Have you seen the clip from Garden State where instead of The Shins playing when Natalie Portman says, “You gotta hear this one song, it’ll change your life I swear,” we hear DMX? It is a jarring and pointed example of how firmly the film relies on its soundtrack, displacing the emotional resonance of the scenes onto the songs. Knifing between a soundtrack and the images they are tracking is a difficult process; certain songs are forever linked, stuck like glue, to the scenes they’ve accompanied.

Steven Drozd’s The Heart Is A Drum Machine is a documentary film about music, on micro and macro levels, and how it interacts and influences us. The soundtrack, of the same name, isn’t chock full of hit pop songs and mainstream music, but a composer’s touch and feel; most of the songs are instrumental electronic, meditations on melody and sound. There is the cover of “Rocket Man,” reworked but keeping the integrity and appeal of the song intact.

Ultimately, like the film that originated this album, Drozd is challenging and dissecting sound and song; divorcing music from lyrics is always a challenge to the listener, but one that is eased by vision and talent instead of small, quaint pop hooks. Something Drozd achieves in spades here.

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