Read my Onthescore.com list of the Best Film Scores of 2024! From the top picks to the runners up’s and the composers to watch, it’s your guide to an impressively diverse year of movie music, as led by The Wild Robot and In the Land of Saints and Sinners!
THE BEST FILM SCORES OF 2024
(Click on the titles to view the soundtracks)
THE BEST SCORES
Volker Bertelmann
(Volker Bertelmann / Back Lot Music)
Having won an Oscar for director Edward Berger’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Volker Bertelmann (aka the alt. artist Hauschka) takes on more of a sanguine, if still perilous struggle to change the course of the world – as heard within the cloistered walls of The Vatican. And while there’s no tanks or mustard gas, he tonally brings as much suspense and subterfuge to the backstabbing and political maneuvering in this utterly gripping movie. Blessedly not going the full-on religious route one might expect, Bertelmann’s string-driven sound evokes the ancient, twisting confines themselves of a millennia-old institution with a stripped down, Baroque approach that’s as rigorously composed as Berger’s ritualistic visuals. It’s an icy, gripping and often slashing rhythmic approach for the most important religious election of all. It’s distinctly thematic in a subtle way that captures the cold, calculated sounds of dozens of men with power plays, and one could easily mistake this for a spy score set in the Renaissance, which is exactly the point of a reform-minded hero and those seeking to turn The Church’s clock back. That this transfixing soundtrack ends with a gorgeously rapturous symphony is the equivalent of breaking down the walls for Bertelmann for a distinctly rewarding creative partnership that might just be getting the Papal golden vote again.
David Fleming
(David Fleming / Netflix Music)
It’s been many a blood red dungeons and dragons moon since we’ve been gifted with a princess and thunder fantasy score and film like Netflix’s “Damsel,” a grrll and lizardess power subversion of the likes of “Dragonslayer,” given gloriously melodic, bursting to the themes music by Emmy-winning composer David Fleming. A protege of Atli Örvarsson and Hans Zimmer on the likes of “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” and the live action “Lion King,” Fleming recently bagged an Emmy for “Jim Henson: Idea Man” and a nomination for the reboot of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” But if there’s a score that really lets us hear Fleming’s old school symphonic talent roar, its “Damsel.” A cornucopia of O.G fantasy scoring in a musical genre that doesn’t quite go for this kind of symphonic gusto now, “Damsel” is a stellar example of powerfully melodic sword & sorcery musical storytelling as old as “Krull,” “Harry Potter” and “Conan” time, replete with thundering brass, choral hosannahs and breathless excitement as the prototypical girl in need of saving ditches the dress for armor. But what really brings depth to Fleming’s “Damsel” is how nakedly out in the open it is for good stretches as the breathless heroine has to navigate her survival out of mountain that would give Sauron pause. The result is a score that not only pays off the costumes and effects, but more importantly the emotions of characters, in both human and fearsome form – all while paying off that awesome walking from the fireball scene.
(Hans Zimmer / WaterTower Music)
Hans Zimmer (photo by Warner Brothers)
Hans Zimmer’s Oscar winning, hallucinogenic space odyssey through Frank Herbert’s desert planet is “The Godfather II” to “The Godfather” here, expanding upon themes and ideas to turn what’s already an epic into something that’s musically cosmic in scope, both in terms of the inner mind, current political relevance and the outer worlds. From worm juice trips to behemoth rides and an atomics-enhanced battle, Zimmer’s music suffuses nearly every inch of this grand, impossibly better sequel like the glistening spice of Arrakis. Caught between acid rock, Arabic-influenced vocals, romantic melody and jarringly atonal experimental music, it’s a soundtrack that’s even more alien than before. Yet given director Dennis Villeneuve’s grounded approach that makes this way more “real” than David Lynch’s predecessor (which I love equally), Zimmer’s roaring, religioso weirdness is right at home in its own dream-like, beyond dense and imaginative way at making us believe a worm can nearly fly through the sand. What’s particularly odd in context is that while Nino Rota’s O.G. “Godfather” was disqualified for employing previous tunes from his cinematic homeland, its sequel score won a well-deserved Oscar. Decades later, the Harkonnens at the Academy have somehow deemed this shoe-in nomination score ineligible – even though within minutes it’s more than obvious that the first “Dune” score was just a jumping off point to exploring a whole new world rich in expanded sonics and sequel-born themes. Let’s just say that “eligibility” is the unjust killing word when it comes to Zimmer’s delirious, deserving and barrier-shattering magnum opus within a world of soundtrack scoring his ethnic inventiveness changed long ago, let alone the astonishing cultural approach for a metaphoric planet that’s too close for comfort to our own.
Daniel Pemberton (photo by Somayeh Jafari)
(Daniel Pemberton / Apple Music)
Just because this delightful throwback rom-com didn’t end up a blip on the box office radar doesn’t negate the utter charm of director Greg Berlanti’s happier spin on “Capricorn One’s” fake moon landing, circa 1969. It’s a retro American energy at once swinging jazz 60’s and symphonically patriotic that always creative English composer Daniel Pemberton blasts off with in style. With the insane stylism of two Spider-Verse movies as well as such ingenious throwback jazz scores as “Motherless Brooklyn” and “Oceans 8” under his belt, Pemberton is delightfully in his element here. Pouring on the playful space age lounge lizard energy for the meet cute coupling of Scarlett Johannson’s Doris Day and Channing Tatum’s Rock Hudson in the battle between liberated woman vs. square jawed caveman, Pemberton swings to the symphonic sincerity of really getting an astronaut on the moon – making both the romance and launch time elation earned on both counts. It’s no mean feat in comic conspiracy scoring that the emotion gets played for real, making “Fly Me to the Moon” into an unexpectedly moving and hiply magical trip up musical with fun thrust to spare.
Diego Baldenweg, Nora Baldenweg & Lionel Baldenweg
IN THE LAND OF SAINTS & SINNERS
(Diego Baldeneg, Nora Baldenweg & Lionel Baldenweg / Sony Music)
One might take the seemingly constant films of silver action fox Liam Neeson for granted. But then like a thunderbolt, “In the Land of Saints & Sinners” arrives to show that this old pro has still more than got it – while at the same time introducing the fresh musical faces with the Baldenweg clan of brothers Diego, Lionel and sister Nora. Hailing from Switzerland and raised in Australia with genes headlined by a musician father, the Baldenwegs deliver a breakout, and knockout score for Neeson’s best film in many years, as set in his home country. This “Land” speaks for the war-torn nature of Northern Ireland and of course the prototypical hitman who wants out. The Baldenwegs take to the Gaelic musical tradition like siblings to the green manor-pub born. At once singing with immediately identifiable ethnic instruments and lush symphonic arrangements, the score also doesn’t deny a dark religious sensibility that’s led brothers and sisters to destruction. Yet in its rich themes, it’s empathetic to Neeson’s hero of sorts, while not denying the very black humor at hand. But perhaps most striking about the Baldenwegs’ approach is the harmonica and guitar which could easily place this “Land” in Man with No Name Spain-shot Spaghetti territory, conveying a powerful sense of an inevitable, explosive showdown where Neeson will get to deliver what audiences have come for. But here it’s with astonishingly thematic power, no more so than when the Baldenwegs come to town with their particular set of skills with the year’s other top film score.
John Paesano
KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
(John Paesano / 20th Century Studios)
Since the monkeys learned speech and threw off their human enslaved shackles to take over the planet decades ago, Ape City has been visited by any number of composers from Jerry Goldsmith to Leonard Rosenman, Danny Elfman, Patrick Doyle and Michael Giacchino – all with their own distinct ideas on how to present a primal world gone mad. Now John Paesano makes an impressive time warp to “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” for his “Maze Runner” director Wes Ball. The results are majestic, terrifying and emotional to musically paint the primates as very human indeed. Paesano’s talent for the fantastical which can be heard in the likes of Netflix’s Marvel Universe and Amazon’s “Invincible” have never been bigger than for this “Kingdom,” which pays particular homage to Goldsmith and Giacchino while finding its own powerfully melodic way with the quest of a hawk-wielding tribe’s prince and a human woman with her own agenda as they venture into the shipwrecked domain of a gorilla with dreams of conquest. The big battle gives Paesano the chance to flex his symphonic muscles in any number of musical setpieces with a score that stakes Paesano’s majestic claim on an iconically long-running Hollywood franchise that only keeps getting better, no more so than with its scores.
Robin Carolan
(Robin Carolan / Back Lot Music)
Breaking out of the gate with an astonishing musical axe in the face on the smoldering, blood soaked volcano fields of the Viking slain and Valhalla-bound for Robert Eggers’ “The Northman,” Robin Carolan matched the transfixingly punishing filmmaker’s taste for raw authenticity with music that didn’t make you hear the barbarian period as much as make one feel that they were living it. Now given the task of embodying the iconic figure who’s Dracula by any other name for Eggars, Carolan impressively stakes what’s arguably the most poetically punishing and spasming vampire film yet made. Right from a music box theme that will transform into other ghastly shapes, Carolan conjures a fog-caked, sneakily thematic atmospheric for this gritty and very grim fairy tale that’s truly scary stuff. Skittering along a fine line between melody and dissonance, Carolan conjures a pure of heart innocence at the mercy of unfathomable evil, evoking the 1830’s string-heavy period as swept into an ageless witches brew of moaning voices, lurking brass rhythm, impressionism a la György Ligeti and ever building modern classicism in the vein of Arvo Pärt that in the end wisely chooses to play tragic emotion as opposed to outright horror. With a near subsonic motif for Nosferatu that’s the equivalent of a long-clawed shadow moving across the cityscape, Carolan touches his talons on every era of vampire scoring from Hans Salter to James Bernard, Harry Sukman and Wojiech Kilar for a memorable entry into the musical annals of the undead that truly goes for the throat.
Christopher Young
(Christopher Young / Intrada)
Bernard Herrmann created slow a conflagration with Laird Cregar’s crazed composer-conductor for “Hangover Square” before taking a cymbal shot with “The Storm Clouds Cantata” in “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” Then John Barry’s “Romance for Guitar and Orchestra” lethally landed Michael Caine for “Deadfall,” adding another faux classical piece to the rich tradition of music designed to work as much for a cinematic concert stage as the story being told around it. But none of these performances are as perilous for your souls or your children’s’ as the piece in “The Piper,” a diabolically clever, music-centric horror film written and directed by Iceland’s Erlinger Thoroddsen that imagines a devilish “Concerto for Children” composed by no less a diabolical musician than a very real Pied Piper of Hamlin, whose concert serves as a conduit to raise his vengeful spirit from hell. When you’ve got the idea of unlocking a piece of a musical puzzle with a twisted fairy tale sound, there’s no better composer to call upon than America’s Christopher Young. Unleashing a legendary horrific score in service of England’s Clive Barker and his Cenobites from “Hellraiser” puzzle box, Young’s horror scoring has been as memorably melodic as its ability to be terrifyingly abstract. Having certainly scarred more than a few generations of kids for life, Young’s new horrific lead doesn’t get more hypnotically mind-ripping than in this rousing, award-winning magnum opus, conjuring a classical piece that makes mincemeat out of both orchestra and audience in a chiller that brings an unholy musical legend to life, as heard in the mind of an iconic horror maestro stepping into the rat catching child snatcher of Hamlin’s poison pen, and pipe.
Kris Bowers
(Kris Bowers / Back Lot Music)
In the annals of movie robots live action and animated, few hear the mothering instinct with such gloriously exuberant music as that provided by Kris Bowers for “The Wild Robot” in the year’s best score. The acclaimed CG toon feature from “Croods” and “How To Train Your Dragon” director Chris Sanders winningly adapts Peter Brown’s books about a robot named Roz for that goes native to become an ersatz Doctor Dolittle for an island’s animals, and one goose in particular that Roz wants to help migrate before a human-sent robot horde tries to put a fiery damper on things. It’s a musical lesson in nature and nurture that’s majestically played by Bowers, who opens up his richly melodic style to epic new heights as his energetically emotional score talks to the animals, and teaches a mechanoid to care, all while casting a warm spell on the audience for this acclaimed fable that stands humanistically tall in the annals of Hollywood robots, no more so than in a particularly exhilarating duck migration scene that’s all about how to use a symphonic score to channel a sense of wonder and make a robot musically human.
Amelia Warner
(Amelia Warner / Walt Disney Records)
There’s been a winning rush to the rivers and the oceans with the dramatizations of historical rowing and swimming underdogs from “The Boys in the Boat” to “Nyad.” But if there’s one composer who reaches the shore with soaringly emotional symphonic strokes to spare, then it’s Amelia Warner and her “Young Woman and the Sea.” It’s a glorious Disney throwback to the live action grrll power likes of “The Journey of Natty Gann” and “Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken” in capturing an American woman’s determination to swim The English Channel from France to Britian. Making her own voyage from “Aeon Flux” actress to composer with the likes of “Mary Shelley” and “Wild Mountain Thyme,” Warner’s big splash in this ocean has the kind of stirring writing and orchestral feeling that shows a major scoring talent has arrived on our shores as it conveys both moxie and peril in the best sports movie underdog scoring tradition, not only bringing new celebration for a forgotten tickertape icon but showing a fresh, exuberant talent that dynamically powers through the Channel with joyous musical empathy to cheer on.
THE RUNNERS UP
Brian Tyler (photo by Cullin Tobin at Lindeman & Associates)
(Brian Tyler / Back Lot Music)
Definitely not a composer you want to be in an old dark (and bolted) house with, Brian Tyler still is more than fun to hear as his rambunctiously full-blooded scoring has made mincemeat out of uncountable unfortunates, particularly when he’s in the company of Radio Silence, a filmmaking team that’s put a fun bite into the horrors of “Ready or Not” and the last two “Scream” pictures. Now they’re doing a delicious vampiric riff on O’Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief” as a deceptively cute ballerina kid is held hostage, only to make her kidnappers woe the day, “Abigail” delivers the kind of fun full-blooded horror scoring that lets you hear Tyler’s malicious joy like never before. With fangs firmly in cheek, the composer music goes to the imprisoned mansion rafters with a grandly imposing orchestra, ripping apart the waltzing idea of Swan Lake, while relishing in putting the string and percussion kibosh on the ever-diminishing cast of hapless way older than she looks child snatchers. What does get delivered here is the kind of big horror action we’ve come to expect from Tyler, as done with the humorously swaggering energy of toying with one’s food. When so much scoring of this type is done with dissonance, the real last laugh is this killer melodic approach.
Umberto Smerilli at Wider Studio Music
(Umberto Smerilli / A24 Music)
One of the year’s truly unique satires from outsider-obsessed filmmaker Aaron Schimberg, who last had “Under the Skin” star Adam Pearson making a point about sticking out in society’s eye with “Chained for Life.” Now a similarly afflicted character starts off as Winter Soldier (and Donald Trump) star Sebastian Stan before morphing into a more “handsome” face, only to have his new life subverted when babe magnet Pearson pops into the picture. Composer Umberto Smerilli’s ironic, woefully jazzy score effectively captures the loneliness of Sebastian’s character – only to musically show his new face can’t mask the inner turmoil that turns his new life into a train wreck when he can’t compete with his old self come to life. Smerilli’s impactful theme-driven score plays like a boozy, neo-noir barfly nightmare as crossed with “Taxi Driver’s” loner vibes, here with the woeful sax, elegiac piano and strings. It’s music that also often flies off the impressionistic handle as it pays off the adage of being careful what you wish for with very dark, if not creepy skin-crawling dissonance-topped humor that helps make the film uncomfortable for all of the right reasons. Where many A24 films aim at outrightly provoking, this is a score and picture that are truly under the skin, especially given Smerilli’s impressively black-humored, finally crescendo’ing tale of doppelganger comeuppance.
Andrew Lockington
(Andrew Lockington / Netflix Music)
Canadian-born composer Andrew Lockington has rocked Los Angeles and duked it out with Kong-sized critters, but he’s perhaps had no more musically formidable character to play than Jenny on the Bot as the pop icon powers “Atlas’” mecha. Given what’s essentially a sci-fi buddy cop movie (and one that’s way, way better than the reviews it got), Lockington’s mission is to create a muscular future tapestry of mecha-suit kick-assery and emo, both dimensions of which he delivers in spades with his impressive score. Constructed out of organic symphonic melody that takes the lead over the synths that could have driven this score, Lockington creates an interplanetary sense of adventure and most importantly all the feels of a growing, very unlikely relationship whose end just might have you reaching for a tissue. Draped with haunted voices that are revealed in Atlas’ guilt-wracked past, Lockington’s real triumph here is delivering an unexpected depth of poignant power to the steely, thematic excitement for this thoroughly entertaining example of musically suiting up with JLO flair.
Dominic Lewis
(Dominic Lewis / Back Lot Music)
There’s no beginning to count the number of Hollywood stuntpeople who’ve pulled off their leaps, burns, punches, car crashes and no small amount of mayhem to the tune of Britain-born composer Dominic Lewis. But if there was a filmmaker that Lewis’ often humorous energy was meant to team with, then it was stuntman-turned-director David Leitch when he took a hilarious, hybrid scoring ride aboard a hitman-filled “Bullet Train” that deftly blended a pop sensibility with orchestral action and rocking insanity. Now that approach is on 80’s steroids for Leitch’s big screen cheeky take on the TV series “The Fall Guy,” whose Lee Majors stuntman was often pulled into crime-busting hijinks. Now embodied by Ryan Gosling and teamed for sweetly battling romance with his onscreen director Emily Blunt, Dominic Lewis takes Kiss’ “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” and makes it the main theme of a score that also manages to put “Miami Vice” and Ennio Morricone into play for its delightful, distinctly 80’s style score that mashes together mullet era synths, big old-school orchestral action and a winking rock and roll attitude for this explosive rom-com. It’s a score that’s no stunt when it comes to Lewis’ ability to kinetically craft music that’s as clever as it is hugely entertaining.
Lia Quyang Rusli
(Lia Quyang Rusli / A24 Music)
Character comedian Julio Torres’ somewhat autobiographical tale of his miserable paycheck life before hitting it big is the “Office Space” we deserve for the 21st century, a hilariously blank faced response to the micro and major aggressions of the job market that gets delightfully eccentric scoring from Lia Ouyang Rusli (“Bruiser,” “Dreams in Nightmares”). Keyed off of the Latin magical realism that suffuse Torres’ immigrant character (and his looming, more potent than ever threat of deportation), Rusli uses vocalese as a Greek chorus along with a retro 8-bit sound in a classically ironic, stone-faced way that would definitely be at home in the Wes Anderson-verse. Bubbling pianos, ethnic percussion, warped clock-like beats and synth melodies are on the edge of Gen X urban panic in a way that also evokes the precious art world of Tilda Swinton’s delightful harridan. It’s a score halfway between dream and nightmare that likely every hapless person bouncing around an employment agency hears in this wackily thematic, yet graceful score that embodies an eccentric subconscious with startling creativity and no small amount of humorous irony.
Mark Korven
(Mark Korven / 20th Century Studios)
Few composers specializing in horror’s queasier offerings like “Cube,” “The Lighthouse” an “The Black Phone” have the unearthly ability to truly get under the skin like Canada’s Mark Korven. Now with “The First Omen,” Korven takes on a particularly unforgiving franchise, whose sequels seemed doomed to never capture the satanically psychological dark magic of the original that netted Jerry Goldsmith his only Oscar for Best Score, and a nomination for the unholy song “Ave Satani.” Yet the most shocking thing about “The First Omen” is that it’s the most daring and successful “Omen” picture since the original with this prequel directed with visually atmospheric and suspensefully ghastly effectiveness by Arkasha Stevenson. While Stevenson and Korven could have delivered a very similar Antichrist, both artists go out of their way to create a truly disturbing film that’s its unholy musical infant. Korven takes the Latin-inspired musical idea of Goldsmith’s unmatchable score and goes his own, distinct way with it. Sure, you get the black mass chorus (and of course That Theme), but here it’s uniquely scary, skin-crawling stuff. Choruses moan and cackle, a horn blares, and the orchestra veers between the melodic and the dissonant to create an unnervingly nightmarish soundtrack as a young American nun in Vatican City falls deeper into a conspiratorial rabbit hole where escape seems impossible. For a composer with no end of music doing a danse macabre between the tonal and the transgressive, his read on a typical “Omen” score is scary in a whole new dark light that gives him the musical Mark of the Beast.
John Gürtler and Jan Miserre
(John Gürtler , Jan Miserre / Universal Music)
An alcoholic’s true-life recovery provides a transfixing experience that blends sardonic documentary-like narration, animation and an escape into Scottish myth of human-transforming seals and world-encircling dragons – all of which become metaphors for a woman who gradually gets the booze monkey off her back in a place where there’s nowhere left to run but into herself. The duo of Englishman John Gürtler and German-born composer Jan Miserre capturing Rona’s inner journey while contrasting the gorgeously bleak nature around her with the hypnotic house beats of her damaging partying, with one location transforming to the next as they hear the dream-like lyricism of purposeful loneliness. Traversing ancient and modern musical worlds, the score converges in an astonishing, orchestrally rising cue as the antiheroine becomes a Prospero of sorts, conjuring a symphony of waves in her mind’s eye, a dazzling concert of redemption if there ever was one in self-imposed exile that the score powerfully embodies.
Alfonso de Vilallonga
(Alfonso de Vilallonga / Neon)
Using a dog’s quest for his robot pal as a metaphor about the death and birth of friendships, not to mention relationships is the moving charm for “Robot Dreams,” with music all the more important as there’s no dialogue to be had. But leave it to Spanish-speaking composer Alfonso de Vilallonga (“The Bookshop,” “It Snows in Benidorm”) to come up with an ingenious approach for countryman director Pablo Berger. Magical memories of the Peanuts gang quickly come to mind with Vilallonga’s intimate jazz approach, where jaunty pianos, vibes and rhythm speak volumes for the thrill of a lonely dog becoming increasingly desperate to free his TV-bought mechanoid pal from rusting on a Coney Island beach in an all-animal 1984 NYC universe (hence tunes as well from Public Enemy an Earth, Wind & Fire). It’s a score that’s simplicity at its finest, with a piano no more hopefully aching, or unexpected instruments like an accordion or electric organ getting put into the unplugged mix. Going from jazz swing to blues, calypso drums and even Swingles Singers acapella vocalese, its music that has a real magic and charm to it that recalls the more intimate work of Randy Newman – not to mention a sense of sadness and hope that comes from trying to find connection in the big, multi-ethnic non talking animal toon city.
Fatima Al Qadiri
(Fatima Al Qadiri / Milan Records)
One of the most unique composers on the world soundtrack stage who’s unique world sound made its cinematic debut with the 2019 Dakar-set ghost story “Atlanticsm,” the Senegalese-born Al Qadiri’s ethereal approach gets sardonically twisted LA style when a pornographically doxed email signals a “Skincare” magnate’s paranoid descent to madness. Set in plastic surgery shiny 2000’s-era LA, the harp-inflected gossamer melodies in “Skincare” are all about surface self-love become menacingly percussive and lushly warped melodies that evoke new wave music as much as they do the deliberately candy-colored noir for the cosmetic-obsessed character’s unravelling. But even with the soundtrack’s menacingly glossy satire, Al Qadiri’s singularly transfixing, often dream-like sound now shows her as one of indie music’s most interesting practitioners at translating her sound to a domain in search of fresh voices, here sardonically scarring the desperate search for a fresh face.
Tim Williams
(Tim Williams / Movie Score Media)
Doing yeoman work for no end of horror films from “Brightburn” to “Peril” and “Bagman” among his always solid quality scores, Tim Williams’ true sleeper is essentially a no F’s given reboot of “Drop Dead Fred,” here in somewhat autobiographical fashion from writer-director Caroline Lindy as a Broadway hopeful singer survives cancer but can’t get up the nerve to take on her abusive director boyfriend. That is until the monster in the closet with an attitude pops in to offer advice, and something a lot more. Graced with two wonderful, Broadway-worthy self-empowering songs by The Lazours that have it all over “Wicked” for me (sorry), Williams’ empathetically gets across the punching bag nature of the sad-sack, broken hearted heroine with delicate guitar melody before his more familiar dissonant horror chops arise, as there is “monster” in the title. But it’s all a set up for a score whose moving power comes from the inevitable beauty and the beast attraction. Sure the furry mischief maker might be a sarcastic walking F bomb whom you can imagine being best bros with Deadpool, but the melody that Williams gets going for you to buy this unlikely couple is what will really rip your heart out in this wonderfully thematic and yearning score, yet with an inherent payback anger that puts a neat spin on Williams’ way with creatures, which now finally gets its romantic moment in the sun.
THE COMPOSERS TO WATCH
Jherek Bischoff
If composing is painting, then Jherek Bischoff knows the poignant tonal hand movements to convey all the colors of anguish in “Exhibiting Forgiveness.” (to be released on Lakeshore Records). As written and directed by acclaimed artist-turned-filmmaker Titus Kapher in his emotionally devastating feature debut, “Forgiveness” is the stuff of beyond obviously autobiographical wounds. Here, the self-taught artist imagines himself as Tarrell (André Holland), a painter wracked by memories of the abuse he and his mother suffered at the hands of the crack-addicted La’Ron (John Earl Jelks). His process of anger and healing spills out in his canvases as he surreally transforms his neighborhood into paintings. Hailing from an alt. rock world far divorced from Tarrell’s beyond their commonality of teaching themselves their art, the American-born Jherek Bischoff brushes the score with jazz and gospel inflections, thematically merging them with solemn, soulful piano and a soothing female voice. Menacing textures wake Tarrell screaming from sleep to punch a hole in his wall, while nostalgic, surreal textures transform a childhood neighborhood into ironic canvases of the black experience. It’s a deeply reflective, yet subdued score as tone poem, taking a lyrical approach to a demon-driven creative process and how to come to terms with childhood hell, whose instigator now reveals unexpected shades – all leading to the film’s moving, climactic title. It’s a musical portrait of an artist quite unlike any other that’s been scored and shown before, a most promising exhibition indeed for Bischoff’s unique musical colors.
Nick Chuba (photo by Dabling Harvard)
Nick Chuba came up as a protégé of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, a collaboration that’s seen him team with Atticus’ brother Leopold on such shows as “The Girl from Plainville,” “Dr Death” and the Emmy nominated “Shogun,” Chuba is also making impressive inroads as a solo composer beyond his often moody sound. And with “Thelma” (Team Thelma) it’s positively a fun blast alongside octogenarian June Squibb’s grandma hellbent to make scammers pay. Taking his own cue from the jazzily impossible missions of Lalo Schifrin, Chuba puts a rhythmic spring in the heroine’s motor scooter step as she shows age is only a state of mind when it comes to payback. Flutes, drums and brass become the signature of her Squibb’s two-person IMF team with the recently departed John Shaft, playfully conveying military cunning, whip-smart planning and under 10 mph action in the fun energetic score, one pulled off humorous compassion as opposed to condescension towards the oldster characters. It’s a attitude that also marks filmmaker Josh Margolin’s fact-based movie about his own grandma who wouldn’t take theft lying down. Yet Chuba’s sometimes wistful score also doesn’t deny the gravity of the years that Thelma’s characters are up against – even when it comes to the villain. It’s fun, inventive scoring that’s the definition of hip indie picture musical moxie and Chuba’s rising solo talent.
Martin Dirkov
Brian Irvine
Danny Forde
Fun City’s, and now America’s King of Sleaze gets an appropriately oily 80’s electro score for “The Apprentice” (Filmtrax Ltd.) from main composer Martin Dirkov (who’d scored “Apprentice” director Ali Abbasi’s “Holy Spider”) along with Brian Irvine (“The Flats”) and Danny Forde (“Ace My Space”) – all with music from the synth-seasoned David Holmes (“Oceans Eleven”). You can positively taste the era’s gaudy Yuppie sleaze and tailored clothing with an impressively cohesive sound that’s spot-on Giorgio Moroder as “American Gigolo,” “Flashdance” and “Scarface” vibes join with some spot-on Studio 54 disco beats. It’s a note-perfect keyboard throwback to an era of easy money, drugs and sex that comprise the pilgrim’s progress of a once-hapless young real estate Turk, and his Mephistophelean relationship with the self-loathing, red-hating lawyer kingpin who shows him the Manhattan ropes. It’s a portrait that’s pure, transfixing queasiness, music tellingly more befitting of annihilating robots then flesh and blood creatures. Yet there’s also an icy, elegiac tone that unifies the soundtrack, the cool and pulsating inorganic feeling of sold souls and the moral price to be paid as bodies and values hit the dance floor on the way to the top, music that gives the feeling of devilishly smirking at the Fait accompli that makes “The Apprentice” a winner amid some very cool retro scores that could only hope for a subject like this.
Blair Mowat
Hammer and Dr Who megafan Blair Mowat unleashes his crazily visaged talent for another modern transformation of the classic tale that’s a clever follow up to the infamous English studio’s “Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde.” This latest spin on “Doctor Jekyll” (Blair Mowat Records) gives a diabolically chuckle for Eddie Izzard in the two roles as such. Of course a nice guy ex-con just trying to keep his job while taking care of The Doc is no match for the derangement ahead, which Mowat plows into like a black horror comedy scoring freight train of choruses, dainty bells and an operatic orchestra. Recalling the likes of Danny Elfman, Alan Silvestri and David Arnold in conveying a sense of joy for evil run amuck, not to mention the full blooded stormy melodic ghosts of way more serious Hammer composers of yore. Mowat’s wacky “Jekyll” is a delight that shows the composer’s ability to capture extreme characters with strikingly fun like this and “Nolly” with richly thematic scoring that bodes well for notoriety on our shores.
Adam Price
Peter Gregson
Hmm. Could it be SATAN again on this list? It sure can when he’s got talented practitioners of his alluring music to the unfortunate, especially when a victim of the Dakota apartment coven is already marked to a prequel fate when she takes resident in “Apartment 7A” (Lakeshore Records). Of course composers Adam Price (“Wild Tokyo”) and Peter Gregson (“Waco: American Apocalypse”) pay wonderful end credit tribute to Krzysztof Komeda’s original voice-lullaby theme of “Rosemary’s Baby.” But this score is very much in their own creepy room, turning female tones to vocalese as the music weaves a soothing spell to lure a success-hungry dancer to birth the Antichrist. But the welcome mat soon gets pulled as the nerve-rending nature of her intended path becomes clear. “Apartment 7A’s” more modern rhythmic suspense definitely is contemporarily hip for the setting of 1968 in this alternately enticing and disturbing score that gives both the fashionable upper west side and the devil his due.
Logan Nelson
Lost in the shuffle of celebrity is the actual human being beyond the artifice both created and foisted upon a beautiful girl-woman to the Hollywood manor born. Now Logan Nelson’s hears “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes” (Unreleased) to gorgeously reveal a far more vulnerable, if still canny personality. Moving from the sweetness of “National Velvet’s” child discovery to the imagined homewrecker of Carrie Fischer’s mom and finally a swan song that changes a nation’s perception of the AIDs crisis that took her best pal Rock Hudson’s life, Nelson captures both the Hollywood dream world and the reality behind it, a playground that Taylor luxuriated in. Listening to the sweeping orchestra, jazz vibes and overall empathy that Nelson gives his iconic subject, one might mistake this for the soundtrack of a make-believe romantic suspense film, which is very much how Taylor lived an often-engineered life under a microscope. as the documentary-centric composer now impressively expresses the pinnacle of Hollywood star power for all of its pleasure and tragedy with music that’s all about a woman who embodied the lush life and scandal of the dream factory like no one else.
Raffertie
Indie artist / composer Raffertie (aka Benjamin Stefanski) has been laying down a distinctive alt. sound with the likes of “I May Destroy You,” “The Continental” and “Bull.” But his intoxicating grooves have never flowed so audaciously as with “The Substance” (Waxwork Records), filmmaker Coralie Fargeat’s no F’s given, altogether hilarious gross-out takedown of Hollywood’s ageistic cult of impossibly beautiful people. Slashing ultra-aerobicized club beats join with eerie synth stuff that deliciously spells out boss level body horror. Raffertie’s unholy house music is ingeniously designed to push buttons, whether as he melodically lures with the promise of youth, and then gutturally delivering the dissonant nightmare, the scoring spinning from intoxication to Abu Ghraib cell worthy madness. Along the way he has fun with the electrified nature of mad science scoring as well as the trance beats a younger, twisted self gets her sex and popularity points on with. That it all morphs into one giant, fleshy sound mass is the gotcha joke of this deliciously cruel music / anti-music enterprise wrapped up with a blissfully lovely, keyboard street sweeping punch line for this brilliantly crazed satire.
Isabella Summers
Best known for her alt. pop personage within Florence and the Machine, Isabella Summers is steadily building an often humorous monster career with the likes of the “Godfather” making of imagining of “The Offer,” “Kaos’” modern Greek god satire and the antics of “Hitpig.” Her stylistic pieces fit together with no more charm than for “Lisa Frankenstein” (Back Lot Music). Given the frame of a snarky Diablo Cody script and electrified direction by Zelda Williams, this droll gem that deserved better certainly displays its horror comedy chops in style, from rapturous orchestra a la “Young Frankenstein” (which was a la Franz Waxman to begin with) to Danny Elfman-worthy gleefully ghoulish orchestrations. But what’s so much fun here is how Summers latches onto the mad goth girl’s rock and roll ennui, bringing down the symphonic lightning, woeful violins and mock-theremin with undead grrll power delight.
Steffen Thum
Frequently in the composing company of Max Aruj for the likes of “Crawl,” as well as this year’s most dangerous bro game thriller “Betrayal,” Steffen Thum has also impressed on his own with the muscular period barbarity of the appalling reality-based “Stockholm Massacre.” But the most immersive of the composer’s triple threat of toxic masculinity this year belongs to “Slingshot” (Movie Score Media, as is “Betrayal” and “Stockholm”). Space is certainly no longer the final frontier when it comes to gracing the cosmos with lush fusions of orchestra and electronics and propulsive suspense, and though shot to Jupiter on a more claustrophobic budget than its cousins, Thum’s way of exploring the film’s puzzle box beyond its confines makes this score stand in good company with such similarly styled co-pilots as “Interstellar” and “Ad Astra.” Thum’s melodic soundscapes are rhythmically mesmerizing while also getting across the disastrous pressure cooker situation bedeviling three astronauts. It’s an approach that’s equally focused on the big, unfathomable picture while deducing what the hell is going on before the panic butting gets breathlessly hit. It’s Thum’s impressive musical balance between a sense of wonder and fear that lets us hear the magical and ominous toll of space exploration in the mind’s fevered eye.
Simon Waskow
Part subspecies banshee on the lose horror and partly a dark, humorous Brothers Grimm-esque Bavarian fairy tale of a tormented young woman dealing with a mad scientist in place of an evil witch, Tilman Singer’s “Cuckoo” (Filmtrax Ltd.) has a delicious weirdness where sound is its own character, particularly when accentuated by the wonderfully eerie score by Singer’s “Luz” composer Simon Waskow. Given his background in philosophy and language before turning to music, Waskow definitely knows something about the psychological power of sonics, particularly when it comes to crafting a haunting score. Crafting avian-like motifs from percussive tapping to squeaks along with fluttering flute, Waskow’s atmosphere of low voices, bell percussion and grungy, Nick Cave worthy guitar lets us know something really is not alright with the kids in the Vienna woods, let alone a wooden sanitarium. Further enhancing the dread is an organ, Giallo-ready retro keyboards and humming, all finally coming together in terrifying, trance-inducing form. Waskow ingeniously creates the metaphor of stolen children as well as being hypnotized by a bird of another terrifying stripe to cast a nuttily creative musical spell, making “Cuckoo” a cinematic and soundtrack a standout in what’s already a banner year for bizarre indie horror.
Gints Zilbalodis
Rihards Zalupe
A banner year continues for the wordless (though not meow, grunt or bark free) animation and the music it inspires in the astonishing ““Flow” (Milan Records) as a fraidy cats leads an incredible animal voyage through a rapidly sinking environment. The meditative, yet mysterious tones of the videogame “Myst” also come to mind in the depopulated, Oriental-influenced ruins and statues that give rise to the Asian and modern classical influences in this organic and synth musical Waterworld conjured by Latvian director-composer Gints Zilbalodis (“Away”) and Rihards Zalupe (“Mutiny”). They don’t so much score the movie as use their entrancing blend of minimalism and rhythm to go with the flow of the ever-rising lake and oceans that propel the boat of these castaway critters. Ranging from glistening Zen melodies to dog running rambunctiousness, “Flow’s” score washes over you with its animal pilgrim’s progress. It’s an approach that allows for playful inquisitiveness and apprehension, where both animals and the human audience can’t begin to grasp where they’re heading, yet are both enraptured by the visuals and tones of a ride to the rock tower horizon. It’s a musical quest that washes over you as it fulfills both naturalistic animal antics and something way more cosmically Zen.
Leave a Reply