After taking a year or so apart to flush their systems of the toxins acquired while off making stadium sized gestures at the world, the Dubliners known as U2 reconvened near the end of '94 to re-ignite the creative jets. But the principle yield from that initial muster might just divide the faithful and any other curious bystanders into distinct camps. Some may call it a well polished wank - a way to bide time between pop albums and indulge their artistic whimsy. Others will view it as a welcome aside or a logical progression from a rock unit that's done it's time in the verse-chorus-solo-verse-chorus grind. When leaning towards the latter you "could" say that if Achtung Baby was U2 dismantling the old radio tower for a satellite uplink, then Zooropa was its first proper transmission and Original Soundtracks 1 its first wild feed.
While Soundtracks 1 was fashioned with a disparate batch of guest crew members as a set of musical responses to a variety of film pieces, the tracks hold together with a fairly cohesive dynamic. Even Eno, notwithstanding what he did recently to Bowie's latest career moves, has an easy time here meshing with U2 as an official fifth wheel. Despite the immense flexibility that creating sonic backdrops like this afforded them, his ambient-ness managed to interject his "treatments" just at the right moments and in the right measure.
What does figure largely into the project is the band's heavy fascination with the Blade Runner-esque landscape of modern Japan. When "United Colours" open the record, it's with all the verve of the post-plutonium society as it streams along the 100 Megabit per second pathway towards the millennium. A blaring horn sample is set up as a runaway siren, deep house bass rumbles are dropped almost off-handedly and eventually a burst of distorted six string work melts in and out the whir and screech of a Yellow Magic snyth line. Japan flat dazzled Bono and he's downloaded much of that exuberance here for the globe at large to see.
There's far more to pore over tone wise considering how amorphous a stance all but Bono adopt throughout. Had Bill Flannigan's awkwardly reverent but insightful bio (_U2 At The End Of The World) not ended right when Soundtracks 1 was brewing, it might have made some interesting reading. Apparently a good amount of instrument swapping went on, and both Clayton and Larry Mullen Jnr. had spent their time off sharpening their chops and broadening their palettes. More evident is Bono's rant lyric angle that he's partially adopted ever since he got some media praise for Bob Marley R&R Hall of Fame induction speech. His building on one thematic rap over the course of a song is sort of precarious, but when it works, as it does on "Slug" and the radio track "Miss Sarajevo," the predominant rhythmic feel distracts sufficiently when the content may be off a touch.
The appearance of Pavarotti is notable mostly in that with U2 compositionally stepping back from most of its mega-rock inclinations the atmosphere is limber enough to weave in something as grandiose as the tenor. Normally the lush weight of such a stroke would bring all things to a lumbering point of collapse. As an interim release from a band who had gleefully acquired the trappings of pop excess and an image of being slightly over the top, Soundtracks 1 is a far more than an agreeable shift of gears for anyone who cares to give it their head.
