CD: Loft, The (2014)
Score: Very Good
Label: Varese Sarabande
Released: January 20, 2015
Tracks / Album Length: 22 tracks / (46:53)
Composer: John Frizzell
Special Notes: n/a
Review:
Bart De Pauw’s screenplay has been adapted three times for the big screen (2008, 2010 and 2014), allowing three composers to tackle the story of a whodunnit involving a group of men who discover a cadaver in a rented loft, and for the 2014 U.S. remake the director of the original 2008 Belgium effort returned to translate the same story for English audiences.
Erik Van Looy’s first film featured a unique score by Wolfram de Marco, transposing the rhythmic textures of a synth Tangerine Dream score to orchestra, with heavy repetition and a constant swirling movement which peaks and recedes like an unnerving undercurrent. Van Looy seems to have preferred that concept of textural waves, hence John Frizzell’s score being one of his least aggressive in years.
There is a sense Van Looy impressed Frizzell to echo de Marco’s approach – “Fatum Nos Lunebity” features pulses and flanging effects which similarly swell into furious eddying sonic patterns, and “Casino Night” is equally cyclical in its use of rhythms, albeit performed by most of the orchestra – making The Loft a bit too familiar to fans of de Marco’s score; certainly for fans of Frizzell’s experimental style, there’s a disappointment in the composer (presumably) not being able to indulge in more abstract cues.
It’s still a well-written, neatly arranged work that shows the composer’s less experimental side (feedback and minimalism excepted in pulsing cues like “Vincent Accused”), and Frizzell’s sleek style never overstates nor erupts into any kind of bombast
© 2015 Mark R. Hasan
Additional Links:
Editor’s Blog — Composer on IMDB — Composer Filmography — Soundtrack Album
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