Heat

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 Buckled Closer - 100% Bio-washed Chino Twill

Heat is a slick, highly charged crime thriller released in 1995 that has the first ever on-screen pairing of De Niro and Pacino (they never shared the screen in Godfather II). The film by Michael Mann is an extraordinarily intelligent, stylish, violent, realistic study of moral decay and human nature in the City Of Angels. 

Mann, as writer, has concocted a duel. On one side the cop, Vincent Hannah (Pacino), the dogged hunter prone to bursts of unwieldy emotion, possessing a sixth sense at second guessing his prey. His foe, the robber, is Neil McCauley (De Niro), icy cool, rational, brilliant, psychotic head of a gang of heist-kings equipped with automatic weapons and never-say-die obsessions. The battleground is a LA shorn of glamour. This is a moody, expansive cityscape, shot in earthy pastels, a twilight world of twisted morals, crumbling relationships, and dying dreams.

As Hannah and his crew of besuited cops close in, McCauley and his crew - an impressively edgy Kilmer, and reliable class from Tom Sizemore - plan the big score, taking a downtown bank under the very eyes of police surveillance. What lifts this beyond being yet another crime thriller, is Mann's dedication to creating inner-life for all the characters.

The film flits between a maze of credibly defunct relationships: Pacino in an imploding marriage (to Diane Verona), De Niro falling for the quiet Eady (Amy Brenneman), Kilmer's volatile marriage to Ashley Judd... these characters have dimension. There is a genuine sense of loss for those who die, and understanding for those who strive.

The soundtrack, including the likes of Elliot Goldenthal's orchestrations, Einstürzende Neubauten, William Orbit as well as U2 and Brian Eno’s project Passenger. Enhanced by the sleek synthesized score, Heat spills sobriety of feeling before erupting in moments of nerve jangling action. The bank job, true to form, goes haywire, resulting in a ferocious, thumpingly loud gun battle.

Heat was also one of the inspirations behind the highly influential 2001 video game Grand Theft Auto III as well as its 2013 sequel Grand Theft Auto V, notably the mission "Blitz Play" where the crew blocks and then knocks over an armored car in order to rob it.

Eady
De Niro’s love interest in the movie, Eady is a part-time graphic designer and in a scene in her apartment, the walls are covered with what are meant to be examples of her design work. You can spot the word “FUSE” on the computer screen, Fuse being the name of the experimental typography magazine created in the 1990s by Neville Brody and Jon Wozencroft. On the window to the left of the computer there’s pinned a copy of Brody’s design for Wipe Out, a single by Z’ev on the Fetish label. Brody designed nearly everything for Fetish during the label’s brief existence in the early 1980s, and the most visible Brody examples in this scene are all Fetish designs. This seems an odd choice for a film made in the mid-90s although in an earlier conversation Eady mentions having designed some music CDs. 

In another part of Eady’s apartment there’s a large reproduction of the sleeve for a Fetish compilation, The Last Testament. While further along the same wall there’s the sleeve for Diddy Wah Diddy by 8 Eyed Spy, yet another Fetish single. On the far right of the shot, there’s a face from one of Brody’s theatre posters which confirms that Mann’s set decorators must have plundered a copy of Wozencroft’s book, The Graphic Language of Neville Brody.

It’s even possible to find a tenuous connection between the record sleeves and Mann’s eclectic soundtrack. Many of the Fetish artists—Throbbing Gristle, 23 Skidoo, Clock DVA, Stephen Mallinder—were in the first wave of Industrial music, and Mann briefly uses a great piece by Einstürzende Neubauten from their own Industrial phase.

Eady : [Their first meeting in a restaurant]  What are you reading?
Neil McCauley : A book about metals
Eady : What kind of work do you do?
Neil McCauley : Lady, why are you so interested in what I read or what I do?
Eady : I've seen you in the bookstore from time to time, I work there, if you don't want to talk to me that's ok, I'm sorry I bothered you
Neil McCauley : I didn't mean to be rude. I didn't recognize you. I work in metals. I'm a salesman, you like working there?
Eady : Sure, I get a discount. There's a whole section of books in my area.
Neil McCauley : What area is that?
Eady : Graphic design, the store's a day job until I got enough going.
Neil McCauley : Who do you do that for?
Eady : A restaurant, their menus and a small record label, their CD covers, I've done two so far.
Neil McCauley : You go to school for that?
Eady : Yeah I went to Parsons
Neil McCauley : Where's that?
Eady : New York City 

Soundtrack

Heat’s score is compiled mostly with Elliot Goldenthal's orchestrations, he explains his thinking behind the score here:

“In Heat, Michael Mann and I were going for an atmospheric situation. It was the first time I used what I like to call a "guitar orchestra" - where I use six or eight guitars, all playing with different tunings stacked up on top of each other in a musical way, and a mixed meter of percussion. It wasn't a type of score where you needed a big orchestral theme or you had to actually hit certain actions with music at specific times. It was much closer to the European mentality of film scoring.” The guitar orchestra, who play most significantly on two of the tracks, is called "Deaf Elk", an ensemble which includes Page Hamilton of the metal band Helmet.

William Orbit
Various tracks that were in some points of the film but did not make it to the soundtrack included pieces by William Orbit from his Strange Cargo albums, namely "The Last Lagoon," "Monkey King," and "The Mighty Limpopo." Orbit is an ambient pioneer, studio master, and omnipresent dance remixer. He began his musical career in the new wave band Torch Song. Even while the group recorded several albums for IRS, Orbit remained in the studio to learn the ropes and began producing and remixing for artists including Sting, Madonna, Prince, the Human League, Erasure, and Belinda Carlisle.

Orbit concurrently recorded his own material, and released his first solo album, Orbit, in 1987. That same year, he inaugurated the ambient project Strange Cargo, which released follow-up albums in 1990 and 1993. Also during the late '80s, Orbit latched onto the acid house explosion in England and founded one of the scene's most notable labels, Guerilla Records. Orbit's own Bassomatic recorded for Guerilla alongside British progressive acts Spooky and React 2 Rhythm plus excellent Chicago producers Felix da Housecat and DJ Pierre. Through Virgin, Bassomatic also released an album, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Bass.

Though his release schedule slowed slightly during the '90s, William Orbit continued producing and remixing at a furious pace. He also founded a new label, N-Gram Recordings, and prepared to release the classical crossover work Pieces in a Modern Style. The album, which featured electronic interpretations of classical pieces, drew angry protests from composers Arvo Pärt and Henryk Górecki, and they helped block the album's release. In 1998, after 15 years of behind the scenes post-production, Orbit's name hit the mainstream thanks to his helming the Madonna comeback album Ray of Light (Orbit not only produced the entire LP, but co-wrote many of the tracks). The album won Grammy awards for Best Pop Album and Best Dance Recording, and its success led to a host of remixing and production work, including Blur's 1999 album, 13. In 2000, Orbit finally released Pieces in a Modern Style, and the album became an unexpected hit thanks to Ferry Corsten's trance remix of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. In 2006 he returned with Hello Waveforms on the Sanctuary label. Finley Quaye appeared on the album along with former Torch Song/Strange Cargo vocalist Laurie Mayer. My Oracle Lives Uptown followed in 2009 on the Kobalt label, and one year later he released Pieces in a Modern Style 2, another edition of classical material, including Orbit's version of "Swan Lake."

Einstürzende Neubauten
The Einstürzende Neubauten logo is an appropriation by the band of an archaic ideogram or petroglyph. It appears to be a stick figure with a circled dot or sol as its head. Its oldest source may be Stonehenge, or the ancient Chinese bronze inscriptions

The provenance of the logo has been attributed to the sacred ring of Stonehenge, or possibly to an Olmec Native American cave, and most directly in one source to ancient Chinese origins. Band leader Blixa Bargeld, said he probably found it in 1980 during a search for mythological icons. He said that by re-purposing a Toltec petroglyph, whose meaning was purposefully undefined, as their band logo, it would be "filled" with meaning later.

There are several hypothetical interpretations of its meaning. An early song by the band, “Vanadium I-Ching” points to the ancient Chinese inscriptions for the sky or heavens. Others claim a resemblance to John Dee’s glyph, the Monas Hieroglyphica (or Hieroglyphic Monad). The circled dot is a common sun symbol, but in this figure may also be a cyclopean eye. The whole ideogram may indicate every man as a promethean starman.

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