There can be catharsis in even the deepest grief. Such is the case in Bobby Krlic’s score for Midsommar, in which he manages to salvage warmth and respite from a slow decay into madness and sorrow. People have immediately compared […]
Sometimes looks can be deceiving. The film title Clownface, for instance, did not inspire much optimism. Yet, I was pleasantly surprised as Hans Hess’ score proved to be more interesting and dynamic than the film’s name let on. Hess hits […]
Independent film is one of the great breeding grounds for new film composers. Consider Hans Zimmer, for example, who started his career scoring direct-to-video films before eventually securing eleven Academy Award nominations. While these films don’t offer the same monetary […]
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 – […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Just before his tragic death in 2018, Jóhann Jóhannsson finished his swansong: the hopeful and tragic masterpiece Mandy. Mandy has two distinct tonal halves: one of hope, innocence, and encroaching menace, the other loss, despair, vengeance. Although the second half […]