Kate Simko – Music from The Atom Smashers
Ghostly International (4/21/09)
Electronic / Ambient
Kate Simko’s Music from The Atom Smashers was created as the soundtrack for the PBS documentary which carries the same title. The film follows physicists working at Fermilab (a government laboratory in the Chicago area, from where Simko also hails), who focus on particle physics, smashing matter together; accelerating protons and anti-protons at rates comparable to the speed of light, to discover the reason why everything has mass. As the research continues, the physicists discover that their funding is being cut, and that scientists in Europe are coming close to solving the mystery of matter. So, it becomes a race against time, and politics. Unfortunately, this is where the interesting part ends…
The album is designed to follow the story, track by track—each song explains and emphasizes the situations at hand, but falls completely short of anything other then the back-up tunes to a PBS documentary. The entire album sounds extremely under-produced, as the slight crackle that follows the listener throughout the album may be subtly at first, but becomes very apparent and distracting by the sixth track. I’m hoping this was intentional, though it just ends up sounding cheap, like my ninth-grade brother put it together in his bedroom after watching a marathon of old Twilight Zone episodes.
As you take the journey through Fermilab, and into the “Control Room” (track two), your ears are filled with the beeps and buzzings of robotic machinery, and as the tempo picks up, this is what I am sure the cockpit of an airplane sounds like before lift off. I get it, it’s sciencey and technical, but it all just lacks the guts of being anything spectacular, let alone good. I kept telling myself that I am hearing this album out of context, as I don’t have the visual of the film in front of me, that hopefully correlates with the music to help portray the story. So maybe I should cut Simko some slack and just let the music tell its own story, but it could not have gone more in the opposite direction.
For a moment things were looking up with the track, “The Creative Part”, which is probably one of the better songs off the album. Simko’s classical piano training shines through the brightest on this track, making it smooth and setting it apart from the others that try, but seem to be broken with interjections of discordance.
Remember to think “science documentary.” But even with that in mind, it is still hard to really wrap your head around this album when all you keep hearing is basic ambient sounds. Simko’s more notable traits can be heard on the exceptional “God Particle”, as the deep bass grooves give for something different, making it a track that could be taken away from the idea of the album and used separately as a club track. It moves a bit darker, with a beat that slowly integrates into layers of simple synth notes and funky drum-and-bass beats that compliment each other by letting each one have their moment—it’s not overpowering and not reserved. This is more characteristic of Simko’s established sound, and something that would have been nice to see a little more of in this score.
Overall, there are tracks that could be worth something if she just tweaked them, making the album flow—that is one of the biggest problems she runs into. Simko has a very simple feel to her music, but she knows how to be dark (She Said EP – “Soltera”), and also drive the tune with quick drum beats and smooth synth (Margie’s Groove). It’s nice to hear the interjections of the classical piano on this score, but it can’t make up for the overall feeling of doldrums that album tends to carry. It would work really well as the background music for a day spa, modern hotel in L.A., a new-age shop or maybe even a laser light show, if I was extremely high.
