PAST LIVES

Memories of love and murder...

★★★★★

Tender poise and saddened stoicism are the key notes of Grizzly Bear mainstays Christopher Bear/Daniel Rossen’s score. Working with chamberpop ingredients – piano, brushed percussion, guitar, synths, vibraphone – the duo nurture sweet miracles of intangible sorrow from understated soundscapes. Melodies hover just beyond reach, like slippery memories; See You brings the emotions at stake to a soft, spacious crescendo. Sharon van Etten’s controlled slowburner Quiet Eyes adds a pitch-perfect closing note to a score of exquisitely contained feeling.

JOHN CARPENTER: ANTHOLOGY II

★★★★☆

Must be the season of the witch, as horror’s punksynth pioneer revisits old haunts with a killer set of rerecordings. Another? Yes, but Carpenter’s urgent, bluesy and brooding DIY ingenuity justifies these deep, driving makeovers. Halloween III’s Chariots of Pumpkins sets the pulsing agenda, collaborators Daniel Davies and John’s son, Cody, adding muscular thump to the arrangement. Two tense, throbbing Halloween II cues prove Carpenter Sr. could build on perfection, while haunting closer Laurie’s Theme distils his genius for minimalist

THE EXORCIST

VARIOUS WARNER RECORDS/RHINO

The way the late William Friedkin told it, he had to cast out some difficult contenders as he sought a composer for The Exorcist. Hitchcock vet Bernard Herrmann dubbed the film ‘a piece of shit’ and suggested church organs might help; Friedkin demurred. And when the director requested music resembling ‘a cold hand on the back of your neck’, Lalo Schifrin (Bullitt) responded with bullish, almost Herrmann-esque scare scoring, to Friedkin’s despair.

Much too vulgar a display of power? Clearly. With subtlety, Friedkin’s answer was to pare the film’s music of steering melody and strip it back to first principles. While editing, he had used avant-garde modern classical music – Krzysztof Penderecki, George Crumb, Hans Werner Henze and others - as temp tracks. Rerecorded by Leonard Slatkin (with the National Philharmonic Orchestra), integrated with the sound mix and spliced with producer/composer Jack Nitzsche’s abstract noises, this music became Friedkin’s soundtrack. He used the compositions sparingly, almost subliminally, but their atonal registers took possession of his film.

Not ‘scored’ in a traditional sense, The Exorcist doesn’t rely on character themes or developed melodies. Sounds buzz like insects and throb with portent, building aural worlds alongside snarling dogs, calls to prayer and chill winds. Some of

Penderecki’s Polymorphia accompanies Father Merrin’s prologue stand-off with the Pazuzu statue, seeding a demonic presence in the film. For Regan’s body-language plea (‘Help me’), Crumb’s unnerving Night of the Electric Insects pierces the cold air.

When Friedkin used melody, he did so carefully. Looking for an almost childlike refrain reminiscent of Brahms, he found 19-year-old Mike Oldfield’s prog-rock concept album Tubular Bells and became seduced by the elegant opening section on piano/ synths. Friedkin used Bells fleetingly but ingeniously, to hugely resonant effect. As Chris walks home, Friedkin spotlights the anxiety in Oldfield’s music with suggestive sounds: wind blowing nuns’ habits, motorcycles revving angrily. For the film’s climax, a hint of Bells is swiftly sidelined by Henze’s Fantasia for Strings – the closest the soundtrack comes to Herrmann, albeit Herrmann possessed.

Otherwise, the soundtrack’s influence outreaches any precedents, touching any horror movie that uses dissonant sound clusters. John Carpenter’s DIY scores for Halloween/The Fog arguably echo Oldfield. Kubrick later followed Friedkin’s example by using Polymorphia in The Shining. Lynch also drew on Penderecki, as did Scorsese’s modern classical Shutter Island music. Whether or not the Devil has the best tunes, he certainly gave horror history some damn good esoteric sound worlds.