The first thing to get out of the way about this horror movie soundtrack is that it does not feature exactly the music heard in the film. The score from the film was remixed by producer Scot Holton in order to emphasize the electronic elements of the score more than they were in the film. I haven’t seen the film, so I can’t comment on exactly how massive the changes are, but Shore would later say that Holton had done a pretty good job, so it seems he was more or less okay with the album as it turned out. And he has every right to be because this is a top notch soundtrack. It contains seven tracks and clocks in at just a bit over thirty minutes, so despite the basically tempoless sound washes and white noise rumblings, the album goes by pretty quick. This isn’t a horror score that’s constantly hitting you over the head with scares. There’s maybe one genuine musical sting on this whole album and it’s the kind of atmospheric score that quietly unsettles you instead of making your pulse quicken. I think it’s a fantastic listening experience, however, best on really good headphones where you can get all the nuances. The opening track, Welcome to Videodrome, is a perfect weird opening; it’s a track with a small spoken word section and then the rest of the track is, I think, entirely a sound-effects collage, creating a weird kind of music out of the whines and whirrs and beeps of electronics, including one fantastic effect that is the sound of a computer drive spinning into life that sounds incredibly like a muffled scream. I think the best track is the second, and the longest, 801 A/B, but they’re all really good and this was a lot of dark, brooding fun. If these are the sounds of the new flesh, long may it live indeed. 4 stars.
tl;dr – remix of Shore’s original score is dark, ambient, atmospheric and a great listen, especially on headphones; nuanced and brilliant. 4 stars.