david arnold

Description

"Play Dead" is a song by Icelandic singer Björk, and was released as the only single from the soundtrack of the 1993 crime drama The Young Americans. The song wasn't included in the first edition of Debut but was later included as a bonus track, and the album was re-issued in November 1993. The song was written by Jah Wobble, Björk featuring David Arnold, and was produced by Cannon, Arnold, receiving additional production and mixing by Tim Simenon. The song, inspired by the main character of the film, was released in October 1993. A mainly trip-hop-influenced track, the song became Björk's first chart success, charting in the Top 20 in every nation it entered. An accompanying music video was released, featuring images from the film. "Play Dead" was included in Björk's 2003 greatest hits album Greatest Hits. Björk was asked to write the melody and lyrics for the song, while Wobble wrote the bass part and David Arnold composed the score. Björk described the writing as "very difficult" because "the character in the film was suffering and going through hardcore tough times and at the time I was at my happiest". To help her in the writing, she asked the film director, Danny Cannon, to write her a whole page of phrases that represented the emotions of the characters in the film, but she used only one line that Cannon wrote: "Sometimes, it's just like sinking", and still she changed it to "It's sometimes just like sleeping" in the actual lyrics. The song is underscored by moody strings and its lyrics about acting numb to prevent emotional pain. Björk wrote it from the main character's point of view: "In the film, he had a girlfriend who just wanted him to be happy and in love and he just couldn't get his head around it. It was just me trying to imagine what he would say to her. Things he never actually said to her in the film but things he would have said to her". Produced by David Arnold and Danny Cannon, the song was originally a non-album track recorded for the film The Young Americans and intended as a single-only release, but eventually it was added as a bonus track to international pressings of Björk's album Debut because Björk's manager Derek Birkett convinced her to add the track. Björk also sings on the tracks "Opening Titles" and "Leaving London" on the soundtrack CD of the film. In both the film and soundtrack, "Leaving London" crescendoes into "Play Dead" as a single arrangement. In both the album and the single version, the song is actually a remix by Tim Simenon. The music video was directed by Danny Cannon, who also directed The Young Americans. In the video, Björk performs the song in an empty bar that is shown in the film. Her footage is intercut with scenes from the film that range from tenderness to violence. The video was criticized because of its simplicity, some citing it lacks of the visual appearances usually offered by Björk. The video has been said to follow "the trends of MTV". http://en.wikipedia.org This came from a letterbox, very low res dvd vob file, which basically means an even smaller picture image to try to do anything with, and this is one of the prime reasons I dislike letterbox videos so much. I'd rather it was true widescreen without the crummy letterbox black bars surrounding the picture and robbing you of space to show more visual detail. So I have removed the interlacing, the black bars and scrubbed the image clean of most of the dirt and digital compression garbage. Image detail has been enhanced as much as possible in the scale to HD resolution. Some might say I pushed this just a little too far while enhancing but I don't think it came out to bad at all in my opinion. When I compare it to the source it's great. Audio has been replaced as it wasn't good enough. It came from a CD that has been given a few tweaks to bring out more audio detail where possible. This is the best quality online for this great hit from Björk going all the way back to the early 90's and I do hope you ...