Road to Perdition
Thomas Newman is a bastard. With a few simple piano chords he can tug relentlessly at my heartstrings like virtually nobody else. It’s hard to single out just one score to account for his long career, American Beauty, Finding Nemo, The Shawshank Redemption, hell, even Skyfall. I think, realistically, it has to be this, almost purely on the strength of the above piece and the scene it’s used in. What I love about Newman is just how much he can do with so little, the minor chord piano, the strings, perhaps a few little unusual percussive flourishes, like a zither or just the chirping of cicadas. The man is a magician and I kinda hate him for it.
Utopia
The fact that we’re not getting a 3rd season of Utopia deeply saddens me. Throughout its run on Channel 4 it has proven again and again just how provocative, powerful and beautiful British drama can be in the right hands. Chilean composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer had a big hand in that. Much of the score is relentless, infused with rock, hip-hop and electronic elements but when it needs to move you, as above, it fucking suplexes you, throws you into a giant blender with your underwear pulled over your head, takes your mother out for a nice seafood dinner and never calls her again.
The Walking Dead Game
Is it just me or are storylines in gaming getting sadder? The episodic Walking Dead game series certainly testifies to that. Many consider it to be a far more engaging and absorbing piece of fiction than the TV series that it accompanies. Composer Jared Emerson-Johnson has been pumping out game scores for over a decade, but TWD is pretty much his opus. Sweeping, atmospheric and utterly soul-destroying by turns, this versatile score even won him a BAFTA.
Requiem for a Dream
I have a really hard time recommending Requiem for a Dream. Don’t get me wrong here, it’s magnificent, Aronofsky’s work is almost uniformly so, but it will destroy you. Clint Mansell’s work on it was brought to wider acclaim when a more epic rendition was used for The Lord of the Ring: The Two Towers trailer. Since then the overture has become iconic, but the real version is far more unsettling, it cuts deep, particularly if you’re seeing all the awful things it ran beneath in your mind’s eye as you hear it.
Journey
This game… This game is just extraordinary on almost every level. Developed by the same team that managed to create an engaging game out of navigating a petal across wind currents, Journey is at its base a nomadic quest from A to B across a changing, challenging land. Oh, right, yeah it’s also so beautiful I could die. Austin Wintory (who also walked away with a BAFTA) deserves as much credit as anyone else for this marvel. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve put the soundtrack on and just gotten lost in it, it’s not healthy, I have things to do.
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