A bit amusing how hard of a time I had finding this release for a moment. I wasn’t aware that Wendy Carlos had a sex change after making this soundtrack and changed her name, and her previous name was cemented in the soundtrack album’s cover art.

Anyway, A Clockwork Orange is one of the strangest, most original films ever made. It’s in its own world when it comes to art direction and camera choreographing, much like all of Stanley Kubrick’s work in the peak of his career. Both aspects made him especially fitting to direct a movie with an equally bizarre plot and setting. But enough of that, what about the music?

In the context of the movie, Carlos’s soundtrack is very fitting. The progressive electronic approach gives it an eerie tone that fits the film’s science fiction elements, and when listening to other progressive electronic pioneers such as Klaus Schulze, it seemed everyone associated early synthesizers with science fiction, so the right stye of music was chosen for the movie. However, the contemplative schizophrenic beats and frequent structure shifts put this in an odd world of its own when it comes to progressive electronic of the ’70s, much like the movie did for itself in modern cinema.

Carlos’s original compositions are every bit as abstract as the film itself and stunningly original and adventurous even when compared to standard progressive electronic works of the time, a darkly dizzying psychotic mood-setter. However, the Beethoven renditions may be lost on anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, and indeed they don’t fit the tone of the original pieces which hurts the soundtrack’s cohesion.

Still, the original compositions are perfect both in and outside of A Clockwork Orange‘s setting—it retains the one-of-a-kind twisted world in both formats—and Carlos does the classical compositions justice when interpreting them into a new form that they’ve never been experienced in before. Recommended to everyone. Groundbreaking music at the time and an unusual listen even today.

I had a very hard time finding samples on YouTube to share, so please forgive the awkward choice.