Jeff Mills has produced a new score for Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film Metropolis.

Out now via his own Axis Records label, Metropolis Metropolis combines elements of classical and electronic music and marks the second time Mills has produced a soundtrack of the film – his previous Metropolis score came out in 2000. Where his original score was produced to fit specific scenes and moments in Lang’s original, this latest version is more influenced by the overall storyline of the film.

“Creating music for Fritz Lang’s masterpiece film Metropolis has been and continues to be a great experience,” Mills said in a statement. “The film is a story about ‘man vs man’ with the help of a machine. Its dramatic theme is as relevant now as it was when the film debuted in 1927. A film to be enjoyed, but also noted and examined.”

Fritz Lang’s film, set in a futuristic vision of the year 2000, depicts a dystopia in which rich people rule over the working classes, who live and work beneath the city. It was based on Thea von Harbou’s 1925 novel of the same name.

Mills will debut his latest score in a live setting at Berlin’s Babylon cinema on April 4. Tickets for that show are available here.

Metropolis Metropolis three vinyl set is an abbreviated version of the most recent Electronic Music soundtrack for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) by the Techno music producer and cultural icon Jeff Mills. Unlike his first soundtrack where tracks addressed specific segments of the film in a track listing form, which was created and released in 2001, this version is more a symbiotic mix of compositions that proposes a nuanced representation of the plot and storyline.

As an electronic symphonic music creation, Mills proposes a few interesting points in the schematics of this album. 1- the positioning and role of the listener as the soundtrack is based on the environment of the scenes, rather than pure transcription, 2 – as a storyline that takes place in the year 2000, the choice of sound elements refer to some future commonality and foresight between the genres of Classical and Electronic music – between man and machine.

And 3, in many parts of the soundtrack where sounds are played in unison. This is symbolic of the hopefulness the storyline works towards.