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From Shaft to My Neighbour Totoro via Slumdog Millionaire and Oldboy: the soundtracks of our jives, the soundtracks of our wives.

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Previously on Afterword Soundtracks ……

A couple of weeks back, it was European Film Day and I was curious to hear about your favourite soundtracks from European films.

There were many wonderful suggestions but it was very clear to me that we couldn’t leave it there. What about soundtracks from Hollywood, Bollywood and Studio Ghibli in Japan? What about films from Brazil, South Korea, Iceland, Brazil, the Faroe Islands, Cap Verde, Malta, Bhutan and Colombia? What about Albania? No soundtracks yet? I suspect @Gary will not be pleased.

And then there’s Australia and New Zealand.
Mad Max, Picnic at Hanging Rock. (remember those pan pipes?)
Romper Stomper. Flight of the Conchords! (not a movie but it ought to be!)

To get us started here are a few composers and songwriters who have contributed to film soundtracks. Some old favourites and some new names to me.

Ry Cooder, Joe Hisaishi , Hildur Guðnadóttir, Randy Newman, Gustavo Santaolalla, Nick Cave, A.R. Rahman, Johny Greenwood, Jordi Savall, Bobby Womack, Brian Eno, John Carpenter, Tom Waits, Nino Rota, Dimitri Tiomkin, Harry Gregson-Williams, Luiz Bonfa, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Isaac Hayes, Josef Van Wissem, Curtis Mayfield, Daft Punk, John Williams, Aimee Mann, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Elmer Bernstein.

Next up some directors who are well- known for their use of music. Several of them clearly have amazing record collections and delight in using their favourite tracks for their soundtracks.

Robert Altman, James Gunn, Hayao Miyazaki, George Lucas, Ken Russell, Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, The Coen Brothers, Stanley Kubrick, Tim Burton, Danny Boyle, Alfred Hitchcock.

Last but not least, just to jog your memory, a list of films with memorable soundtracks:

Slumdog Millionaire, Jackie Brown, Jaws, Broken Flowers, The Harder they Come, Superfly, Paris, Texas, Les Triplettes de Belleville, Trainspotting, Only lovers left alive, The Magnificent Seven, Beetlejuice, Streets of Fire, Cars, The Warriors, Tar, Ghost World, Oh Brother! Where art thou? Nashville, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Motorcycle Diaries, My Neighbour Totoro, One from the Heart, Gattaca, Pulp Fiction, Toy Story, The Godfather, The Boy and the Eagle, High Noon, Strangers on a Train, The Kingdom of Heaven, Tron, American Graffiti, Guardians of the Galaxy, Shaft, Black Orpheus, Saturday Night Fever, Lisztomania, Across 110th Street, 24 Hour Party People, Spinal Tap, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.

That will hopefully get you started. Let’s hear about your favourites. From anywhere in the world. From any time period.

Two modern soundtrack trends which interest me.

Singalong screenings. These usually involve the audience dressing up in character.
Most popular is The Sound of Music.
Most quirky is Singalonga Wicker Man!

And then there are these screenings where a live orchestra plays the soundtrack as you watch the movie. I’ve spotted posters here in Stockholm for Love Actually and films from the original Star Wars trilogy.

An orchestra with a silent film is very appealing to me. But not when there’s already a soundtrack. But I could be completely wrong.

I’m kicking off with Bobby Womack’s theme song for Across 110th Street, an excellent blaxploitation gangster thriller which I saw in the Odeon Rayners Lane in 1972. Tarantino recycled it rather well in Jackie Brown.

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Comments

  1. And now from the pavements of Harlem to the railways of Russia.

    Here’s a Belgian tune that you will probably do know which was used in a recent Finnish movie that you probably don’t know. Compartment Number 6 was filmed in Russia and all the dialogue is in Russian.

    One of my favourite movies of recent years, it is well worth looking out for. Very moving and often very funny.

  2. Starting this thread made me wonder how many soundtracks Ry has done, Here is a list of his soundtrack albums from Wikipedia.

    Performance (1970, three of 13 tracks)

    Randy Newman also contributed to that Performance soundtrack.

    The Long Riders (June 1980)
    Southern Comfort (1981)
    The Border (1982)
    Streets of Fire (1984)
    Paris, Texas (February 1985)
    Alamo Bay (August 1985)
    Blue City (July 1986)
    Crossroads (July 1986)
    Cocktail (1988, one track: “All Shook Up”)
    Johnny Handsome (October 1989)
    Trespass (January 1993)
    Geronimo: An American Legend (1993)
    Last Man Standing (1996)
    The End of Violence (1997)
    Primary Colors (1998)
    My Blueberry Nights (2007)

    Ry has worked frequently with Walter Hill. What a long, interesting, varied Hollywood career he has had!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Hill

    • I’d presumed that Randy and Ry had written the music for the Performance soundtrack.
      Far from it. Keith and Mick wrote Memo from Turner. All the rest was written by Jack Nitzsche.

      What an extremely talented fellow he was! He won an Oscar with Buffy Saint Marie for co-writing Up where we belong and worked on many successful and very varied soundtracks.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Nitzsche

      And then there was his work with the Stones and Neil Young.

      Regrettably, as you can read on wiki, he was a total douchebag as a person and very narrowly escaped jail for assaulting his girlfriend.

        • I read somewhere that Keef refused to record Memo From Turner as he was so peeved at Mick’s devotion to the method acting technique when it came to shooting his sex scenes with Anita Pallenberg, so turned in a mutinously duff version when forced, which has popped up on a compilation or two. The slinky, sinuous soundtrack version with Ry and assorted studio “cats” is glorious in comparison

  3. You’ve mentioned nearly all the soundtracks anyone has ever heard, KFD. But one you’ve not mentioned is Tony Scott’s film The Hunger. It’s my favourite vampire movie, stars Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie at their most beautiful and has the best opening sequence of any movie ever, featuring Bauhaus performing Bela Lugosi’s Dead in a cage. More than that, it has a fantastic soundtrack, specifically on account of three tracks: 1) The Flower Duet from Lakme by Delibes, which has been used in multiple films and adverts (including Scott’s True Romance) and has thus become a little spoilt through its over-familiarity, but is surely used at its very best in accompanying a lesbian sex scene between Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. 2) A lovely version of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, Prélude, which Bowie pretends to be playing in the film. 3) The best version I’ve come across of Schubert’s Trio in E-flat major, Op. 100. Again it’s a piece that has been used in many other films, most notably Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, but I’ve never heard any version I like as much as the one in The Hunger (it seems it’s often played slightly faster).

    • Wow! I am very impressed by your knowledge of all the classical pieces in this movie.

      I found this playlist which will help me get up to speed with you.

      There was an OST released with a combination of the classical music and some music by Michel Rubini and Denny Jaeger.

      https://www.discogs.com/master/196052-Michel-Rubini-Denny-Jaeger-The-Hunger-Original-Motion-Picture-Soundtrack

      And I think you will find these detailed notes by Howard Blake who was the musical director of the film very interesting @Gary.

      From lesbian vampires To British Airways! Howard Blake mentions that his version was used for this extraordinary iconic ad. Directed by Tony Scott.

      Bowie, Sarandon and Deneuve! Talk about A list casting! And none of Bowie’s music on the sound track.

      The wiki page is excellent too.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_(1983_film)

      • That’s very interesting about the ending of the film, added at the studio’s behest to allow for a possible sequel. Sarandon’s comment is quite right, the result was that “nobody knew what was going on”. I liked the film so much that I read Whitley Strieber’s novel merely to get better understanding of the ending, but it didn’t help as the ending in the novel was completely different.

  4. One of the best gigs I’ve ever seen was the Cambridge Community Orchestra* at West Road concert hall doing an afternoon gig of film & telly music for kids.

    I’d never heard the Star Wars theme played by an orchestra. It was real hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck stuff.

    (*) they are no slouches, I know three music teachers and they’re all in the CCO.

  5. Obviously the Lord of the Rings trilogy has the greatest soundtrack of all time – that cannot be argued, so please don’t try to convince me otherwise – but here are some of my other faves that deserve some love:

    Heat – Michael Mann does appreciate a good soundtrack, and his best film has one of the better ones: Moby covering Joy Division, Kronos Quartet, U2/Passengers, Eno, etc. See also Manhunter (80s synths ahoy!) and The Insider (hello, Lisa Gerrard!).

    Amelie – lovely, quirky music for a lovely, quirky film.

    Tenet – the film did not set the world alight, but the soundtrack is great collection of hybrid electro/orchestral sound.

    The Fog, Halloween, etc. – boy, John Carpenter knows how to turn a few synth tracks into a thing of wonder.

    The James Bond themes – when they’re done well (e.g. OHMSS, Shirley Bassey’s three, Chris Cornell’s You Know My Name) they really set the scene and create that Bond mood. However, Another Way to Die by Jack White and Alicia Keys is practically a crime against music and should be buried inside a secret base inside a volcano.

    Braveheart – Trevor Morris combines traditional instruments, an orchestra, and thundering drums. Powerful and emotional stuff.

  6. Guy Ritchie’s Lock Stock and Snatch (sort of) nicked the soundtrack ideas from Tarrantino films by inserting dialogue between the tracks.
    Lock Stock is the better listen of the 2 mixing James Brown, Dusty Springfield, The Stooges and The Stone Roses (and others).
    Snatch plays it safer with The Specials rubbing shoulders with 10CC and Madonna (plus Alan Ford’s “Nemesis” speech – which if you’ve seen the film you’ll understand the reference)

    High Fidelity moved Nick Hornby’s novel from North London to Chicago, but delivered a fine soundtrack including Bob Dylan, Velvet Underground and The Beta Band (the UK version tacked The Jam’s Town Called Malice on, but both suffer with Jack Black’s version of Let’s Get It On).

    Love, Honour & Obey was a fairly low budget (and low audience affair), and budget restrictions meant one of the chosen songs (Sympathy For The Devil) was replaced by the Them to Fireball XL5. Noel Gallagher’s Force Of Nature was featured quite heavily in the film, but is not on the soundtrack (Noel kept it back for Oasis’s Heathen Chemistry).
    But what you do get is the cast performing a karaoke version of Tony Christie’s Avenues and Alleyways

  9. One From The Heart – Coppola’s self- indulgent piece of fluff made at vast expense from the profits of Apocalypse Now. Looks good though, and (occasionally) sounds very good.

    • I love You Can’t Unring A Bell, which is a very good example of a “bellwether” song – it could have appeared on his next album Swordfishtrombones but not on his previous album Heartattack and Vine.

      We had a thread about this once. Mind you, by now we’ve had a thread about everything ant we….?

  10. I’m a huge fan of Martin Scorcese’s films, but I avoided The Wolf Of Wall Street when it was released. The glorification of the excesses of 80s yuppies I found a bit stomach churning. Years later I was flicking through CDs in a library sale and had a look at the soundtrack. Wow! Cannonball Adderley, Elmore James, Joe Cuba, Bo Diddley, even Ahmad Jamal and Jimmy Castor featured. A great compilation by any standards. Even Malcolm McLaren puts in an appearance with this 80s banger.

    • Martin Scorsese’s career, from Mean Streets onwards, is basically a footnote to his career as a compiler of mixtapes.

      That said, Bernard Hermann’s score for Taxi Driver takes some beating.

      • I hang my head in shame, @Moose the Mooche. Before this thread I had never heard of Bernard Herrman. How dare I call myself a cinephile when I don’t know about the composer who wrote music for so many great films from Citizen Kane to Taxi Driver?

        Extra homework for me!

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Herrmann

        Herrmann did seven films with Hitchcock but the partnership came unstuck with the soundtrack of Torn Curtain.

        “In Hollywood and elsewhere, it was the practice of the film industry to favor scores that would sell as popular records—the kind of film music that could be danced to in discotheques. In this sort of game, Hermann, a disciple of Wagner and Stravinsky, was bound to be a loser.” (Wikipedia)

  11. One of my favourite soundtracks is David Shire’s for the original Taking of Pelham 123 from 1974. It’s reminiscent of the great Lalo Schifrin soundtracks for Dirty Harry of a similar era but better. I daresay it has been sampled repeatedly by hippity hoppers.

    I also enjoyed the soundtracks to the early movies of 90s indie kid Hal Hartley up to Amateur which is an excellent soundtrack album. He contributed to them under the alias Ned Rifle but also featured some cool indie stuff like Kool Thing by Sonic Youth which he uses for a dance routine in Simple Men. Here’s a favourite – quite New Order ish.

  12. The original post suggest possible Bollywood soundtracks. As I have mentioned before, Lady Slug is Indian by birth and a major fan of all things Bollywood, so I have been exposed to many Indian film soundtracks in the last 12 years. Romantic ballads in Hindi are, I admit, a hard listen for my western ears, so I tend to prefer catchy, up-beat tunes which are heavy on the rhythm , which may well explain why Jai Ho, the song from the end scene of Slumdog Millionaire, has become the European go-to tune to accompany almost anything with South Asian content.
    Anyway, this tune, from the 2010 comedy action movie Dabangg (it means “fearless”), starring Bollywood superstar Salman Khan is a toe tapping banger (and also inspired a bizarre short lived dance craze in India called ‘the belt strap’.)

    • Wow wow wow! That is quite extraordinary @Slug.

      I’m finally getting round to looking through all the comments on this thread and that left me gobsmacked. Talk about an epic song and dance routine.

      I would love to learn a little more about Bollywood. A while back, my daughter had a school taxi driver who was from Delhi. I told him that I worked at the local cinema and this led to some wonderful micro-conversations about both films and cinemas.

      He told me about the extraordinary Delhi cinemas of his childhood: glorious, exotic palaces akin to the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park.

      Every summer there is a free festival of Indian culture, Namaste, at Kungsträdgården in the centre of Stockholm. It is extremely popular and the vast majority of people there are from the sub-continent.

      Lots of Indian dance school perform to the delight of proud relatives in the audience. Here’s a taste of the entertainment.

      The audience know all the songs and go bonkers when their favourites get played. THeir enthusiasm is very infectious.

      I hadn’t realised there were so many people from India in Stockholm. I suspect many of them are working in high-tech industries

  13. I’m very surprised we have got so far down the thread with no mention of Ennio Morricone.

    Ecstasy Of Gold is one of my all time favourite pieces of music (although I prefer the Yo-Yo Ma version)….

    Another from me would be Mike Oldfields soundtrack to The Killing Fields. I think it’s up there with the best stuff he has done….

    • When I lived in Bristol in 1985-86, I visited the Watershed cinema a few times.
      One film I definitely saw there was Emir Kusturica’s Palme d’Or winner, “When Father Was Away on Business”. Superb film. Would like to see it again one day.

  18. One of the delights of these soundtrack threads has been discovering home-made Spotify playlists for different films which are far more comprehensive than any official release.

    This one for the Finnish film Compartment No 6 is wonderful. I suspect that not all of the tracks were used in the movie but if you fancy some 80s disco nostalgia it will hit the spot very nicely.

    Well I never! I just found that Peter Bradshaw from the Guardian has a Vlog. And he really likes Compartment No 6

    And here’s another excellent site which I’ve never heard of which really provides some excellent background information:

    https://burnsfilmcenter.org/cinefiles-curator-notes-compartment-no-6/

    “A snowstorm surprised them while shooting the final scenes of the film, and blew their catering tent out to sea. Despite the hardships, they felt that it was such an amazing visual moment that the entire crew rallied to finish in these conditions.”

    Talk about the back of beyond!

    • When I saw John Niven last week he mentioned that Nick Lowe’s ‘What’s So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding’ had been used in the film The Bodyguard only a small snippet at that, and he received a cheque for over a million dollars for its use.

      • I’m surprised by that figure. I know that Jim Carroll died in relative poverty, despite a small snippet of People Who Died being used in ET.

        • According to Rolling Stone

          Every time a track or record sells, all the songwriters receive a total of 9.1 cents in mechanical-royalty payments. (This can cause all kinds of crazy examples of “mailbox money.” Famously, Curtis Stigers covered “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” on Whitney Houston’s 1992 The Bodyguard soundtrack. It has gone on to sell 17 million copies in the U.S., which means the songwriter, former British pub-rocker Nick Lowe, has received checks for roughly $1.547 million in his mailbox.)

          • Ah, there be the difference. Nick Lowe’s song was on the soundtrack album to The Bodyguard. Jim Carroll’s snippet was used in the film but didn’t make it onto the E.T. soundtrack album. Which only sold five copies anyway. And one of them was probably to Jim Carroll, so he could see if he was on it.

              • As part of my research for this comment I have looked up Elliot’s older brother on my computer’s internet. He never wangled the same post ET career success as his onscreen siblings did. He became a mail handler. His wife, however, had small parts in Goodfellas, Bad Lieutenant, Trees Lounge and The Fighter. This is him recently:

                View post on imgur.com

                • Henry Thomas hasn’t really done that well, especially considering how occasionally sensational his performance as Elliot was.

                  In fact the only thing I can remember seeing him in was a TV series of Moby Dick – Patrick Stewart as Ahab, I recall… late 90s.

                  That wee feller in the basket hasn’t been seen from that day to this – “I’ll be right here” my arse!

                  • Henry Thomas has done a fair bit of telly. Some of it (like The Haunting of Hill House) quite good. His audition for E.T. is remarkable. I urge anyone who hasn’t seen it to rectify their negligence forthwith.

  23. After reading about how much Nick Lowe made from one song, I was curious to find out how much a composer of film music earns. I haven’t found out yet but I did stumble across this BBC Classical Music list of their top ten film composers.

    https://www.classical-music.com/articles/top-film-composers-ever

    It’s far more international than I’d expected and includes A R Rahman, John Barry (he won five Oscars), Joe Hisaishi and Ennio Morricone among others.

    And Bernard Herrmann. Here’s his Psycho Suite (that sounds like somewhere David Byrne would stay)

    https://www.classical-music.com/articles/top-film-composers-ever

    And here’s composer Matthew King from Guildhall talking abut Psycho

  25. @Gary‘s amusing comment about the extremely anachronistic use of Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxygene in the film Gallipoli made me want to know more. Peter Weir was the director and he’s not someone who does things by chance.

    Wikipedia reveals that there was a considerable variety of music in the film:

    “The original music was provided by Australian composer Brian May (who had also scored Mad Max). The film includes excerpts from Oxygène by French electronic music pioneer Jean Michel Jarre during running scenes. Quiet or sombre moments at Gallipoli, and the closing credits, feature the Adagio in G minor, by Tomaso Albinoni.

    The film also features the Pearl Fishers’ Duet by Georges Bizet playing on Major Barton’s gramophone before the final attack, drawing a parallel between the bond shared by the ill-fated soldiers of the film and the fishermen in Bizet’s opera.”

    Here’s a very informative review about the film.

    https://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s1845gall.html

    Australia lost its innocence at Gallipoli. A major trauma in the history of the nation.

    Modern movie soundtracks are full of wonderfully incongruous, anachronistic combinations,

    But Bow Wow Wow and Marie Antoinette takes the (dog) biscuit.

    Sofia Copolla’s film is mentioned on this list.

    https://gamerant.com/movies-best-anachronistic-soundtracks-music/

    As are Jojo Rabbit, Inglorious Basterds and Guardians of the Galaxy.

    All three Guardians fllms are packed with magnificently unexpected pieces of music. For example, Beastie Boys was a complete and wonderful surprise,

  26. I saw Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron at Bio Reflexen, the cinema where I work, a couple of weeks ago . Normally when we screen an anime film we will get an audience of 20- 30, if we are lucky. This time we sold out. 196 tickets! Can it be that the My Neighbour Totoro Hitmaker has finally become a household name in Bagarmossen?

    One important contributor to this success is the music of Joe Hisaishi who has been working with Miyazaki since 1984.

    https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2023-11-29/miyazaki-boy-and-the-heron-music-composer

    Here’s Joe playing the theme from the new film.

    One of his catchiest compositions is the theme for Totoro.
    Try to avoid singing along to that!

    One of my favourite moments when working at Reflexen was when we had a school screening of Totoro for youngish kids ( 5-8 years old perhaps). They were all bowled over by the film and came out singing the theme song. Film can really transcend cultural barriers.

    I’m gobsmacked. To my great surprise, I’ve just discovered that the RSC has turned Totoro into a very successful stage show.

    https://totoroshow.com/

    I’ve seen the film several times and transferring its magic to the stage sounds tough, But the trailer looks promising.

    It seems like Miyazaki and Hisaishi are definitely becoming household names in the UK!

    But if you want the Full Miyazaki Monty, you need to go to Japan. Here’s Studio Ghibli’s 25th Anniversary Concert. No expense spared! Full orchestra and mega-choir.

    Hisashi-San is really giving Hollywood a run for their money. Sit back and enjoy it!

  27. Can any of you name any other Japanese soundtrack composers? I am scratching my head in vain. I googled and got this ginormous list.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Japanese_film_score_composers

    The name Stomu Yamasta rings some bells. Prog fans will definitely remember him!

    Some of his music was used in The Man who fell to earth.

    The only name that I recognisel is Ryuichi Sakamoto who won an Oscar for Merry Xmas Mr Lawrence in 1983.

    He also scored several other films. Wikipedia gives all the details.

    “”Sakamoto later composed Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987), which earned him the Academy Award with fellow composers David Byrne and Cong Su. In that same year, he composed the score to the cult-classic anime film Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise. Sakamoto also went on to compose for the opening ceremony of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.[74]

    Other films scored by Sakamoto include Pedro Almodóvar’s High Heels (1991); Bertolucci’s The Little Buddha (1993);[75] Oliver Stone’s Wild Palms (1993);[76] John Maybury’s Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998); Brian De Palma’s Snake Eyes (1998) and Femme Fatale (2002); Oshima’s Gohatto (1999); Jun Ichikawa’s (director of the Mitsui ReHouse commercial from 1997 to 1999 starring Chizuru Ikewaki and Mao Inoue) Tony Takitani (2005);[75] and Andrew Levitas’s Minamata (2020) starring Johnny Depp, Minami, and Bill Nighy.[77]

    Several tracks from Sakamoto’s earlier solo albums have also appeared in film soundtracks. In particular, variations of “Chinsagu No Hana” (from Beauty) and “Bibo No Aozora” (from 1996) provide the poignant closing pieces for Sue Brooks’s Japanese Story (2003) and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel (2006), respectively.[78][79] In 2015, Sakamoto teamed up with Iñárritu to score his film, The Revenant, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.[57] The film Monster by director Hirokazu Kore-eda, released in 2023, was Sakamoto’s final score; the film is dedicated to his memory.”

    One of the most enjoyable and impressive anime films I’ve seen in recent years is Momoru Hosada’s Belle: The Dragon and the Freckled Princess. A treat for the eyes.

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13651628/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cl_sm

    Music is central to the story. A look at IMDB reveals it was written by Taisei Iwasaki, Ludvig Forssell and Yuta Bandoh. All very new names.

    I imagine that J Pop fans were very enthusiastic.

  28. It’s Friday evening and the weekend starts here!

    Time for a few funky soundtracks!

    It all kicked off in 1971 with Melvin Van Peebles and Sweet Sweetback Badassss Song.

    And of course, in the same year, Shaft. Overnight Richard Roundtree and Isaac Hayes became the coolest guys on the planet.

    Hollywood thought they were making niche films for the Afro-American market. How wrong they were!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaxploitation

    Many blaxploitation films followed and opinions were very divided about the genre. It certainly produced some fine music.

    Carwash – Rose Royce

    Superfly – Curtis Mayfield

    Coffy . Roy Ayers

    Truck Turner – Isaac Hayes

    Black Caesar – James Brown

    Many jumped on the Blaxploitation bandwagonn. Here are a few soundtracks. Do you have any faves?

    https://www.cdandlp.com/en/collections/blaxploitation-bandes-originales-albums-indispensables/19/

  29. I can’t believe we’ve got this far without mentioning any Icelandic soundtrack composers.

    Quite seriously!

    Hildur Guðnadóttir won an Oscar for her music for Joker

    and she’s already at work on the sound track for the sequel: Joker: Folie a Deux (in which Lady Gaga plays Harley Quinn).

    A few years back I saw Hildur live supporting Fever Ray. Just her and her cello playing songs from her album Without Sinking.

    Since then she has done the soundtrack for Tar, The Revenant and the TV series Chernobyl.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildur_Gu%C3%B0nad%C3%B3ttir
    Her most recent assignment was the music for Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice.

    While we are discussing Iceland, I ought to mention Jóhann Jóhannsson, another very talented composer who died tragically early, only 48 years old.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3hann_J%C3%B3hannsson

  30. I enjoyed that interview with Hildur so much that I’m posting another one from the same series_ Carter Burwell talking about scoring The Banshees of Inishiren.

    Talking of Ireland, here’s Stephen Rennicks’s music from the other great Irish film I saw last spring: The Quiet Girl.

    What a wonderful film!

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