Unusual Film Scores

[Kristin Anderson]

I'm on a bit of a personal informational search to uncover/identify the most unusual, non-standard, non-film-production-music-y, strange, experimental, avant garde, or sound design-oriented film scores that have been created. Obscure indies, foreign, shorts, animation... doesn't matter the source. Essentially, I'm looking for titles of movies whose scores are both a bit 'out there' and don't scream 'film music' (or pop or rock or the like in the case of more song-based scores).

I've noticed that even some of the strangest movies don't necessarily have the strangest sounding score to match. And, for instance, Phillip Glass sounds pretty tame in film score form. Well crafted, but still pretty tame.

 

Any ideas? Or are my ears just way too accustomed to unusual sounds?

[Ian Stewart]

Hello Kristin, I think Michael Andrews music is really good for films - he wrote the music for Donny Darko. He describes how for the film "Me and You and Everyone We Know" he used things like old synthesizers he found in car boot sales I think. Unfortunately I cannot recommend the film, I thought it was uncomfortable to watch.

There was an episode of the Scottish television detective series Taggart on recently in the U.K. and the music for one scene was exceptional - leftfield electronica that sounded random but felt highly structured  It was so unusual that I wrote to the composer - Malcolm Lindsay - to say how good I thought it was, and that I was surprised he managed to get the producers to accept it. He replied, explaining that he created his own sounds by experimenting with a portable recorder.

 

I have heard a few other unusual sound tracks recently but cannot remember the films unfortunately.

[Kristin Anderson]

Nice... some interesting choices here. I'll have to look into these. Interestingly, I have seen both Donny Darko and The Seven Samurai, and for the life of me can't remember what the music sounded like. I know... shame, shame on me!

[Clark Nichols]

the score for "book of eli" was pretty odd (and awesome), the score for "The leet world" (the OST, it was a webseries) was fantastically original, one of the best pieces of music I have heard in my life.