Unless you’re living in the cave of Polyphemus, you are surely aware that Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey arrives today. With it, Ludwig Göransson’s 23-track, two-hour score—concluding with an end-credits collaboration with Travis Scott and James Blake—is now available to stream.
As the composer revealed to Time, no orchestra was used for the score, and instead he “rented 35 bronze gongs of varying sizes, experimented, recorded them with synths, and began sending the director songs.” Göransson notes, “It’s not like the orchestra existed back then. It was a challenge and also an opening to try to make something unique.”
Nick Newman said in his review of The Odyssey, “The Odyssey‘s A-list ensemble tends to play material at a morose even keel—stone faces, teary eyes, throaty whispers. Only certain outside-the-line colorings smuggle revelation. Most evident is Robert Pattinson’s take on the antagonistic Antinous as (keeping up with Nolan’s script by putting this in the parlance of our times) a crazy white boy whose stated inspiration (James Woods in Casino) was neither sensed in the moment nor shocking to learn ex post facto. The energy inflected by one spitting of wine or crookening of smile can’t help begging questions about his relative-to-Spider-Man sidelining, though I suppose that query at last stretches back to Homer, and we cannot consult him.”
Listen below and pick up the vinyl edition here.
