Since its 1927 release, Fritz Lang’s masterful Metropolis has undergone innumerable re-cuts, restorations and reinterpretations- including a 1980s version soundtracked by Adam Ant and Pat Benatar.

Thankfully, Miles Phillip (aka Miles Cosmo)’s Metropolis: Audio Redux spares audiences the power ballads and instead employs a more Eno-esque approach. Taking over a year to refine, Phillip’s personally crafted electronic soundscape takes Lang’s classic dystopian vision and dresses it with dark and contemporary tonality.

Screened at Loop Bar on a particularly soggy Wednesday evening, a bedraggled and rain-drenched group of cinephiles took refuge in the back room and waited to be immersed in a filmic world of lavish sets, class tensions, and ostentatious pantaloons.

An intensely pulsating beginning suggests that Phillip’s interpretation might verge on becoming an overblown aural affront, however it soon softens into something else entirely. Gentler, more melodic traces are introduced and Lang’s iconic water fountain scene is given new emotional depth. As the camera lingers on the maidenly Maria, the score manages to evoke a genuine sense of longing, where other versions have felt flat, forced, or camp.

The score succeeds in capturing the film’s dichotomous sensibilities, being at once humanist and machine-like. The undulation between throbbing scenes of mob anarchy and more gentle moments of emotional weight, are echoed deftly by Phillip’s sound.

The evening was given an even more surreal aural element as, during the quieter moments of the score, fragments of gangster rap and The Velvet Underground could be heard bleeding through from the Loop’s main room.

Metropolis: Audio Redux, offers a distinct interpretation and will delight cinephiles and experimental music geeks in equal measure.