Do you like synth scores?
- This topic has 64 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 2 weeks, 1 day ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I have reached Rob (aka Robin Coudert) in my collection walkthrough. He blasted into my conscience with his awesome, Carpenter-infused score for MANIAC in 2012, but there are plenty more – favourites include BELLE EPINE (which I’m currently listening to, and is more a mix of 60s psychedelia and 70s prog, almost), MANIAC, TRISTESSE CLUB, MADE IN FRANCE, GANGSTERDAM, KILLER COASTER, CULTE and NUDES. I prefer it when he sticks to his synth roots (and when he’s funky and/or melodic), although he loves to branch out and do all kinds of stuff, including more orchestral or acoustic works. Anyone else a fan?
The album is much too long, but when whittled down (in my case to 37 minutes), a fine synthwave score from 2022 steps forward.
I first discovered Rone aka Erwin Castex (b. 1980) via his collaboration with Jean Michel Jarre on the track “The Heart of Noise, Pt. 1” on Electronica, Vol. 2 in 2016. Since then, I’ve latched on to his scores for LA NUIT VENUE (2020), LES OLYMPIADES (2021….Audiard displacing his usual collaborator Desplat) and D’ARGENT ET DE SANG (2024). It’s roughly within the genre known as IDM (Intelligent Dance Music…kinda confusing and arrogant term, I’ve never been a fan), but with all these broad, melancholic, indie chord progressions that aren’t far removed from the likes of Johnny Jewel. Well worth checking out. My favourite is probably LES OLYMPIADES.
Just came back from Joshua Safdie’s MARTY SUPREME — a classic Safdie film (although without his brother this time) circling around “Murphy’s Law” and coincidences, loads of energy, Timothée Chalamet and ping pong! The score by Daniel Lopatin was fantastic — very Tangerine Dream vibes at times. Appears it doesn’t come out until next week, I had hoped it was out already, as it’s certainly one of my favourite scores of 2025.
One of my all time favorite film scores is LOGAN’S RUN by Jerry Goldsmith, which includes a lot of then cutting edge synthesizers, though I would not call it a synth score. It’s just exemplary of how synths can be used and incorporated into a classic orchestral structure.
The opening already sets the tone for the score, a mirror to Strauss’s optimistic “sunrise” Zarathustra, yet the effect is the opposite: the music sounds like dystopic oppression. The camera zooms in on “The City” a giant dome, and as soon as we’re inside, bang, the score turns fully electronic. Ice-cold. Surgical. Stockhausen comes to mind — or Varese’s “Poeme Electronique”, there is no warmth in the music. And Goldsmith was doing this in 1976, and I’ve heard avant-garde pieces from later in the 70s and 80s that sound like they’re chasing this shadow.
So the music is sterile, cold, but, and that’s typical for many of classic Goldsmith scores, especially his science fiction scores, there are a lot of “ideas” and concepts in the music, and the architecture is genius. The first acoustic instruments enter when Jessica is first encountered and mentions the “Sanctuary”, a mythical place outside of the dome. At first, these instruments stay in the back, the electronics still dominate, but the more Logan and Jessica try to flee the city, the closer they get to “Sanctuary”, the more acoustic instruments creep in, like vegetation through concrete (an idea that is visually mirrored later when they come find the old man in the overgrown ruins of Washington DC). The music slowly adds more and more orchestral instruments, first just maybe some percussive hammered piano notes. Then strings. Then more. The further from the dome, the more “human” the sound becomes. There’s the great section, which has its own musical voice: the enigmatic freezer robot Box (who, like today’s A.I., sounds sentient, but may just be a program on a loop that actually needs a re-boot), who belongs neither to the inside nor the outside.
The music reflects the difference between breathing recycled air and gulping wind. Until the full orchestra comes to shine with “The Sun”. Great cue. And it explodes after all the oppression… twice. And that’s another interesting thing. When Jessica and Logan’s first see the outside world, the music is glorious, like a celebration of life and outdoors, when the pursuing Francis reaches the same spot, the music — still fully orchestral — now sounds like a threat… which of course the encounter with the outside is for Francis and his worldview. When Francis sees the same sun that same full orchestra that embraced Logan and Jessica now turns predatory, threatening.
The score is dense with these moments. The music stays now acoustic except for one final confrontation cue, when Logan goes back inside the dome to confront the computer. And that’s another harrowing piece of electronica. It’s a remarkably well constructed film score, composed through like any classical symphonic work, containing both wonderful melodic passages and alien atonality, warm, gentle music and ice cold sterile music hostile to genuine feeling. Masterpiece. But is it a “synth score”? I would say not really… it’s a score that uses synths, among other things.
Yay! Another contributor in this thread! 🙂
Good reading of LOGAN’S RUN there, Nick. I saw the film years ago, and was struck by some of the same things you talk about.
I also got the FSM CD, but I wasn’t ready for it at the time. Synths or no synths. It was all too challenging, cold, abrasive even. So I proceeded to sell or trade off the CD. I never re-acquired it, not even as digital files. But maybe it’s time I revisit it now. I’ve always been critical of Goldsmith’s synth noodlings, especially from the 80s onwards, but there’s no question he was quite cutting edge with them in the 60s and 70s. SECONDS is another example. Maybe I’m more ready for it now.
LOGAN’S RUN is great and the synth usage is far better than many of the 80s experiments. Of course those old analogue synths sound way more interesting having more edge somehow than many slick 80s ones.
Yeah, I really love that score. And it’s so fascinating on many levels. That synthesizer “pulse” motif that opens the score and symbolizes the inner “logic” of the city and its computer mind is weaved throughout, like in the imposing but oppressive three note brass fanfare, for example, heard in the opening. So from the “outside”, the dome is this huge, somewhat threatening structure, a big oppressive “city”, but from the inside, it’s a “pulse”, that motif is just “present” and rolls electronically around, just a cold, electronic “omni-presence”…
This score IMHO is a prime example for expansions: While the original short album is great and contains all relevant parts (plus some disco version…) the expanded FSM shows that strucutre far better and to me even flows better.
This synth score turned out to be my favourite of 2023, no less. In retrospect, that is perhaps a bit overkill, but it’s damn good. Dark and zithering at times, but with spacey, melancholic, semi-analogue qualities.
This is a score that really grew on me over time. When I first heard it, I felt it was distant, rather harsh sounding, not all that interesting. But that changed over time, now I really enjoy it very much.
Not so much for the main theme, but for the action and suspense cues. The whole section “Acme Service/The Spider/Alley Fight/Shootin’ Up the Ritz” is just terrific. I also love the remaster Varèse Sarabande did here. I had this blaring out of my stereo last night, and the music sounds like “aggressive electricity”.
Thor, you really dig out stuff I not even have heard about! Great, at some time with time I have to sample these things 😉
RUNNING MAN is a mixed bag for me. Besides that I like almost all Goldsmith naturally this always felt a little like actually written more with orchestra in mind but just done with synths. If you know what I mean…
If you mean RUNAWAY, Goldsmith stated that it was composed like an orchestral score, but with synthesizers in mind. It was not done with synths instead of an orchestra, but specifically written like an orchestral score, but orchestrated for synthesizers. The way RUNAWAY was done, it turned out to be a rather expensive score, too, so the electronics were not used to “save” money. For my ears, the music belongs to an electronic ensemble.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.