u/BelieveCongreveCube

The Race (Hudson Mohawke Rework) x The Hand That Feeds (Photek Straight Remix)

Original Tracks:
- The Race from the 2024 revival of Starlight Express, by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with the voice of Cristian Buttaci as Control, remixed by Hudson Mohawke
- The Hand That Feeds by Nine Inch Nails, remixed by Photek

Mashup and cover art by me

I’m still a beginner at mashups so I know it’s not perfect, but I love NIN and the Starlight Express revival that I had to make this. I wish the other remixes on the Starlight album had professional producers like Hudson work on them. I mean, imagine NIN or Boys Noize reworking a track like AC/DC, that be fucking epic.

Ok, so, I’ve watched The Nightmare Before Christmas hundreds of times, I love Tim Burton and that film endlessly. But there’s always been something about Jack’s singing voice (done by Danny Elfman) that I found strikingly familiar and I’ve never been able to put my finger on. It’s bothered me for years. And today I was scrolling and got an ad Martin Short and Steve Martin was in and then write after a clip from an interview with Danny Elfman that used a clip from Jack’s Lament and it clicked: Jack Skellington’s singing voice sounds like Martin Short.

I’ve noticed that I’ve barely seen anyone discuss this album from the perspective of an electronic music fan rather than primarily as a theatre fan. Since I’m both a musical-theatre lover and an electronic-music fan, I wanted to give my thoughts. Especially because I think this album is a fantastic example of just how much potential electronic music has in musical theatre.

For those unfamiliar, Starlight Express is an electro-pop-rock musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber that originally premiered in the 1980s. It was substantially reworked for its 2024 revival, with the new production leaning much more heavily into electronic music and contemporary pop/rock production.

First of all, I think this album is a huge improvement over the recording for the original 80s production.

A lot of musical-theatre albums have a very clean, polished sound. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it can sometimes make them feel somewhat detached from the production styles of contemporary popular music. The Starlight Express revival album goes in almost the opposite direction. It embraces electronic production, synths, distortion, pop, rock, and dance music in a way that makes it feel surprisingly close to something you could encounter outside of musical theatre.

In fact, this might be the only musical-theatre album I’ve ever heard where there are multiple tracks that I could genuinely imagine hearing in a club, rave, or party.

The tracks I find the most fun as an electronic-music listener are Overture/Entry of the Trains, Hydrogen, AC/DC, Starlight Express, The Race, The Final Race, and the Megamix.

Some tracks like the Overture/Entry of the Trains has this fantastic atmospheric orchestral-synth-rock sound. It reminds me a lot of Wendy Carlos’s score for the original TRON, particularly that combination of orchestral textures, synthesizers, and futuristic atmosphere. Plenty of fun 80s vibes influences in this track and throughout the album.

And tracks like the race sequences, meanwhile, lean much more toward electropop and house, which makes perfect sense given the subject matter. They have this driving, kinetic quality that makes the music feel like it’s constantly moving forward.

But AC/DC is probably my favorite and most interesting track on the album from a production standpoint. The vocal doubling and distortion effects give it a really cool and distinctive sound, and I love how it combines electronic pop with an almost industrial edge. It’s one of the tracks where the production becomes a major part of the song’s identity.

I also just have to mention Pumping Iron. It has an awesome distorted bass line, but other than that it’s really more of a rock track than an electronic track, but I just had to talk about it because it’s one of my favorite tracks. That guitar solo goes hard as hell.

Then there are the remixes. The absolute standout for me is the remix of The Race done by Scottish composer and DJ Hudson Mohawke. It’s easily my favorite remix on the Deluxe Edition.

The other remixes don’t have individual remixers credited, so I’m gonna assume they were just done in the studio by the same people who made the original tracks. And that’s also not necessarily a bad thing, the remixes of Whistle at Me, AC/DC, Starlight Express, Hydrogen, and Pumping Iron are all phenomenal.

In fact, from the perspective of an electronic-music listener, I actually prefer some of these remixes to their original versions. They lean even further into the dance-music side of the material and feel like they could work incredibly well at a rave or party.

That said, I do think the Deluxe Edition could have gone even further. Hudson Mohawke absolutely goes wild with The Race, and it makes me wish they had brought in him, or other professional electronic producers and DJs, to rework more of the songs. The material clearly has the potential for that kind of treatment, and I would have loved to hear completely different producers bring their own styles to the soundtrack. Like imagine Nine Inch Nails or Boys Noize remixing AC/DC, that’d be friggin awesome!

Overall, I found this to be a really fun and fascinating listen. More than anything, the album demonstrates how much untapped potential electronic music has in musical theatre. It works extraordinarily well here because the electronic production isn’t simply being added as a gimmick. It becomes part of the musical’s identity.

The revival combines elements of electropop, house, synth-pop, industrial, rock, blues, orchestral music, and contemporary musical theatre to create something that feels genuinely distinctive. And that’s what I find most exciting about it.

I really wish there were more musical-theatre scores willing to experiment with electronic music to this extent. There’s no reason musical theatre has to limit itself to the traditional orchestral sound. Electronic music can create atmosphere, movement, intensity, futuristic textures, huge drops, distorted vocals, and completely new sonic worlds that an orchestra alone can’t necessarily provide. And I think the revival of Starlight Express makes a pretty compelling case for exploring that potential.

As both a musical-theatre fan and an electronic-music fan, I’m really glad this album and musical exists. It may be a weird and camp show, but the revival of Starlight Express is one of my all time favorite musicals, because of unique and interesting it is. I just hope more composers and productions take notes from it and start experimenting with electronic sounds on this level.

If you haven’t listened to it yet, I can’t recommend it enough, I really think it’s something truly special with nothing else quite like it.

I wanna get better at anatomy so I can draw bodies at more and better angles, I also wanna make sure my art doesn’t suffer from same-face-syndrome (the last slide is a WIP of Social Network fanart I was working on and trying to go the shape of Jesse Eisenberg’s face was kinda a challenge), I also wanna get better at drawing hands and people interacting with each so I can draw more art of my favorite ship, OscarMolly from the Katt vs. Dogg novels (see second to last slide for one I already made)

Audio: Song “We’re In This Together” by Nine Inch Nails

I still defend Ares as a good film but my guy, what do you mean “I don’t know?” When asked about why TRON Legacy characters weren’t coming back you say you “don’t know” people care about returning characters in a sequel? You already wrote it and you’re unsure if people care about that? You just guessed people didn’t care? You wrote it off an assumption? Brother, look on the internet! You don’t know, find out for yourself! Ask the fans this movie was supposedly made for! What happened to those characters? Do you not know?

Wally Darling from Welcome Home x Randy Feltface

And Sweeney Todd is also regarded as one of his best performances and the Wolf is regarded as one of his worst