I’ve started to become concerned, or perhaps a little worried, that there is a world of older film scores filled with great melodies and sounds that have never been formally released, leaving them almost hidden. While some smaller record labels are helping solve the issue (like Rustblade with Hands of Steel), I know there’s more out there. Take George S. Clinton’s score for Brainscan. It features an all-timer horror theme and yet only one cue was ever released, and that was thirty years ago as part of the soundtrack release (which featured bands like White Zombie, Primus, and The Butthole Surfers). One has to wonder, if the movie’s soundtrack didn’t feature such well-known names in the rock and metal scene, would it ever have seen the light of day?
Brainscan follows Michael (played by Edward Furlong), a loner high school student who withdraws into video games and horror in the wake of his mother’s death. Eventually Michael finds the game “Brainscan”, a new virtual reality game in which you play a serial killer. However, the game is too real, an Michael finds himself forced by a demon named Trickster to keep committing violent acts with seemingly no escape.
George S. Clinton’s score, surprisingly, largely ignores the “plot”. Despite the ahead of its time view on video games and the monster in the machine, Clinton’s music is neither particularly futuristic nor horror focused. There are synths and there are horror stingers, but ultimately he leans neither into the “techno” side of things nor the horror side. Instead, he leans into Michael.
The first three and a half minutes of the film reveal the bulk of the score. This segment was released on the film’s soundtrack. Two motifs quickly emerge. The first is a slow, two-note motif like the repetition of waves crashing or a cradle rocking, with any sense of caress wiped out by a faster, slightly off-putting two-note synth piano ostinato. The first motif disappears and the second emerge, while the synth piano still plays, connecting the two. The second is a languid, guitar-like melody, whose slow pace is draining and dour. Wind howls and an occasional electric guitar riff appears deep into the mix, like a distant crack of lighting on a miserable night. Behind it all is an ambience not out of place in Twin Peaks, a constant unease, a twist on pristine Americana life.
The theme (in the abstract sense) should be pretty clear: Clinton’s music isn’t interested in the film’s video game focus or horror, it’s interested in Michael’s loneliness. Michael’s mother died in a horrific car accident that left him permanently injured; his father is gone for long periods, leaving Michael home alone; he has one friend, he spies on the girl next door, pining for her but knowing he’ll never talk to her; his classmates describe him as creepy and dangerous; he runs a horror club at school that gets banned. Michael is alone, isolated, searching for increasingly extreme things to get lost in and that will make him feel something, anything.
Clinton’s score is lonely. The two motifs appear, again and again, with their mournful pace and melancholic timbre pushing Michael into further despair and detachment. In doing so, Clinton latches onto what the film is really about: even though the plot is about Michael’s entrapment in Brainscan, the film is about Michael’s loneliness and whether he can break free from his isolation. That second theme in particular is one that continues to haunt me, its catchy melody stuck in my head, emanating waves of endless melancholy.
