The soundtrack album to Jean-Cosme Delaloye's documentary about Detroit techno legend
Carl Craig spans the artist's entire career, dating back to the late '80s, and includes some of his most well-known tracks as well as rarities that hadn't been available digitally. Appropriately, the collection captures the cinematic side of
Craig's work, often including tracks with long, atmospheric buildups, or no drums at all. A percolating remix of
Slam's "Azure" takes half of its ten-minute running time to arrive at a beat, and the blissful yet slightly anxious "At Les" floats on a cloud before the drums kick in. The deep-space techno meditation "Galaxy" is an inspired choice, as well as the breakbeat melancholia of "Desire" and "Bug in the Bassbin"'s tumbling jazz drum loops, which greatly inspired the U.K. drum'n'bass and broken beat scenes.
Craig's Grammy-nominated remix of
Junior Boys' "Like a Child," which slowly teases the song's vocals for several minutes before the beat drops, remains one of his more addictive productions.
The digital version of the soundtrack, which includes several more cuts than the CD or vinyl editions, goes a bit more into
Craig's collaborative side, including a track he produced as part of
Sherard Ingram's
Urban Tribe, a jazzy house collaboration with
Moritz von Oswald, and a track he mixed (but didn't write or produce) for
Recloose. There are also selections from
Versus, a 2017 orchestral revisit of some of the producer's key tracks, and the shimmering "A Wonderful Life (Version)." The set concludes with the patient, rippling "Meditation Four," originally released as part of an ambient suite included as the third disc of the 2013
Ministry of Sound mix/compilation
Masterpiece: Created by Carl Craig. Similar to other soundtracks for documentaries about musicians (like, say,
The Velvet Underground: A Documentary Film by Todd Haynes),
Desire: The Carl Craig Story isn't meant to be a conventional best-of compilation, but a well-rounded selection that fits the film's narrative and hopefully offers a different perspective about the subject. In this case, it touches on
Craig's club-driven side, but more often emphasizes his status as a composer of hypnotic, deeply felt material that takes the listener on a voyage. ~ Paul Simpson
