Who can forget that indelible combination of image and sound from Blade Runner, as Vangelis's majestically forlorn synthesizer washes play over the initial wide-screen view of a dilapidated and dystopian Los Angeles? Or the repetitive, eerie bass throbs John Carpenter favored in his classic flicks from the late '70s and '80s?
Movie soundtracks often accrue iconic status regardless of the features they're tied to, but science fiction, with its wide-eyed futurism and flights of technological fancy, seems to bring out particularly memorable work from forward-thinking composers.
"[It's about] expansion of exploration, life, humanity, culture, known worlds, and the worlds we create," says Scot Porter, aka local electronic musician Vox Mod, when describing his fascination with sci-fi. Perhaps it's this clear understanding of the links between philosophy, sound, and vision that prompted the Northwest Film Forum to pick him as the inaugural artist for its new Puget Soundtracks series. The monthly event asks musicians from a variety of genres to perform brand-new original soundtracks, live in the theater, to accompany films of their choice (which won't always stick to science fiction).
Porter's clearly a student of the soundtrack form, citing everything from Geinoh Yamashirogumi's original Akira score to the underground techno compiled for 1995's cyberpunk romp Hackers. For this performance, Porter claims listeners can expect a more "beatless, cinematic approach" than a typical Vox Mod performance, "indicative of and inspired by the film and original soundtrack." Though he's trying to keep it a bit of a surprise, Porter says his choice of film is "by one of my animation heroes, Hayao Miyazaki." (Enterprising folks with access to Google may be able to discern the movie in question relatively easily.)
Puget Soundtracks, Porter says, is a "fantastic idea and [presents an] opportunity as a local musician," a new forum for musical expression doing double duty by presenting film favorites in a new light. In that vein, here are five suggestions for some classic sci-fi movies that could benefit from a soundtrack renovation.
The movie: The Matrix (1999)
The proposed composer: Special Request
While the original soundtrack to The Matrix sported a snazzy mix of industrial-tinged techno and meathead rock, with cuts from Rage Against the Machine rubbing up against Meat Beat Manifesto, I propose instead the crackerjack jungle revivalism of Special Request. Just watch the famous lobby scene while listening to "Soundboy Killer" and forever renounce the Propellerheads.
The movie: Zardoz (1974)
The proposed composer: Black Moth Super Rainbow
Lovers of bad film and classic Sean Connery alike remember this 1974 doozy, a product of a potentially irresponsible amount of hallucinogens on set and a legendarily low budget. There's no point in attempting to describe the plot; suffice it to say it involves Sean Connery in a red space-age man-diaper, a giant floating head, and the discovery of The Wizard of Oz. The movie never got the psychotropic soundtrack it deserved, for which I recommend the deliriously Munchkin-like electro-fantasies of Black Moth Super Rainbow.
The movie: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
The proposed composer: Logos
Here's a heretical idea: The cinematic masterpiece that is Stanley Kubrick's 2001 could have been improved by a better soundtrack. Sure, the "Blue Danube" sequence is canon, same with the apes throwing the bone in the air to "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and Ligeti's "Atmospheres" during the space-jump. But suppose these sequences were accompanied by a more literal, less metaphorically resonant soundscape, like the galactically spacious and dissolutely serene one conjured on Logos' 2013 release Cold Mission. Because in space, no one can hear your Strauss.
The movie: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
The proposed composer: Boards of Canada
A strange relic of post-WWII American cinema, The Day the Earth Stood Still tells the story of a pacifist alien with a big-ass robot best friend named Gort, who travels to Earth on a mission to prevent the human race from blowing itself to bits. As Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada proved with their end-times-evoking pseudo-concept-album Tomorrow's Harvest, they are the masters of melancholically evoking humanity's follies through wobbly synthesizers and down-tempo lushness.
The movie: Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
The proposed composer: Merzbow
The postindustrial fever dream Tetsuo: The Iron Man has long enthralled both fans of Cronenberg-ian body horror and armchair philosophers rhapsodizing about the emasculated post-globalized man. The endlessly harsh Benzedrine-feed of noise flowing from Japanese sound-pain auteur Merzbow for the past three-odd decades would be an ideal fit for the film's mecha-montage of brutality and nihilistic approach to storytelling. 
