- Suspiria, Dario Argento’s cult Italian-American horror film is celebrating its fortieth anniversary in 2018. Rather than staring at its naked body in the mirror on its fortieth birthday, wondering “what happened to me?”, the film has been remade by Luca Guadagnino. Thom Yorke, of Radiohead fame, and who coincidentally is dating an Italian actress, is enlisted for soundtrack duties; but is it a re-imagination or merely remake of the original soundtrack?
With the 1977 original, punters came for the film, and stayed for Goblin’s experimental prog-rock soundtrack. As seems the case with most Italian-American film directors, notably Sergio Leone and Martin Scorsese, there is less a soundtrack to the film and more a filmtrack to the sound. Like Leone’s films, Yorke completed the soundtrack prior to the film being shot, in order that Guadagnino could work around it. Goblin’s eccentric and nightmarish score to the original 1977 Suspiria does much of the grunt work for the film’s squeamish brand of psychological horror. Suspiria has been described as “the closest a filmmaker has come to capturing a nightmare on film.” Goblin’s unearthly and sub-human soundtrack was a big part of that.
In 2018, Thom Yorke stands upon the shoulders of giants. Giant Goblins, perhaps. There are, rightfully, a number of homages to the original soundtrack, and the original is too iconic to not have them. Tracks such Olga’s Destruction and Volk similarly utilise melodic arpeggios and sporadic percussion. Sabbath Incantation and The Conjuring of Anche are wordless acapella choir pieces that nod to the original’s heavy use of the unintelligible human voice as an instrument of fear.
However, Yorke’s soundtrack transcends the mere unsettling mood of the original. Particularly on the tracks Unmade and Open Again, Yorke more profoundly explores the complex human emotions that usually have no place in a ‘cheap thrills’ horror picture, the former of which is an undeniably shimmering beauty of a song and the album’s clear highlight. These two moments of sweetness, as well as the title tracks, are in juxtaposition to the rest of the soundtrack, which is predominantly morbid and bleak. The listener is thus given respite with ambient piano and synth tracks akin to krautrock such as Neu!, which befits the new film’s setting in Berlin. Conversely some tracks, such as A Light Green and The Balance of Things are forgettable and could be mistaken for a teenager playing simple chords and clicking every Garageband effect to see what happens while 2.6 standard drinks deep on a Friday night.
The mere fact that Yorke’s soundtrack has lyrics, means that it is not merely new, but different. When you leave your girlfriend and then try to find another girlfriend that looks just like your ex, albeit hoping that she doesn’t also make you wear a tracking device on your ankle, you subconsciously convince yourself that your ex was the perfect match. Thom Yorke has impliedly, through the power of film soundtracking, given us a great piece of dating advice.
Rather than entrusting an unknown, foreign band for its big break, as Goblin were given by Argento in 1977, the new film has played it safe with an established popular musician in Thom Yorke, but that’s not a big issue. Yorke is still an independent musician who is comfortable and experienced with unfettered creativity. The Universe Is Indifferent, with its nonsensical guitar picking, suspenseful strings and droning vocals, combines the foreign with the unworldly and is the most overtly creepy song on the album. Klemperer Walks, despite its strange effects, is a perversely moving piece of music, like a Peruvian hairless dog doing something cute.
Suspirium, the title-ish track and its seven-minute extended finale rendition are truly beautiful pieces of music, with reverb soaked piano and flute drifting wherever Yorke’s breathy vocals may take them. However, in the unexpected chord changes and abnormal time signatures there is a foreboding undertone that suggests something twisted and sinister behind the beautiful aesthetic. It is this duality to Yorke’s score that makes it a new, and potentially brilliant piece, in and of itself, rather than being comparable with the brilliant original.
There are twenty-three tracks on Yorke’s soundtrack - however, if your iPhone 3 was running low on storage, only a handful would be worth deleting photos for, though photos of deceased grandparents would be worth deleting for Unmade (and its shorter, ambient reprise, The Jumps). This soundtrack does not readily seem as timeless as the original. Perhaps we are having the gin without the tonic, the UQ law student without the boat shoe, the Vietnamese restaurant without the BYO, and it will all make sense when we see the new film.
Thom Yorke is edgy, but nonetheless a pop/rock musician, not classically trained and inexperienced in soundtrack work. Suspiria’s 2018 soundtrack is an interesting musical experience, but a timeless quote from another classic film springs to mind: “Stick to the stuff you know… stick to the status quo”.
- Harry Rival Lee.