Far Out There: Character Soundtracks - Maunu (Patreon)

531 Maunu is a character with pastel pink/blue hair and shades, a light suit and t-shirt combo straight off of Sonny Crockett, and the solid white skin of a Patrick Nagel character. If you don’t think she listens to 80s music, then ONE of us is doing something wrong. That said, even somebody who totally gets the decade right might get the entire feel of this soundtrack wrong. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that the whole root of Maunu’s character came from marathoning a big ol’ chunk of Miami Vice and realizing it was a much gloomier show than our present-day nostalgia for all things 80s had led me to expect. That’s not jut a matter of how many episodes end of a downer story-wise, but also how somber and ominous much of the soundtrack is. Sure, Jan Hammer’s title theme is all bright and fast and energetic, but if you’re anything like me, any time somebody says “Miami Vice music” you immediately think of “In The Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. Yes, the song existed for a few years before the show, but Pop Culture has decided that it permanently exists as the score to a tense late night drive right before something dangerous goes down. That one song is basically what I wanted Maunu’s entire soundtrack to be: slick and electronic, but still moody and foreboding and tension filled until That One Drum Break™ explodes in and brings everything to a climax. It’s the whole reason why Maunu is so mopey and melodramatic all the time, because that’s the kind of activity this music is designed to accompany. So let's get into it.

Well, there is one other thing worth mentioning right off the bat. Close to half the tracks on Maunu’s soundtrack aren’t actually vintage 80s selections, but comparatively modern revivalist works. And that’s not just me talking about all the recent “OMG Retro Nostalgia” cash-ins of late, either. Even back before it was cool, there was already a fairly well-populated New Wave/Synth 80s revival scene out there, operating in roughly the same fashion as all those 60s reenactment bands I’ve mentioned in previous blogs. And if you actually remember anything about those blogs, you’ll recall the paradox of modern artists who exclusively recreate the clichés of a genre somehow not sounding anything like the original works of that genre. That’s very much on display in Maunu’s soundtrack, where my attempt to work out an even flow from vintage New Wave and Electronic Instrumentals into more recent Synthwave revivalist songs turned out to be REALLY hard. For all their neon and teased hair and cool shades, a lot of modern Synthwave is WAAAAY more hard-hitting and minimalist than the works of Harold Faltermeyer or Jan Hammer that allegedly inspired them. Of course, that’s just the thing: Harold Faltermeyer wasn’t trying to “sound like Harold Faltermeyer” when he wrote “Axel F,” he was fusing his background of studying classical organ and producing Donna Summer albums and playing keyboards in a bar band. As a result, a lot of the actual vintage 80s tracks I’d had under consideration for this soundtrack got dropped because they “didn’t sound 80s enough” when played next to the modern Synthwave stuff. Music is weird sometimes. (Case in point, for as much as I just talked about it, “Axel F” isn't even on this soundtrack)

But let’s get into the music, starting off with the afore mentioned modern Synthwave stuff. I think the best jumping off point is “Broken Dreams” by Nightcrawler. Musically, “Broken Dreams” is already a fine template for the sound of this soundtrack as a whole, a brooding minor-key melody obviously inspired by Brad Fiedel’s soundtrack to The Terminator or any John Carpenter scores. The really kicker, however, is the vocals, when are sampled off of Jimmy Ruffin’s Motown hit “What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted.” Over the years, I’ve become more and more cynical of modern artist’s attempts to “reimagine” old words (if you aren’t clever enough to come up with something original, what makes you think you’re clever enough to improve on what somebody else did?) but “Broken Dreams” actually manages to do a really solid job of recontextualizing the older song’s lyrics into a whole new sound. It helps that, for as different as the two songs are musically, the depressive lyrics honestly work just as well in a futuristic Neo Noir setting as they do in the lushly orchestrated Motown original. What’s more, the relentlessly downcast Maunu would absolutely identify with a song so ponderously up it’s own butt about loneliness and abandonment.

Beyond “Broken Dreams,” the rest of the modern Synthwave tracks kind of blur together, which is probably somewhat by designs, seeing as how heavily the genre is influenced by film soundtracks. Case in point, Protector 101 contributes two tracks off the L.A. Cop Duo ep: “A Remembered Friend” and “Good Cop.” Everything about this ep wants you to think it’s the soundtrack to one of the roughly 7,000 buddy cop movies to come out during the late 80s, and as such they work more as tone-setting transitional pieces than stand out tracks of their own. Similarly transitional is “The Seduction” by Multipac, aka MPM Soundtracks. I mean, it’s right there in the name! (well, one of the names, I’m not entirely sure which one is the artist’s current alias) Much more distinctive is the aptly titled “Victory Theme” by MYRONE, which tops off all the synths with a rockin’ lead guitar straight out of a Top Gun rip-off.

To transition into “the vintage stuff,” and continuing on the theme of guitar heroics, we have a pair of instrumentals that are of the same era as the more obvious New Wave tracks to come, but originate from the significantly less him New Age/Contemporary Instrumental genre. Anybody who actually went and listened to Sophia’s soundtrack will know what I’m talking about, that Weather Chanel/Elevator Music kind Smooth Jazz that now days gets only gets heard when it’s chopped up and used for Vaporwave samples. But in another example of what I was saying about actually 80s music sounding a lot different than what the revivalist acts would have you believe, this Contemporary Instrumental sound was a pretty big part of film soundtracks of the day. For example, take “Stormlight” by David Lanz & Paul Speer. While ostensibly a musical ode of Yuppie New Age naturist mysticism (the album’s called Desert Rain, for crying out loud), you cannot listen to this song and tell me you couldn’t hear the Hair Metal guitar riff and ominous synth soundscapes and NOT imagine some on the edge wild card cop who doesn’t play by the rules but gets results sneaking into some dramatically-lit warehouse to bust some drug traffickers or something. Even better is “The Passenger” by Peter Maunu, which is tailor made to be the training montage right before the climactic third-act fight scene in some martial arts-tinged flick. And before you ask, yes: nitpicker character 531 Maunu is indeed named after session guitarist Peter Maunu, which I do believe is the first time a character with a musically-inspired name has actually had that musician on their soundtrack (seeing as how there’s no Derek & The Dominos on Layla’s soundtrack).

And that brings us to the real meat of Maunu’s soundtrack, the ACTUAL 80s synth songs. The music that’s really from Miami Vice and the many movies and shows it inspired. This is where most of the vocal tracks on this soundtrack come from, I’m gonna save those for after I get through the instrumental tracks. The afore-mentioned Miami Vice provides us with “Crockett’s Return” by Jan Hammer, and no, I’m not using the show’s actual theme. And speaking of Miami Vice, the closest thing we got to a film of the original series, Manhunter, is also represented by the atmospheric “Lector’s Cell” by The Red (in case that name sounds familiar, Manhunter is technically the prequel to Silence of the Lambs, but the key to enjoying Manhunter is making sure you never think of it as “A Hannibal Lector Movie” ‘cos it ain’t). On the less moody side, we have our token Japanese entry on the soundtrack: “Focus” by Yellow Magic Orchestra. Actually, I need to specify that it’s the instrumental version of “Focus,” as the album Naughty Boys was released both Vocal and Instrumental versions. As a point of order, I also want to mention that I really WANTED to include a snippet of Joe Hisaishi’s score to the “Nightmare” sequence in Robot Carnival somewhere on Maunu’s soundtrack, but apparently the snippet I like so much doesn’t exist as a standalone composition, only as one part of a much larger suite. Boo.

Now, on to the vocal tracks. There’s no way I could get away with doing a soundtrack like this without kicking it off with “In The Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. Even setting the pop cultural associations aside, this song is remembered the way it is for a reason. Between the ever-mounting tension of the music and the ambiguously sad and angry lyrics, it really is the perfect musical introduction to Maunu. What’s more, as I’m mentioned elsewhere, the “531” in Maunu’s full name isn’t just some random futuristic detail, I stuck it in as a reference to “In The Air Tonight” because it’s the song’s run time… or at least it is on the copy I’VE got. In double-checking the details later, I discovered that the official length of the song is either 5:34 or 4:59, depending on whether you’re talking about the album or single edit. Either way, my copy is apparently some weird Greatest Hits version with a bit of the fade out chopped off, so now that number really IS just random… which is still pretty on brand of me, to be honest.

Collins actually appears twice on this soundtrack, with a second song that ALSO appeared on Miami Vice: “Long Long Way To Go.” That song sounds so much like “In The Air Tonight” that it’s honestly a pretty good thing they were released two albums apart, or people would have been screaming rip-off. Continuing with the Miami Vice connections, Russ Ballard provides the track “Voices,” which is honestly one of the livelier tunes here, even if it is essentially about mental illness. Next up, we have a song that I’d originally included because it sounded like it SHOULD have been on Miami Vice, only to discover later on that it actually WAS on the show and I’d just not noticed: “Lunatic Fringe” by Red Rider. Again, a tense, moody, atmospheric track that really sounds like it was intended to accompany visuals rather than stand on its own. And because I apparently can’t talk about anything from Miami Vice without also talking about Manhunter, we also have “Strong As I Am” by The Prime Movers. But hey, better I talk about the song being in Manhunter than citing the OTHER movie it was used in: Abraxas staring Jesse Ventura.

Finally, we have the one song here that really ACTUALLY wasn’t on Miami Vice (or Manhunter) despite totally sounding like it should have: “Twilight Zone” by Golden Earring. Despite being one of the best-known tracks here, and despite its paranoid espionage-themed lyrics being REALLY well suited for a show so focused on the stress of undercover police work, (and even despite being one of the first generation of MTV-powered music video hits) somehow the show never managed to use “Twilight Zone” anyplace. Well, at least I’M around to right this wrong.

And just to try and tie everything together, the afore mentioned paranoia makes “Twilight Zone” another really great choice for Maunu’s soundtrack. She’s so pessimistic and self-pitying and melodramatic that she probably DOES equate not having much of a social life due to her work with fearing execution for being a spy. Or, at the very least, she’d SAY she did until everybody else was sick of hearing it.

(This was a bit of an odd one to put together; not difficult, just odd. For one thing, a lot of these modern Vaporwave acts exist in this sort of limbo between “professional musician” and “amateur side project,” so it’s often a bit difficult to tell what’s actually an official post and what’s a fan post, or if there’s even a difference. I tried to avoid posts that were van videos full of 80s movie clips, but in a few places is was unavoidable. On the flip side, there WERE a few instances where I was tempted to embrace the spirit of the MTV era and use actual music videos, or even Miami Vice clips, but they inevitably edited out chunks of the song to same on runtime. But speaking of editing things, somehow the version of “Lector’s Cell” included on this YouTube playlist is actually a full minute LONGER than the copy I’ve got. It’s not padded out with movie audio, and it doesn’t sound like it’s just looping anything. Apparently this random YouTuber just managed to get his hands on a version of the Manhunter soundtrack with more music on it than the one got. Music is weird. And speaking of YouTube making music weird, I wound up having to pull a VERY last minute change while putting the playlist together. For the longest time, the two Protector 101 tracks on Maunu’s playlist were “Good Cop” and “Bad Cop,” only for me to discover that “Bad Cop” apparently doesn’t exist on YouTube anywhere. The whole L.A. Cop Duo ep doesn’t seem to be on the official Protector 101 channel, and fan posts seem to just skip that track. So I swapped it out for “A Remembered Friend,” which is honestly a better pick musically since it’s closer to being an actual SONG instead of just ambient synth noise. But still, I miss the thematic unity of those two titles kinda-sorta-bookmarking this playlist. Why you gotta make things so hard, internet?

Oh, and speaking making things hard, I planned on cropping out a picture of Maunu from one of the Christmas pages to use as the header image for this… but didn’t like how it turned out, so I wound up pulling up the original line art for the page in question and completely recolored this brand new image. Because who says I have a time management problem?)

Maunu's YouTube Playlist