Back catalogue: Soundtracks

Review: Since its release in 1997, David Lynch's neo-noir-horror, Lost Highway, has become something of a cult classic. The accompanying soundtrack album, here reissued on weighty double vinyl, is similarly revered in some circles. Put together by Nine Inch Nails' frontman Trent Reznor, composer Angelo Badalamenti, and punk-turned-producer Barry Adamson, it's a mish-mash of darkly intense songs (Bowie, Smashing Pumpkins, Lou Reed and Rammstein all contribute), and the kind of creepy, other-worldly soundscapes that have always been a feature of Lynch's work. It's arguably the latter tracks, composed by Badalementi and Adamson, which remain creepily potent all these years on.

Review: Denis Villeneuve's psychological thriller about a man who sees his doppelganger in a movie, and begins an obsessive search for the look-alike, is a strange, tense, highly stylised dive into a world that's informed by some of the masters of surrealist tension. At times invoking landmark mind-benders such as David Lynch's Lost Highway, albeit with a far less experimental narrative structure, to say its score works hard to set the tone is putting it mildly.
Created by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans, Enemy's soundtrack is a joy, but also thoroughly trippy. It's unnerving, and yet inviting, laidback while also mournful, and always has this air of the unknown and uncertain about it. Boasting white noise, strings, drones, woodwind, elements of classical, jazz and library sounds are all here, at times invoking space age imagery, in other moments taking use back to the great mysteries of 20th Century cinema.

Review: Music on Vinyl gives the full treatment to Volker Bertelmann's epic score to All Quiet On The Western Front and serves it up on limited and numbered 180-gram audiophile transparent smokey vinyl with a four-page booklet featuring movie still to boot. Set during World War I, the film follows an idealistic young German soldier and received a leading 14 nominations at the 76th British Academy Film Awards, including one for Best Original Score. It is a truly immersive listen that captures the range of emotions conveyed in the film.

Review: When it comes to classical and orchestral worlds things often look painfully whitewashed and very male dominated, at least in so far as conduction goes. Talk about understatements. Enter Jongnic Bontemps, one name on a growing list of incredible talent changing that stereotype up for the better. Schooled in church and jam music, formally educated in classical, to date he has been responsible for no less than 50 significant projects spanning video games, cinema, TV series, shorts and documentary films. His contribution to Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is emblematic of his dexterity, a collection that shifts between bombastic and high tech, machines supporting brass and string crescendos, then quiet, patient, and at times tense work, marking him out as a true musical storyteller extraordinaire.