We’re quite a number of months away from Halloween season and spooky, pensive and driving sounds that go along with it. But as we approach the hot Texas Summer (and 100 degrees this coming Wednesday!) we put our minds to cooler places. One of the best is the dark of a theater. Or a theater room. Either will do. One of the most enchanting parts of dark room entertainment is being enveloped by the soundscape, and we’re suckers for symphonic elegance and moody synthesizers. As such, today we have just what the doctor ordered by way of Lakeshore Records. Now let’s get this out of the way up front. These…
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Interview…Le Matos on Returning to The Wasteland with ‘Turbo Kid’ Video Game Soundtrack
It was ten years ago that the world fell in love with Turbo Kid, and part of what made that small-scale, cult classic an underground worldwide phenomenon was the incredible musical accompaniment. An exceptional powerhouse of synthesizer alchemy, Le Matos brings a very cinematic approach to their compositions. You can say that for a lot of musicians, but this time it’s completely justified – especially because they have a background in cinematography. So when they work on something, there’s a narrative through line where shooting styles can inform the soundscape, and vice versa. We’ve been a fan of the Montréal-based outfit for almost that long, thanks in large part to…
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Interview…Harry Gregson-Williams on the Vocals, Violence and Variety in ‘Gladiator II’
As film score fans, the only thing we love more than revisiting our favorite scores is when a sequel happens and a composer gets to take the themes into new territory. As such, our guest today has expanded not only his own work but many other composers’ efforts. Scan through the site, and you’ll see that we are very fond of Harry Gregson-Williams, and it’s always a treat catching up with him to talk shop. While any acoustic endeavor might be intimidating, how could one even start thinking about working on a sequel to Gladiator?? It’s a perfect film that resounds to this day, and that goes double for its…
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Interview…Volker Bertelmann on the Comfort and Chaos Between the Quiet Moments in ‘Conclave’
One of the best films of 2024 is Conclave, and it will certainly top many critics’ top 10 lists. It’s a quiet narrative that doesn’t have a lot going on on the surface, but that’s the beauty of Edward Berger‘s film: what you don’t see is the most interesting part of the story. In a way, it’s very much like a duck whose feet are swimming feverously under the water to get to its destination. The film is utterly gorgeous – the sets, locations and costumes dazzle – and in a story about holy men serving an ideal, we get to see crisis of conscience, infighting and scheming behind the…
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Music Review…Scott Pilgrim Truly ‘Takes Off’ Thanks to Anamanaguchi and Joseph Trapanese
The animated series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off gets us back into the wonderful, wild and insanely colorful world of Bryan Lee O’Malley‘s original graphic novels. Our first entry point to this universe was Edgar Wright‘s 2010 film which lovingly adapted those works. It was awesome – filled to the brim with Wright’s style and charm, yet the great live-action film retained the 2D atmosphere of the books. Now fast-forward more than a decade later and Netflix dropped this incredibly reverent and all encompassing eight-part animated series. It cherry picks the best from O’Malley’s ideas and Wright’s film (including the voice cast who return and reprise their roles) to expand/explore the…
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Music Review…’Severance’ Soundtrack Is Chock-Full of Lumon Goodies
If you’re a fan of soundtracks and film scores, the team at Mondo has you covered. They take great pride in crafting physical media, they produce vinyl with audiophiles in mind, and they also care about the packaging. Like a lot! In fact, their slipcases have just as much detail as their amazing posters. Yet the cool thing about their albums is that the team gets to do way more than silk screen their work on foil variants. Albums give these artists/creatives a smaller yet more complex canvas than a poster and the team tries their darnedest to use every square inch (inside and out) to tell their story. The…
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Interview…Paul Haslinger on Electronic Soundscapes, Subtext, and Scoring Processes
If you were around in the ’80s, few things defined “cool” like music did. And, film fan or not, the top of that list is most likely going to be Tangerine Dream: the German electronic music outfit who dominated airwaves and theaters with their cutting edge electric sound. One key member of that ensemble pushing the electronic side of the band was young Paul Haslinger who joined up with them after their big hits like Sorcerer and Risky Business. Bringing a younger video game sensibility, he helped change the course of their sound for the better and contributed plenty including scores to Near Dark, Miracle Mile and Three O’Clock High.…
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Interview…Composer Nathan Johnson on Harpsichords, Travelogues and ‘Glass Onion’
For those of you needing a classically clever whodunnit to add to your cinematic plate this holiday session, look no further than Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion. The next installment in Benoit Blanc mystery series is whip smart, hilarious, exquisite and layered…you know, like an onion. Herein, Johnson and company outdo everything in their last detective yarn. Bigger stakes, bigger laughs, bigger onions – it’s an exceptional outing! Every element just sings, and again Rian enlists his cousin Nathan Johnson to write a fitting score to accompany the masterful story. While subsequent yarns in the series are meant to be stand-alone events, the further adventures of the Kentucky-fried character required Johnson…
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Interview…Barry Burns on Mogwai, Signature Sounds, and Never Reading the Manuals
When it comes to one-of-a-kind sounds, look no further than the Scotland-based, post-rock band, Mogwai. They hit your ear drums with a one-two punch of style and experimentation, and always take you on a true musical journey. We first stumbled on them while I was visiting Japan in 2006. Maybe it was the reference to Gremlins that caught our eye, but once we heard “Auto Rock” we were hooked. Over the years, they have lent their skill and sonic textures to film, shows, documentaries and rocked out plenty of stadiums. In 2016 however, they really outdid themselves with the score to Kin by our friends Jonathan & Josh Baker. Not content…
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Music Review…’The Batman’ Is A Ballet of Brooding, Brains and Brawn
There’s a lot to love in the music of Michael Giacchino. He’s been to space, he’s been lost on an island, he’s been to the moon, far from home, he’s been up and inside out, and when it comes to modern composers, he’s the right one to let in if you want to get to the heart of the story. On that note, this film marks his fourth time collaborating with Matt Reeves, and what a team they have made over the years. The Batman finds him exploring new ground, well, for Reeves that is; Giacchino is all kinds of familiar with a superhero sound. But the world of dark…
