Noir music.

I knew exactly what that was going to sound like before listening to a note.

It's strange how the atmosphere of films noir has come to be associated with, and symbolized by, the latter-day sounds of moody keyboard chords and a wailing sax (or its alternate, a muted trumpet) in a downbeat style that's generally not to be found in any films represented by the genre from the '40s or '50s. The scores of those films are much more typified by bombastic brass, urgent or lushly romantic strings, quizzical flutes, inquiring woodwinds, ominous cellos and threatening timpani. 

Toward the end of the period, the "cool jazz" influence of the '50s began to be heard here and there in films like The Big Combo, albeit in more driving, up-tempo arrangements. But consult the music scores of exemplars of the form - Out Of the Past, Double Indemnity, Murder My Sweet, The Big Sleep, The Asphalt Jungle, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Criss Cross, The Killers, Pickup On South Street, Crossfire, Detour, The Big Heat and dozens of others - and the sound demonstrated in the embedded video is one that's difficult to come by in the work of composers like Miklós Rózsa, Roy Webb, Max Steiner, David Raksin, Leigh Harline and so on.

It's one of the mysteries of music that particular sounds can so effectively evoke moods, periods and images, even when the pictures they bring to mind have little connection to them, and such is the case with the music in the video. What do you see? A dreary, darkened room with only the light from a neon sign streaming in through the blinds? A smoky cocktail lounge where a lone, melancholy blonde nurses a drink at a back table? A man with battered fedora, loosened tie and unbuttoned double-breasted wandering aimlessly along a damp, deserted street? Or, yeah, a coffee shop during a rain storm. You'll find all those images in classic films noir, but you won't hear music like this accompanying them. But they all go together just the same.

Like I said, a mystery. One as confusing and hard to untangle as the intertwining shot glass rings on the table in front of me, as my head pounded like a platoon of infantry was marching through it and my eyelids felt like five-pound weights were attached to them. One more drink, then a walk up three flights, a lumpy mattress and a soft pillow. And maybe I'll figure it all out tomorrow. Or maybe not.