Waking Life Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
(TVT) Don’t let the animation fool you, Waking Life is not for anyone needing “Parental Guidance.” One of two new celluloid splashes from Austin filmmaker Richard Linklater, Waking Life is the Slacker of the digital age, its frame-by-frame painted images animating existential ramblings. Like the soundtracks for Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (’93) and Suburbia (’97), Waking Life‘s musical accompaniment once again demonstrates the local director’s musical savvy. Enlisting Austin natural resource Glover Gil, Linklater queues up the maestro’s Tosca Tango Orchestra to further obfuscate the film’s boundaries between the conscious and unconscious mind. Gil and his compatriots, notably the Tosca String Quartet, rise to the occasion with their usual expertise (though credits would have been helpful), bookending the movie itself with a couple of live performances. The soundtrack’s opening sequence, “Ballade 4 part 1,” “Mi Otra Mitad de Naranja,” and “Pelo Negro,” with their restless beautitude, set a tone not only for the soundtrack, but for the whole of Waking Life, which softens its somewhat unsettling mood with the colorful imaginations of 30 local artists and animators. It’s like a ghostly ball, tangoed to upstairs at the Ritz. Gil’s solo piano on Chopin’s delicate “Nocturne in E-Flat Opus 9 No. 2” and cheek-to-cheek dance floor turn with the severe string dance of “Ballade 3” only heighten the mood. Warning: Waking Life might cause unsettling dreams. 
This article appears in November 16 • 2001.
