this commemorative reissue of music from 2001: a space odyssey combines the also sprach zarathustra theme, various johann and richard strauss segments, and a ballet suite by aram khachaturian—all of which prove how much stanley kubrick's film attempts to avoid the soundtrack clichs of most science-fiction movies. instead of the expected sci-fi effects, there is a more ironic application of music that would be otherwise incongruous to the celestial settings. here, "the blue danube" complements scenes involving weightlessness and descending spacecraft, while gyorgy ligeti's creepy "monolith" music connotes armageddon more than interplanetary exploration. the tracks play as they had appeared on the original soundtrack release back in the '60s, but there is also previously unreleased supplemental material and a dialogue montage entitled "hal 9000."
