In the 17th century, a group of soldiers and their academic hostage eat psychedelic mushrooms in A Field in England. In so doing, they’re convinced that they’ve uncovered the powers of divination, becoming enspelled in the process. Jim Williams uses […]
Vertigo: the sensation of a loss of stability; a spinning, destabilizing unease, that you and the world around are careening into chaos and you can do nothing but watch, transfixed. In a high stakes moment, vertigo strikes veteran detective Johnny […]
Pick any year from the 2010s and you’ll find a dozen (or more) synth/electronic driven film scores. These scores tend to feel familiar and rely on the same tropes because they share the same influences. Disasterpeace’s It Follows takes these […]
Paul Giovanni uses English folk music to reflect the neo-paganist worldview of the The Wicker Man’s isolated islanders. Many of these songs are upbeat drinking ballads or slower love songs. In any other context, they would be the soundtrack to […]
A common complaint about film and TV scores is their use of tone over melody (a complaint perhaps most famously made by Jason Segel’s composer character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Mark Korven completely ignored this complaint for his score of […]
In an uncharacteristic twist, one of the most famous modern composers agreed to make the soundtrack for a somewhat strange, B-tier horror movie. Philip Glass believed that Candyman would be an artsy, independent re-telling of Clive Barker’s original short story. Much […]
Most westerns contain many grandiose shots of great untamed landscapes – wide rivers, soaring mountains, sprawling valleys. These shots tend to be sweeping and slow-to-develop, allowing for an equally grandiose score to fill the void. This relationship puts the focus […]
I once wrote that the grimy urban hellscape of Beherit’s Electric Doom Synthesis would be a perfect soundtrack to Robocop. I was wrong. Basil Poledouris’s score perfectly portrays the downtrodden, darkened world of Robocop’s futuristic Detroit. But he also captures […]
Danny Elfman’s score for Dumbo continues his trademark ominous yet whimsical style. Elfman manages to expertly create a dark score while keeping it kid appropriate and positive, all without the overabundance of memorable melodies more common in his earlier works. […]
Once again, another traditional “dumping ground” month dredges up some solid scores from largely under the radar films. Joseph Trapanese continues building his resume with the impressive Arctic. The score, like the film, is oppressively bleak. To accomplish this, Trapanese […]
January has become known as a “dumping ground,” when the box office slumps and studios release films they’ve written off, lower budget films, and counter-programming. Nonetheless, the month produces many quality scores. Not surprisingly, January only has one major release: […]
In 2018, director Armando Iannucci discovered long lost recordings of a great Soviet-era composer. He then used them to score his film, The Death of Stalin. At least, composer Christopher Willis (Interview) believably convinces the audience of this discovery. To […]