Blog

Top Ten Sci-Fi Soundtracks

The music used in film and television adds a dimension to the mood of any given scene that draws us into the moment, and helps to subtly direct or indeed misdirect our understanding of what is happening on screen. Below, I've compiled my top ten favourite Official Sound Tracks for film and television, though please keep in mind that this is not necessarily the order in which I'd place the films / television series themselves.

10. The Prestige (David Julyan)

David Julyan's film score for The Prestige is a somewhat traditional orchestral film score, although this fits well with the film's 19th century setting. It has a sombre, almost funereal tone to it, reflecting the otherworldly forces that Christian Bale's magician experiments with.

9. The Day the Earth Stood Still (Bernard Hermann)

In this 1951 scifi classic, we find Bernard Hermann's unconventional innovations in music, and in particular his use of the aetherphone, also known as the theremin after its inventor, Professor Leon Theremin. This otherworldly-sounding instrument had two antennas, which detected hand position, allowing the hands to then control the radio frequency, and volume of the amplified electric signal. Perhaps the best track on this OST to make use of this is track 9 Gort: The Visor. As a pioneer of this use of unusual instruments, it's worth noting that Hermann was a major influence on Elmer Bernstein, a mentor of Bear McCreary, composer of the music for the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica and the upcoming Caprica.

8. Vanilla Sky (various)

The soundtrack to Vanilla Sky comprises tracks by various artists, but the track which stands out most, and perhaps best reflects the lucid-dream-like qualities of the film, is Everything in its Right Place by Radiohead. Other tracks that stand out are Sweetness Follows by REM, Elevator Beat by Nancy Wilson, and Last Goodbye by the late Jeff Buckley.

7. Batman: The Dark Knight (Hans Zimmer)

Just as Christopher Nolan creates a superhero film that breaks free of the limiting confines that other films in the series have adhered to, to create a Gotham City that is epic in scale, so Hans Zimmer matches this with a film score that has the spatial depth of a city, created by having the different instruments play at different levels of intensity and volume. In Why So Serious for example the violins play quietly but without pause, almost like the whining of mosquito wings, slowly growing louder and louder, only to be overtaken by electric bass and lead guitar, which ebb and flow from near silence into heart pounding riffs with deep, pounding drums like gun fire.

6. Alien (Jerry Goldsmith)

While Alien remains perhaps the most terrifying science fiction film ever made, its soundtrack is no less terrifying. For some it might make for uncomfortable listening, in particular track 5, The Droid. Goldsmith follows in the tradition of Bernard Hermann and Elmer Bernstein, in using unusual sounds and instruments to capture a sense, or a feeling, that might otherwise be impossible with conventional instruments.

5. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (John Williams)

John Williams' music for George Lucas' Star Wars films even now never fails to send chills down me, most particularly the choral piece used for the arrival of the Emperor, in track 8 The Emperor Arrives. Although one might think of John Williams as a more traditional composer, and his music for the Star Wars films so familiar that one might pass on listening to the soundtrack, this would be a mistake.

4. The Matrix Trilogy (Don Davis and various)

The orchestral score is composed by Don Davis, with other tracks written by a variety of artists, most notably (Rob D) Rob Dougan's Clubbed to Death (The Matrix), and Rage Against the Machine's Wake Up (The Matrix). My only wish is that the film and OST had included something by Fear Factory, whose industrial, futurist metal would have fit perfectly. What Don Davis brings to the Matrix series, is a breathtaking use of sweeping trombone and dizzying violin sections that reflect perfectly the time and space-bending abilities of Neo and others within the Matrix.

3. Blade Runner (Vangelis)

Due to a dispute between Vangelis and 20th Century Fox at the time of the film's 1982 release, the OST wouldn't be released until the dispute was resolved in 1994. Until then, Fox released an inferior version of the soundtrack performed by the New American Orchestra, a kind of music for elevators version to be avoided. Vangelis' OST incorporates samples from the film into a truly amazing score that elaborates greatly upon its edited use within the film. One of the best examples of this is track 2, Blush Response, and track 9, Tales from the Future which features the falsetto vocals of Demis Roussos.

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (various)

The sheer majesty of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke's vision of humanity's technological leap from using bones to space stations, and its first encounter with an alien intellect millions or perhaps billions of years more advanced, is reflected perfectly in the use of different classical pieces, in particular Aram Khachaturian's Gayane Ballet Suite (which is also used in James Cameron's Aliens). Classical music often thought of and presented as the height of human cultural sophistication, is overwhelmed by the most startling, exhilarating, even terrifying piece of music in the OST, Jupiter and Beyond: Requiem for Soprano by Gyorgy Ligeti that offers us a frightening glimpse into the monolith, and into dimensions beyond our own.

1. Battlestar Galactica

Richard Gibbs composed the soundtrack for the pilot, and season one of Battlestar Galactica, with assistance from Bear McCreary. Taking over, Bear McCreary went on to write the music for seasons two, three, and four, building on what they had already established, but replacing the somewhat hollow synthesizers with a richer, more diverse array of instruments and musical styles. Three examples of this richness stand out in particular: McCreary's interpretation of All Along the Watchtower (original by Bob Dylan and made famous by Jimi Hendrix). Battlestar Sonatica used in the episode 'Torn' (Season 3) in which Gaius Baltar finds himself on a cylon basestar, contrasts perfectly the rich, ethnic complexity of the music used to represent the human colonists, but also represents a counterpoint to Metamorphosis I (from the album 'Solo Piano') by Philip Glass, which Starbuck plays a recording of in her abandoned apartment on cylon-occupied Caprica. The music from Battlestar Galactica, like the series itself, explores new depths and complexities of emotion that set it apart from all others.

Written by Charlie Benjamin

A love of scifi and horror lead me to study illustration for two years at college when I was a crazy teenager, and many years later to change direction and study literature at Stirling University where I got a PhD for the thesis ‘Dickens and Freud: A Mutual Encounter with the Double’. I’m currently writing a science fiction novel, but it may end up turning into a book on the origin of science fiction. I listen to death metal, especially Cannibal Corpse and Mortician, and I’m an avid gamer, especially Gran Turismo and World of Warcraft.