Back catalogue: Soundtracks

Review: GRAMMY-nominated and Emmy Award-winning multihyphenate Labrinth builds on the success of scoring the first season of Euphoria with another high octane score for the second series. The HBO series was a huge hit and that's in part because of the music. Labrinth himself has said this one is more than just soundtrack music and he's right. It is a visceral listening experience in its own right and one with 22 well crafted tracks including the fan favourite version of 'I'm Tired.' Whether or not you have seen this series, this album is well worth hearing.

Review: When they brought back Tom Cruise's macho fighter pilot for Top Gun: Maverick, they were making no bones about the nostalgia trip. The original remains an endearingly ludicrous slice of 80s action with all the brawn necessary to make it an enduring hit, and the soundtrack more than matches up to that, going nine times platinum, no less. That's a lot of success to match up to, so Maverick pulls out the big guns by tapping up Lady Gaga for the hit-making and Hans Zimmer for the epic Hollywood score. It's tonnes of fun, and it even features Kenny Loggins' classic 'Danger Zone' from the original.

Review: Claude Lelouch's 1966 romantic drama, translated into English as A Man and A Woman, is simultaneously filled with hope and tragedy. It's a passionate story but not one without warnings and lessons about the challenges of getting over loss and learning to trust again. It was also a huge success at the time of its release, grossing $14million at the US box office, which was big bucks back then for a foreign language movie. As the title suggests, the plot follows two single parents - he and she - who lost their spouses in horrible circumstances, namely suicide and an accident, and set about building new lives for themselves, which then cross paths. To complement this, French composer Francis Albert Lai created a sexy, playful, but highly emotional score, which ranges from heartfelt songs to jazz cool and laidback rock 'n' roll.

Review: 'The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself' is a British fantasy drama that's got it all; antichrist conspiracies, pagan witches, misplaced identities, concerning the spiritual journey of the son of the most dangerous witch on the planet, it's no surprise that its showrunners have enlisted the help of Let's Eat Grandma (Rosa Walton / Jenny Hollingworth), who normally work in the realm of "experimental sludge pop", but instead, this soundtrack essentially recalls witch house for synthpop heads - with its garishly detuned synth mallets and uncanny arpeggiations recalling the creepy modernity of 2010s soundtracks by Disasterpeace or CUTS - but better.

Review: Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch's All of Us Strangers soundtrack is a superb trip through plenty of highly atmospheric landscapes that blend delicate piano melodies with haunting electronic textures. Each track paints a vivid portrait, evoking a sense of introspection and emotional depth that only heightens the scenes in the movie. Levienaise-Farrouch's narrative captivates and guides the audience through a range of moods from tranquil introspection to moments of poignant intensity, and as such this soundtrack showcases her exceptional talent for composition and storytelling.

Review: The Marvel movie universe has exploded in recent years and whatever you make of the on-screen showings the soundtracks - particularly of The Avengers - have all been superb. Now you can immerse yourself in the universe of your favourite Marvel characters with this new and limited edition vinyl pressing from Diggers Factory on translucent vinyl. The 15 tracks traverse the superhero world and thanks to superb performances from London Music Works. Tracks from Infinity War, End Game, Age of Ultra and more all feature to make this a superb collection for fans of any age.

Review: Known for their acclaimed renditions of film scores and soundtracks, London Music Works are now set to unveil their latest undertaking: The Essential Games Music Collection. Delivering precisely what it says on the tin, the collection features bombastic, swelling orchestral arrangements of musical highpoints from some of the most highly regarded videogames of all time. Transcending consoles and eras, the troupe cover everything from Nintendo classics such as Super Mario Bros. and The Legend Of Zelda, to more modern first-person-shooters Call Of Duty and Gears Of War, to iconic third-person triple A titles like Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid and The Last Of Us.

Review: High-kicking, nunchaking, pizza-eating, wise-cracking green dudes incoming. The barnstorming success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge isn't hard to surmise. The original cartoon itself is a joyous, goofy, good time slice of late 80s / early 90s pop culture, and the modern video game knew exactly how to capture that energy and port it into a highly addictive beat 'em up. The soundtrack is pitched bang on for the occasion as well, running the gamut from electro and funk to jazz, all rendered with that classic chip tune finish. But that's not all - the team also invited a dizzying cast of guests to lend their voices to this project, from Raekwon and Ghostface Killah to Mike Patton and more. To put it another way, it's totally far out.

Review: Formerly known as Non-Human Persons, NNHMN (or Non-Human) are a duo from Berlin who sound every bit like stereotypes of synth-twiddling tag teams from the German capital. Which is no disrespect, more to celebrate how long the city has been known for embracing noises plucked straight from the future, and then combining those with mechanical hyper-emotion. Androids or not, on Deception Island Part 1 NNHMN show off deft skills at creating strangely sensual and sexual soundscapes from plugged-in things, offering up five stand out tunes that straddle club scenes and twisted romances, or obsessions, each perfectly poised to move bodies while also enveloping us in mysterious atmospheres thick enough to drown in. It's dark, (predominantly) driving, epic and alluring - the art of sinister seduction, to put all that another way.

Review: If you've seen the TV series The Last Kingdom chances are you're pretty hyped about the idea of a feature length movie. Before that, though, we get Destiny Is All, an album made up of sounds from the super-popular Viking drama that stands out for many reasons. Whether you consider this dinner party music is a question of taste, but in the grand scheme of tunes made to score historical shows this is a cut above so much.
Forsaking tradition in favour of innovation, the arrangements here seem to transcend the period in which the narrative was set, and yet are so evocative of that age. A time of heroes, myths, legends, thunderstorms, rituals, runes, and an overwhelming sense of adventure, all those things are captured here but through the combination of orchestral bombast, choral voices, chants and electronic equipment.

Review: Alongside Visage, SOMA or Phasmophobia, perhaps one of the most original and storm-whipping horror video games to have been released in recent years is Scorn. The game takes after H.R. Giger's monstrous biotech vision to produce a horrifying take on the sci-fi-horror intersection, with hybrid organisms, bone guns and bloody viscera both in tow. It makes pretty damn good sense, then, to have Lustmord and Aethek, two titans of dark ambient, to produce this daring post-industrial hellscape of a half-foley, half-musical soundtrack LP.

Review: Nokbient and Save Point's Video Game LoFi: Yoshi is a playful and charming electronic covers tribute to the classic video game character. A mix of chiptune-inspired synths and lo-fi beats, crafted delicately and softly for the modern listener, combine to create this lovely ode to everybody's favourite green, giant-nosed reptile. Yoshi's greatest character themes - including those from Mario Kart, Super Mario World, and Yoshi's Story - all combine in an unequivocally cute mood here.

Review: Let's face it, Hollywood director Christopher Nolan broke the mould with his re-envisioning of Batman. Taking things closer to the original comic books, themselves forced to 'go soft' by censors in the early-1950s, his films payed direct tribute to the saga's direction from the mid-1970s onwards. A trilogy of movies that were visually arresting, tonally dystopian, and viciously unhinged. It's not clear if we'll ever get a superhero (or anti-hero) film series of that class and calibre again, the world on screen so immersive you quickly feel like a Gotham native. A big part of that universe-building comes through the music, which enlists two of the greatest names in the history of soundtracks to help weave the tales. Hans Zimmer has composed for more than 150 films, James Newton Howard in excess of 100. This compilation of their shared caped crusader efforts proves why they're so well respected.