The final frontier. Today we have a tendency to take the miracle of space flight for granted: a 60-year history, hundreds of launches a year, and thousands of manmade objects in orbit have made it almost routine. But, decades ago, […]
Cyberpunk gives composers great musical flexibility. Not only is “futuristic” sounding music appropriate, but so is contemporary and classical music. After all, cyberpunk is often a dark imagining of our current trajectory. Rory McFarlane, in his score for the UK […]
Krzysztof Komeda is considered the forefather of European jazz. And yet, his most famous and enduring work is the haunting and discomforting score for Roman Polanski’s horror classic Rosemary’s Baby. The opening credits introduce Komeda’s single most well-known song – […]
Karel Zeman’s 1961 surrealist masterpiece The Fabulous Baron Munchausen is one of the more bizarre entries in film, with its fanciful story, kaleidoscopic colors, and animation/live action mix. The logical musical accompaniment would be something as equally odd and avantgarde. […]
Clint Mansell adds cacophonous noise and jarring sounds to beautiful, classical melodies that slowly degrade as Black Swan progresses. This degradation directly mirrors the protagonist’s own descent into insanity. Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake is obviously thematically appropriate. However, it is too […]
A nearly forgotten English classic, If…. is one of those genuinely provocative films that only the 60s and 70s could produce, satirizing school and religion, glorifying sex and drinking, and offering youth the dangerous idea of freedom. Marc Wilkinson’s hypnotic […]
Despair rises up gradually, then suddenly, like the arms of a vice slowly closing in until, all at once, they crush everything in their grip. Lustmord’s score for First Reformed works in largely the same way. Much of the film […]
Suspiria is madness. The mechanism largely driving this madness is Goblin’s score and, most importantly, their”Suspiria” theme. In the film’s opening moments doe-eyed ballet student Suzy Banyon arrives alone in a foreign land. Immediately Goblin begins pummeling her with bursts […]
Enter the New World. The conquistadors believed it was God-given, filled with cites of gold and fountains of youth, where every man was free and rich and a king of his own. But in Aguirre, the Wrath of God, this […]
Jazz is the stereotypical music of film noir. Soft piano and crooning sax, the perfect moody complement to those scenes of smoke-filled bar; desolate, rain-soaked streets; the honking of a ’38 Packard and the holstering of a ’38 special. The […]
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 […]
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 […]