Love is in the Air, Pt.1 I love this piece from the film Obsession; a movie made on a shoestring budget ($750,000) and grossing nearly 200 million globally. I don’t expect Hollywood to draw any correct conclusions from this, but it would seem original storytelling […]

Handprint Twenty-year-old Kane Parsons is having a moment. His found-footage Backrooms short — made at home when he was 16 — pulled in tens of millions of views on YouTube and somehow turned into a real A24 feature. The film just became A24’s first movie […]

The Mandalorian and Grogu This is essentially a reprise of my 2019 arrangement of The Mandalorian Theme — one of my all-time favorite pieces to play. I loved the show, and I’m genuinely excited for the film adaptation, The Mandalorian & Grogu, especially with the […]

Destroyer of Worlds Ludwig Göransson’s Oppenheimer soundtrack is, I believe, the greatest film music achievement of the past decade. The whole thing is immensely listenable — and woven deep into the bones of the film and the Oppenheimer story itself. If you watch it again […]

I Need You M83 is a French electronic music project — primarily the brainchild of musician Anthony Gonzalez. The band is widely recognized for creating epic soundscapes with a sound that’s both nostalgic and cinematic. In 2014, M83 contributed a beautiful piece to the Divergent […]

First Flight The Last of Us HBO sees composer Gustavo Santaolalla retooling and abbreviating many of his most famous pieces from the original game soundtracks. “First Flight” is actually the bridge section of “Unbroken” from The Last of Us Part II. This makes it a […]

The O.G. of cinematic guitar Gustavo Santaolalla had already built an impressive résumé — Amores Perros, 21 Grams, The Motorcycle Diaries (an astonishing soundtrack) — but it was 2005’s Brokeback Mountain where his cinematic sound truly took flight: minimalist guitar, expansive reverb, and open space […]

A Real Hero Drive (2011) was a great movie — artful in the way it introduced an 80s aesthetic while still being set in the present day. The soundtrack was excellent, punctuated with synthwave (or retrowave) producers like College, Kavinsky, and Desire. Music built around […]

Left Behind (The Journey) I’ve always loved this piece, originally titled “Left Behind (Together)” from The Last of Us Vol. 2 — which is actually the soundtrack for the Left Behind DLC  (the first game’s expansion). I’m not a gamer, and in case you’re not […]

I Suppose We Could Go Anywhere I’m consistently amazed at how HBO knocks it out of the park — specifically with the Game of Thrones universe. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was a slightly upbeat departure in tone, but still carried all the shock […]

Together Again The BBC/Hulu limited series Normal People has been recommended to me for years. I’ve always loved the music, and I was deeply familiar with the minimalist piano soundtrack by Irish composer Stephen Rennicks long before I actually watched the show. Having just finished […]

The Luck Is Ours Alone While Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon focus on the high-stakes maneuvering of kings, queens, and Great Houses—A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms offers a refreshing, more intimate look at George R.R. Martin’s world. Based on the Tales […]