It was another day spent with time at the airport, although this time at least it was coming home. With the time zones involved, despite leaving at a pretty humane hour, I didn’t land back in New Zealand until 23:00 and didn’t get back home until 23:30.
And I was in no state to go to sleep upon getting home. Was still pretty amped, and the wind down was going to take some doing.
Fortunately, Netflix was there for me in my time of need — and specifically, it let me know that ‘Kaos’ was now available.
If you’ve seen or heard nothing of this, I’ll provide both a short description and a trailer. The description being: Jeff Goldblum plays a modern-day Zeus. There you go. You probably have enough right there. If not, the trailer:
Now, I’ve only watched one episode so far, so I cannot begin to comment on how great the series as a whole will or won’t be, but the first episode at least did a great job of drawing me in.
And a large part of that was the music choices, and how they were employed. Many of the tracks selected set establishing moments for the characters themselves, ranging from original tracks performed by the actor in question (Killian Scott as Orpheus performing ‘Eurydice‘) through to the likes of Money for Nothing by Dire Straits, or Gimme, Gimme, Gimme by ABBA. They had cemented the fact they ‘had’ me though by the time ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ by Blue Oyster Cult rolled out.
If you’re interested in the complete list, NME already has an article up covering it. But be aware it references the music of every episode in the season and not just the first episode.
But perhaps the one I would like to highlight is ‘Darkness Song’ by Asaf Avidan.
It plays relatively late into the first episode, and I wondered whether it might’ve been written specifically for the show.
Turns out- No. On the artist’s own channel, it went up some 3 or so years ago.
It doesn’t (yet) have a large number of views (so far as songs go), sitting just on the threshold of breaking 100k (99,888 as I write this). I’m going to be somewhat shocked though if that doesn’t go up considerably — assuming also that Kaos as a show is successful, in any case!
As the song’s name suggests, it is not exactly light and cheery. The album’s name is ‘Anagorisis’, which, funnily enough — and I have zero idea whether this in any way played into its inclusion in Kaos — has roots in Greek language. Anagorisis describes the moment of realisation or critical discovery. In Greek drama, it specifically referred to the point in a play where the character makes a significant realisation, be that the true identity of another character or perhaps understanding the true nature of their own situation.
Whatever the case may be — I like it, and particularly within the context of the scene where the song is introduced, it held impact. Although listening to it again now, I think that would have been true even without.
This was posted during Blaugust 2024, the annual blogging event hosted by Belghast. Blaugust is an event aiming to welcome new blogger blood into the fold and revitalise those who’ve been at it a little longer.
The Blaugust Discord is still available to join in, year-round!
That is an… eclectic list. I’m going to add the show to my ever-growing watchlist and I’ll be interested to see – or rather hear – how well the choices work in context. There are some tunes on there I find it hard to imagine not making me reach for the mute button but we’ll see…
Definitely be curious what you think of the tunes in context then. There were some (even in ep 1, and more from what I’ve peaked at in the list ahead) that were it NOT in the context of such a show, I’d never in a million years listen to. Hah.
The series is brilliant and like you this track hit me straight away as brilliant.
Agree! I’ve since this post finished it, and loved every moment of it. But by George I hope we get confirmation of a Season 2 soon! xD