Thom Yorke - Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film) [2LP]

Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film) is Thom Yorke's first full film score, a 2018 double album that is as eerie, tender and unsettling as the dance-academy horror it was written for.

Asked to follow one of the most famous horror soundtracks ever made, Yorke sensibly ignored it. Instead of prog-rock frenzy, he built something colder and more intimate: analogue synths, choral voices, ghostly piano and long stretches of dread. The result works beautifully away from the screen, sitting somewhere between his solo electronics and the hushed end of Radiohead.

Suspirium is the heart of it, a gentle, waltzing piano song that sounds like a lullaby with something wrong underneath. Unmade is even more fragile, Yorke's voice barely above a whisper over slow chords, while Has Ended drifts in on a woozy groove and murmured vocals. The longer instrumental pieces lean into pulsing synths and droning textures, conjuring rituals, bodies in motion and very bad intentions.

Spread across two discs, the record moves between song and score, beauty and menace, with the patience of a filmmaker.

For Radiohead fans, it is one of the most rewarding side roads Yorke has taken. For horror fans, it is the perfect soundtrack for a long night with the lights off.