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Robert Hood’s Omega Man soundtrack | FACT magazine: music and art
Detroit techno icon Robert Hood is to release a curious new album this Spring via his own M-Plant label.
FACT can exclusively reveal that the album, entitled Omega, is a new soundtrack to the 1971 sci-fi movie The Omega Man. Directed by Boris Sagal and starring Charlton Heston in the title role, The Omega Man was based on Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel I Am Legend, which inspired 2007’s Will Smith vehicle of the same name.
In the film, most of humanity has been wiped out as a result of biological warfare between the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. Heston plays military scientist Colonel Robert Neville. Having rendered himself immune to the killer virus by injecting himself with an experimental vaccine, Neville now leads a life of bitter survivalism, fighting off The Family, a cult of nocturnal albino mutants dedicated to destroying what’s left of technological society. We won’t spoil the rest of the nutty plot , but if you’re curious you can find a full synopsis here.
“The [Omega album] is finished,” Hood, who is best known for pioneering minimal techno with seminal releases like Minimal Nation (1994), tells FACT’s Bjørn Schaeffner. “It’s this long-time vision I’ve had in musically interpreting the movie.
“There was the remake with Will Smith in I am Legend. But I’ve had this vision of doing this project even long before that. You know the story: Charlton Heston plays the last person on Earth, everyone has died. This man is running out of hope, running out of faith. He is this kind of Messiah type figure. The music I’ve done is sort of a loose interpretation of this precept. I just imagined myself if I were commissioned to do this soundtrack. What would it be like? And so, this is what [Omega] is.
But what drew Hood to the project in the first place?
“Faith,” he answers matter-of-factly. “Let’s say, you’re the last man on Earth, and there was this opposing force of people threatening to wipe out the last remnants of humanity and progress. You know, the white people with the hoods and the white faces, I don’t remember their name [The Family]. They were trying to kill the original character, Charlton Heston. He who represented the last of humanity.
“I asked myself: What would I do? How much hope and faith would I have? Faith in God, faith in restoring humanity? Ever since I saw that movie as a child, it has haunted me. [In particular the scene] where Robert Neville the Heston character creates the serum, this antidote for this sickness. He was like this Christ figure and that has resonated with me over the years.”
“We’re heading in the direction of extinction, we’re killing ourselves and each other…This is where we’re headed: Man’s greed and lack for humanity. [The Omega Man] is definitely metaphoric and if we don’t heed the signs, this is were we’ll end up.
“We live in a society where we just consume. We just take. We live to consume, we live to take. We don’t operate on the concept of giving. When we go to raves or to holidays, we see it only as an opportunity to consume, but not to give input. [... ] The consumption of drugs at raves: That creates negative energy. You know, the techno culture is a positive energy, it’s a God-given vision, but we look at it in such a perverse way. We think about the weekend as just a chance to explode and self-destruct instead of going to participate in something that is higher as ourselves.
“We’re walking like zombies through our lives and we really don’t know what abundant life is about! ”
Omega will be preceded by a single release in March. Look out for the full and revealing interview with Robert Hood, coming to the FACT site next month.
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