Videodrome - Music

Music

An original score was composed for Videodrome by Cronenberg's close friend, Howard Shore. The score was composed to follow Max Renn's descent into video hallucinations, starting out with dramatic orchestral music that increasingly incorporates, and eventually emphasizes, electronic instrumentation. To achieve this, Shore composed the entire score for an orchestra before programming it into a Synclavier II digital synthesizer. The rendered score, taken from the Synclavier II, was then recorded being played in tandem with a small string section. The resulting sound was a subtle blend that often made it difficult to tell which sounds were real and which were synthesized.

The music for the film plays over the Universal logo. "So right from the Universal Logo, you are already kind of unsettled," Cronenberg said, "That's because of Howard Shore's wonderful score for the movie, which was subversive and perverse and unsettling without being obvious."

The soundtrack was also released on vinyl by Varèse Sarabande and was re-released on compact disc in 1998. The album itself is not just a straight copy of Howard Shore's score, but rather a remixing. Howard Shore has commented that while there were small issues with some of the acoustic numbers, that "on the whole I think they did very well." The album is currently out of print.

Videodrome's cult film status has made it a popular source for sampling and homage in Electro-industrial, EBM, and heavy metal music. It ranked tenth on the Top 1,319 Sample Sources list of 2004.

Read more about this topic:  Videodrome

Famous quotes containing the word music:

    People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around—the music and the ideas.
    Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)

    Not to sink under being man and wife,
    But get some color and music out of life?
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)