Sneaker Pimps- “6 Underground (Nelee Hooper Edit)”
From The Saint: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

No two people consume music the same way in the 21st century, and with people downloading music from torrents or buying songs on iTunes or Inceptioning albums from each other’s brains or whatever, it’s difficult to describe the importance soundtracks used to have.

To a huge segment of listeners, it would be unfathomable to waste $16.99 for one song. To the rest of us, it used to be a fact of life. For me at least, that outmoded pricing model was where soundtracks came in. Instead of buying an entire Kool & The Gang album, I could buy the Pulp Fiction soundtrack and get “Jungle Boogie” along with a bunch of other cool songs. Besides introducing me to new music and providing an inadvertent education in record labels and scenes, the best of these soundtracks could establish a mood in ways that seemed more graceful and creative than traditional albums. They opened me up in unpredictable ways.

Some films that seem minor in retrospect had unforgettable soundtracks, and the one that immediately comes to mind is the compilation for 1996’s The Saint. To a guy transitioning out of Bush and Silverchair, it was a perfect primer for the burgeoning world of electronic music, mixing the progressive bounce of Daft Punk, the ambient hypnosis of Moby and the genre-hopping of late Bowie into something that I could only describe at the time as “European.”

The standout track, besides the now clunky-sounding theme by Orbital, is “6 Underground” by Sneaker Pimps. It’s powered by a sped-up harp sample from John Barry’s “Golden Girl,” and that otherworldly sound is softened by the even, understated vocal performance of Kelli Ali to create a tone that’s just as inviting as it is foreign. That mixture of predictable, artificial sounds—mechanical scratching, chugging drum-loops—with more ethereal elements became the blueprint for trip-hop, and this song was my gateway drug to it.

Whether it was the coquettish delivery of Ali or the silky, leisurely pace of the track, I found “6 Underground” irresistibly sexy. Thus began the strange journey of a fifteen-year-old boy looking for downtempo trip-hop to one day hope to potentially have sex to maybe. Things got weird. I actually made an untitled mix CD—the cover was just a zipper drawn with blue Sharpie—with “6 Underground” and Portishead and Royskopp all over it. There were no girls to speak of, but part of me assumed that they would fall into place if I could find the best Morcheeba song for them to undress to*. In some ways, that was the story of my life back then. I knew I was developing something within myself, even if it didn’t seem productive to anyone else. I was, as they say, finding out what I liked.

Like I said, soundtracks opened me up in unpredictable ways, and I pity the kid only buying from the iTunes top ten. He’s definitely not driving to Catholic school with an erection from listening to Zero 7’s “Destiny.”

*- Probably “Fragments of Freedom.”