My segment of the film started quite neatly at the point where the characters land on Mars. As the setting is now an alien world (and, spoiler alert, a dream) I felt the music would have to sound weird and eerie. The sequence also contains an unsettling 'love' scene between Aelita and Los. I tried to imagine what the musical motif for Aelita would be in her appearances and that in this scene, the same melody would be distorted or arranged in a spooky manner, perhaps sounding like an off-key love theme from a conventional romance film.
The sequence also contains some also suspenseful moments with the characters sneaking around avoiding the Martian soldiers, in addition to more comedic scenes with the bumbling Kratsov character. Despite the difference in cinematic eras, this brought to mind Henry Mancini's music for Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers films. I wondered what kind of music might have been made had Mancini been an industrial artist or if he collaborated with The Residents.
I don't really have the knowledge or skills to pull off these concepts so I fell back on my home turf of including some breakbeat, which helped to give the track some rhythmic backbone. I was flattered that Y Groes/hummingofevil said that it reminded him of Plug/Luke Vibert, though I never consciously had his work in mind as an influence. There's also some samples of vintage Russian jazz, hopefully unrecognisable, though I cannot recall their origins anyway.
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