L'Affaire Farewell,Varese Sarabande ****
Since his first score for Darren Aronofsky’s Pi in 1998, Pop Will Eat Itself founder Clint Mansell has written several distinctive and original scores, including
World Traveller, Abandon, Moon, Requiem for a Dream
and
The Fountain
.
The latter two (both for Aronofsky) are sampled frequently in trailers and other films. With each successive score he favours an increasingly lean and laconic style of long melodic lines, idiosyncratic instrumentation and brooding electronica. Mansell’s taut score for
L’Affaire Farewell
, a French Cold War thriller, is his sparest yet, combining subtle variations on a single elegant theme with jittery polyrhythms and glittering colours (sonorous piano, nervy balalaika, churning electric guitar).
Climaxing in the 15-minute- long cue
Secrets and Lies
, a near perfect fusion of romance and paranoia, Mansell’s compelling score rarely resolves or relents in either tension or menace. See colosseum.de
Download tracks: Secrets and Lies, Cold War
