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From Pshycotic Beats to Elvis Presley: Hot Corn’s playlist

Turn up the volume: here are the best songs and scores listened to this week by the editorial staff

KILLER SHANGRI-LAH – Pshycotic Beats. From Killing Eve. Starring Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer, Killing Eve centers on two women: Eve (Oh) is a bored, whip-smart, pay-grade MI5 security officer whose desk-bound job doesn’t fulfill her fantasies of being a spy. Villanelle (Comer) is a mercurial, talented killer who clings to the luxuries her violent job affords her. Penned by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and based on the novellas by Luke Jennings, Killing Eve will follow these two women, equally obsessed with each other. Pshycotic Beats’s Killer Shangri-Lah is the perfect song to capture the TV show’s atmosphere.

 

MISTRESS – Nico Muhly. From Howards End. Howards End is a 2017 four-part television drama series based on the novel of the same name by E. M. Forster. The series is adapted by Kenneth Lonergan and directed by Hettie MacDonald. Encounter of three social classes of England at the beginning of the 20th century: the Victorian capitalists (the Wilcoxes) considering themselves as aristocrats, whose only god is money; the enlightened bourgeois (the Schlegels), humanistic and philanthropic; and the workers (the Basts), fighting to survive. Modern classical composer Nico Muhly wrote the beautiful and elegant piano driven score.

 

LAMP POST – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis. From Kings. Kings is a 2018 crime drama film directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven (Mustang). Set in 1992, it follows Millie (Halle Berry), a woman living in South Central Los Angeles who takes in at-risk youths to live in her home. When the infamous Rodney King riots grip the city, Millie and her cavalcade of adoptees are thrust into the mounting chaos sprouting all around them. Scoring duties for Kings fell to renowned Australian musicians Nick Cave & Warren Ellis. In recent years, they have become a power couple in the world of film scoring thanks to their impressive work on films such as Hell or High Water, Wind River, and the National Geographic series Mars.

 

ALL TOGETHER NOW – Marco Beltrami. From A Quiet Place. A Quiet Place is a horror film directed by John Krasinski, who also stars in the film with real-life spouse Emily Blunt. The film, produced by Michael Bay’s company, Platinum Dunes, tells the story of a family of four who must live life in silence while hiding from creatures that hunt by sound. The film premiered at SXSW 2018 where it received critical acclaim. Composer Marco Beltrami (3:10 to Yuma, The Hurt Locker, Logan) produced a bone chilling score that is a perfectly companion to this almost silent, innovative horror film!

 

COMMON EVIL – Martin Todsharow. From The Captain. In the last moments of World War II, a young German soldier fighting for survival finds a Nazi captain’s uniform. Impersonating an officer, the man quickly takes on the monstrous identity of the perpetrators he is trying to escape from. The Captain’s score was composed by German composer Martin Todsharow. After 5 years of study at the Musikhochschule “Hanns Eisler” Berlin in the early 90’s , Martin Todsharow first composed for the theatre before going to the UK. As a performer in pop and art music, he became in 1997 a full film composer and a music supervisor. He composed for The Captain a dark and intense score that pushes the surrealistic and strained adventure of the captain.

 

PRELUDE/RADAR – Bernard Herrmann. From The Day the Earth Stood Still. La-La Land Records present a re-issue of legendary composer Bernard Herrmann’s original motion picture score to the classic 1951 sci-fi feature film 1985’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, starring Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal and Hugh Marlowe, and directed by Robert Wise. Composer Herrmann’s iconic score is a milestone that anticipated electronic music with its then unheard-of instrumentation for electric violin, electric bass, electric theremins, four pianos, four harps and what the composer called “a very strange section of about 30-odd brass.” It’s a landmark score for a landmark film – a motion picture still very much relevant in its warnings of nuclear proliferation. Produced by Nick Redman, and restored and mastered by Mike Matessino, this classic soundtrack title returns in print – in a limited edition of 3000 Units – with new art-design by Jim Titus.

 

THE REASCENT OF MAN – David Shire. From Monkeys Shine. Music Box Records presents an extended soundtrack release of Monkey Shines: An Experiment in Fear, George A. Romero’s vivid 1988 psychological horror thriller . The music was composed by David Shire (The Conversation, Zodiac), in one of only a few excursions into horror territory made by the composer. Shire’s skillful music is an engaging mix of sweeping lyrical melodies and jungle drum timbres and tempos that augment Romero’s visualized moments of fear and suspense. Shire delineates the thought-world of the capuchin with a growing interaction of sonic discord and shocking stingers that electrify Romero’s carefully choreographed scares. In following the contours of Romero’s scary storyline Shire also composes some tremendous action music which intensifies the film’s excitement, suspense, and roaring action, all of which makes for a tense and thrilling listening experience.

 

SUSPICIOUS MINDS – Elvis Presley. From Elvis Presley: The Searcher. The Searcher‘s soundtrack includes the 18 essential Elvis hits, powerful performances, and rare alternative versions of songs at the musical core of the groundbreaking three-hour two-part film which focuses on the development of his spellbinding artistry, from his early blues and country roots and influences through his seismic contributions to popular culture to his 1976 recording sessions at the Jungle Room in Graceland. The two-part documentary film, directed by Emmy and Grammy award winner Thom Zimny, uses rare footage lensed throughout Elvis’ life and career as a means of exploring his singular musical vision in all its complexity.

 

ALASTROREN MENDEKUA – Pascal Gaigne. From Errementari. Quartet Records presents the soundtrack album of a new score by Goya Award-winning composer Pascal Gaigne for the supernatural horror fantasy directed by Pauk Urkijo Alijo and produced by Alex de la Iglesia. In a small town in Álava, ten years after the First Carlist War in 1833, a government commissioner named Alfredo investigates an event that takes him to a sinister smithy in the forest, where a dangerous and lonely blacksmith named Patxi lives. Pascal Gaigne provides a 77-minute big symphonic big tour-de-force score, almost operatic, written for full orchestra and chorus (with subtle electronic effects). One of the composer’s most special scores—performed by the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra under the baton of David Hernando Rico—it will surprise his many fans with its change of style.

 

THE CASSETTE – Frank Ilfman. From Ghost Stories. Ghost Stories is a well-crafted ode to old-school horror movies and adapted from directors Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s successful London play. It stars Nyman himself with Paul Whitehouse, Alex Lawther and Martin Freeman in supporting roles. The film premiered at the London Film Festival and received critical acclaim. The score is by Frank Ilfman, who conducted the London Metropolitan Orchestra at Air Lyndhurst Studios. The soundtrack also includes two featured pop songs from the film; Why by Anthony Newley and Monster Mash by Bobby Boris Pickett.

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