I feel like I’m probably on record somewhere that I think the music Mark Snow produced for The X-Files is probably the best music ever produced for television. Well, that theory gets put to the test for sure with a series of soundtracks Snow released in the early 2010s. This is the second volume and it collects nearly five hours of music on four CDs. It has selections from over thirty episodes with at least one from each of the original series’ nine seasons. And, man, does it hold up. I’ve listened to this entire set numerous times and I’m not frigging done with it yet. This music spans the gamut from moody atmospherics to pulse-pounding action music, from gorgeous piano melodies to grinding industrial soundscapes, from ethereal beauty to dissonant terror. This music is just as much of a roller coaster ride as the series was. It’s kind of amazing to realize just how varied Snow’s output was and also to realize that, while he occasionally reused some themes or hooks, that he essentially wrote a new thirty to forty minute score for every single episode of the series, which is absolutely crazy. And some of the tracks here run twelve or thirteen minutes; what that means is that Snow was creating a single music cue to run from commercial break to commercial break, covering an entire act of the show with unbroken piece of music. I mean, that’s crazy. Sure, one could quibble about some things. Some of the episodes get incredibly brief selections. Grotesque, a grim fourth season episode, has a kick-ass industrial score and it gets less than a single track that clocks in at less than a minute-and-a-half. Other episodes get eighteen or twenty minutes. Not sure how those selections were made. But there are only a couple of tracks out of the sixty-two that make up this album that are what I’d call not good. The four minute track from Biogenesis is the worst, Snow indulging his cheesiest tendencies with big brass hits. Maybe I’m biased; a listener without all the baggage I bring from the show would find this music less interesting or compelling, but I’m willing to bet they’d still be impressed. The only question now is: do I buy Volume One or Volume Three next? The truth is out there. 4 stars.
tl;dr – nearly five hours of the best music ever created for television; Mark Snow’s scores run the emotional, thematic and genre gamut and never cease to impress. 4 stars.