Helvetica Soundtrack

Posted in General Blogarrhea on November 26th, 2007
by O. Quimby Melton
permalink: http://www.vocabulary-blog.com/?p=110

If indeed one accepts it as an opposition (as folks have done for centuries), the great binary of my life has to be that between text and the graphic. It defines my interests as a human being; and as an English-lit-PhD-turned-hypermedia-developer, I suppose my professional life speaks for itself. Specifically, I suppose there is no more direct illustration of the visuality of text and the textuality of the graphic than that offered by typefaces. Echoing Gertrude Stein’s famous and delightfully nerdy proclamation “I really do not know anything that has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences,” I myself really don’t know anything that’s as exciting as typography. Chuckle as you will.

So of course I was interested in this: Helvetica: a documentary film by Gary Hustwit. I just watched it, in fact. The film is wonderfully done and makes me even more eager to run out and buy Adobe’s Font Folio 11 and browse the contemporary versions of historical typography, typing “ABC … ” and “The lazy brown fox … ” over and over and over again, checking serifs and ascenders, looking at 26+ x 26+ permutations of adjacent letters and characters, making up words, fantasizing about the genius of Cy Twombly, flipping the letters and words around like a child his/her wooden blocks, reveling in the materiality of words divorced from syntax, loving the tension of my mind not letting semantic meaning go and my attempts to force it to do so, and generally carrying on like a mad Aldo Manuzio taken from his metal type and set in front of a MacBook. For this, $2.5K is money well spent.

In addition to the wonderful filmmaking, one thing folks are chattering about with respect to the film is its soundtrack. I can’t find it available in either iTunes or Amazon or via any sort of Torrents so that likely means the soundtrack itself hasn’t been/won’t be released as a commercial entity in its own right. This is a shame. The film’s music is as hip, ambient, cool, and current as the font it analyzes. Scouring the web and even the official movie site, I couldn’t even find a list of individual songs played in the move. Doing my part to fill the internet well from which I myself so often draw, here’s the list of songs and artists listed in Helvetica’s credits. I know I’m not the only one looking for this.

:: “Thinking Loudly” - El Ten Eleven
:: “Lorge” - El Ten Eleven
:: “Meow” - Motohiro Nakashima
:: “Helvetica 2″ - Kim Hiorthøy
:: “Every Direction is North” - El Ten Eleven
:: “Seqy Chords 3″ - Sam Prekop
:: “Central Nervous Pister” - El Ten Eleven
:: “IPT2″ - Battles
:: “My Only Swerving” - El Ten Eleven
:: “Helvetica 9″ - Kim Hiorthøy
:: “Tunnel Chrome” - Chicago Underground Orchestra
:: “Seqy Solo” - Sam Prekop
:: “Rye 2″ (”Bye Annie, Bye Joe, Bye Michael, Bye Jake” in iTunes) - El Ten Eleven
:: “Potala” - Motohiro Nakashima
:: “3+4″ - El Ten Eleven
:: “Hot Cakes” - El Ten Eleven
:: “Magic Step” - Sam Prekop
:: “And Then Patterns” - Kieran Hebden/Four Tet
:: “Pelican Narrows” - Daniel Snaith/Caribou
:: “Shine” - The Album Leaf
:: “Fanshawe” - El Ten Eleven

All the El Ten Eleven songs are available in iTunes. There are lots of Kim Hiorthøy songs in there, but the two “Helvetica” songs aren’t. They might have been composed just for the movie. The same is true of all the Sam Prekop tracks save “Magic Step” which you are able to purchase and download in iTunes. Finally, for those who are interested, here’s the playlist of songs from the Helvetica soundtrack available in iTunes. Just download, import to iTunes, and you’ll have your shopping list. You can also buy the songs using the iTunes iMix I made for the soundtrack. There are two listed in the iMix database (someone jacked my work, methinks) so make sure you get the complete one: the one with 17 rather than 16 songs.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 3:37 am and is filed under General Blogarrhea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

13 Responses to “Helvetica Soundtrack”

1. El Ten Eleven Says:
   November 27th, 2007 at 3:09 pm

   The song you are looking for by us on the Hevetica soundtrack that is listed as “Rye 2?is actually called “Bye Annie, Bye Joe, Bye Michael, Bye Jake.” Sorry for the long title! It’s available on iTunes.

   Cheers,

   ETE

2. Q3 Says:
   December 2nd, 2007 at 7:51 am

   Very interesting thoughts on the text and the graphic. As I wrote to you earlier…I think you are going in the right direction making the text your graphic.

3. Melina Says:
   December 8th, 2007 at 7:41 pm

   Thanks for posting about the Helvetica soundtrack. I’m watching it via Netflix and *had* to find out the great artists featured.

4. O. Quimby Melton Says:
   December 11th, 2007 at 2:34 pm

   Ah, thanks El Ten Eleven. I’ve made the change in the blog text and in the downloadable playlist.

   ~Q.

   BTW, your music is amazing.

5. O. Quimby Melton Says:
   December 11th, 2007 at 3:16 pm

   Also, I left comments here on the official Helvetica blog, but they keep disappearing and reappearing …

6. Alix Gore Says:
   March 20th, 2008 at 6:18 pm

   thank you so much for posting this.

   we were forced to watch this in a journalism class, and to my amazement, was wonderful.
   and the soundtrack is outstanding, but we couldn’t find out where to get it!

   thanks again!

7. Matt Says:
   April 27th, 2008 at 3:35 pm

   Does anyone know which song was playing at this point?:

   WELCOME TO THE EXPERIMENTAL JETSET,

   at 1 hour in

   Where Erwin Brinkers & Marieke Stolk were introduced? (It sounds like an “El Ten Eleven” song.)

8. Sebastian Says:
   March 4th, 2009 at 8:27 am

   thank you for your effort.

9. m-scott-hay Says:
   March 5th, 2009 at 11:31 am

   Perfect! I really appreciate this.

10. Helvetica « acuti fortori Says:
    March 31st, 2009 at 7:06 am

    [...] sera sono riuscito a vedere Helvetica e mi sono appassionato alla colonna sonora, anche se normalmente uso [...]

11. M Says:
    April 5th, 2009 at 1:52 pm

    How wonderful… I’m watching this great documentary at the moment and just wondering where I could find the soundtrack… couldn’t find it either, but I found your blog. Thanks for building the list for us.
    cheers,

12. Brandon Says:
    April 19th, 2009 at 7:55 pm

    does anyone know what song is playing after one of the designers discusses the shift from other fonts to helvetica…like from 1950s - early 80s. And a woman afterwards describes why companies enjoy helvetica?

13. O. Quimby Melton Says:
    April 20th, 2009 at 11:05 am

    I’m not sure, amigo. But all the songs that appear in the film are listed in the post and the comments.

    Hope you can find what you’re looking for …

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