'Metropolis'). For fans of hardcore techno it could even get indifferent at times, yet I understand that he willingly understated the weird and groovy percussive elements that make his tracks what they are, focusing more instead on creating a score, a soundtrack for the film, with themes and motifs and all. And the film is more or less comical, so the music is more or less non-industrial, even bright at times. On the other hand it's still Mills we're talking about, so there are good club trax; the Roman theme is definitely wonderful.

I wish you'd watch the film first, then come back to the CD, but connection problems are frequent lately here and I cannot post something so big yet. Hopefully in the near future there will be a repost, I'll let you know.

Jeff Mills - 2004 Three Ages OST
Info here.