Soundtracks Vinyl 637 Items

Denis Villenueve’s masterful Blade Runner 2049 races into theaters this weekend and the film’s accompanying soundtrack, composed by legendary film score maestro Hans Zimmer, is now streaming in full.

The score was composed in tandem by Zimmer and his longtime collaborator Benjamin Wallfisch. The duo was brought in somewhat later in the production process, after the score’s initial composer, Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, ceased involvement due to creative differences.

Villeneuve explained his decision to replace Jóhannsson with Zimmer in an interview with Al Arabiya. “The thing I will say is that making movies is a laboratory,” he explained. “The movie needed something different, and I needed to go back to something closer to [the original film’s composer] Vangelis. Jóhann and I decided that I will need to go in another direction — that’s what I will say.”

The decision seemingly paid off, as Clint Worthington notes in his review of the film: “[Zimmer and Wallfisch] lean heavily on Vangelis’ original 1982 score for inspiration, but 2049 is refreshingly light on incidental music, mostly allowing the booming, immersive sound design to take center stage.”

As Editor-in-Chief Michael Roffman writes in his glowing A- review, the score is “a total evolution of what Vangelis set in motion way, way back in 1982. It’s louder, it’s gloomier, it’s heavier, and it’s much more expansive, all qualities one might tag with Villeneuve’s breathtaking sequel.”

In additional to Zimmer and Wallfisch’s original compositions, the soundtrack features songs by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Lauren Daigle.

Aesop Rock produced a gritty-sounding score for the intense thriller Bushwick.

JARV IS... have written & performed the original soundtrack for the critically acclaimed BBC TV series "This is Going to Hurt" based on Adam Kay"s award-winning international multi-million selling memoir of the same name. The soundtrack was recorded at Narcissus Studios, London by Drew Dungate-Smith during various sessions throughout 2021. Most of the performances are live takes featuring the entire band - often recorded whilst they watched the playback of key sequences from the series. Each episode features at least one song with lyrics by Cocker, who had access to the scripts (adapted by Adam Kay from his own book) from an early stage in the production process. JARV IS... is a band comprising Jarvis Cocker, Serafina Steer, Emma Smith, Andrew McKinney, Adam Betts & Jason Buckle. The soundtrack consists of a mixture of songs & instrumental pieces, with Cocker & Steer being the main composers. Cocker is quoted as saying "It"s our love song to the NHS".

Baton Rouge sludge band Thou have released over a dozen LPs worth of music, collaborated with divergent artists like Emma Ruth Rundle and The Body and released covers that run the full gamut of genres. Continuing their practice of bucking typical metal tradition, their latest record, a split release with composer Gewgawly I, is a soundtrack created for the highly anticipated new video game Norco. Gewgawly I has created a master work of ambiance, not only reminiscent of some of the best game soundtracks from the 80s and 90s but also a stunning work of contemporary experimental music pushing the genre forward in exciting ways. Thou have rounded out the game's grit with a wash of downtuned doom and drone. The band has previously been described as "For fans of: alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as agony, reason as disease," and these themes come to life vividly in Thou's collaboration with the richly illustrated world of Norco. "Thou represents an aspect of Louisiana that's close to my heart. The members know the suburbs of New Orleans and Baton Rouge well. They capture a kind of strange irreverence in their

Trailblazing instrumental synth pop experiments created to soundtrack Japan’s booming 1980s cartoon and comic industries. The brightly futuristic instrumentals on this collection reflect the mindset of composers and musicians who believed in a technological future where everything was possible.

In the late 1980s Japan experienced a brief but heady period where societal changes combined with new-found wealth to open up a world of possibilities. A huge influx of cash - artificially created by slashed interest rates after an agreement with the US to weaken the dollar relative to the yen - resulted in the inflation of real estate and stock market at a rapid pace. While the economic bubble it created was unprecedented and impossible to sustain, for a while money was in plentiful supply.

The musical genre City Pop reflected the aspirations of the country’s booming leisure class. Video games flourished with Nintendo's 1983 launch of their Family Computer (or FamiCom). Studio Ghibli was founded 1985 to later became one of the most famous and respected animation studios in the world, and Anime and Manga were established as major forms of entertainment for all generations of the Japanese public.

Music was no mere footnote to the anime and manga boom: the two forms of media often went hand in hand, and not simply through the presence of background melodies. With generous budgets available, even two-dimensional static manga comics could be released with an accompanying soundtrack of original music known as an ‘Image Album’.

Composer and arranger Kazuhiko Izu was one such beneficiary of this open budget approach. Written to accompany artist Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga comic Domu, the composer and arranger took advantage of the world-leading (and wallet-busting) Japanese synthesiser technology available at King Records’ fully equipped studio. Featured on this compilation, A3: Act 2 Scene 26 reflected the story’s sci fi themes with a blazingly futuristic yet warmly funky slice of synth pop that presents a joyful celebration of synthesisers and their seemingly endless possibilities.

Kan Ogasawara was another composer who made early mastery of the litany of synthesisers, drum machines and sequencers that had become available. Two tracks written to accompany the 1985 period manga Yume No Ishibumi are featured here; Honowo’s experimental electronic textures add spice to a jaunty electro pop melody that recalls the Rah band’s 1983 hit Messages From Stars; the jazz-tinged Utage rounds out Ogasawara’s shimmering synth textures with beautifully crafted backing from legendary musicians Yuji Toriyama (guitar), Pecker (percussion) and Jun Fukamachi (piano).

Before becoming one of the pioneers of Japanese Kankyo Ongaku (Ambient Music), Takashi Kokubo worked on the proto techno track Kiki (Jungle At Night). It was put together for the 1984 anime film Shonen Keniya (Kenya Boy) using some of the most expensive music technologies available at the time. This Africa-Inspired dance track offers a contemporary parallel to the early techno music that young Detroit based producers were then creating using cheap Japanese Roland drum machines and synthesisers.

This is the first compilation of Japanese anime and manga soundtracks curated by Kay Suzuki and Rintaro Sekizuka from Vinyl Delivery Service (a Tokyo based online record shop which also operates in East London's renowned wine and hifi shop Idle Moments). With a cover by artist Kazuki Takakura and two pages of liner notes, this vinyl only compilation of music never before released outside of Japan, captures a vital aural snapshot of an era whose forward-thinking sounds went hand in hand with cutting edge technology.

My Story, The Buraku Story is a new feature-length documentary film that explores the discrimination against a group of people - commonly called "the burakumin" - who were classed into lowly groups and segregated from the rest of Japanese society. This discrimination is not by race or ethnicity, but rather by place of residence and bloodline, and has existed for centuries - albeit very rarely acknowledged or discussed in Japan. When director Yusaku Mitsuwaka imagined the exemplary score for such a culturally sensitive and significant subject, he idealized Mono to help tell this story through their legendarily cinematic music. Following their recent experiments with electronic textures infused into their trademark dynamic rock compositions, My Story, The Buraku Story finds Mono at their most understated and elegiac. The songs that make up My Story, The Buraku Story are largely built around piano, strings, synths, and choral vocal loops. As one might expect from Mono, the arrangements are masterworks of understated execution with oversized emotional resonance. By far Mono's most delicate album, it is a fitting document of the band's first-ever full-length film soundtrack.