Italian director Domiziano Cristopharo’s (Red Krokodil) film Dark Waves (2015) is a fantasy-horror film revolving around a young couple and an unfortunate little gift.  What her husband thinks are gold nuggets turn out to be gold teeth. A series of strange events culminate in the piratical owners of those teeth rising out of the sea to reclaim them.  The score, by Alexander Cimini (Red Krokodil), has been receiving numerous accolades and awards.

An opening horn idea kicks off the “Main Theme” with a haunting vocalise that floats ghost-like across this sparse texture.  As the orchestra enters, we are treated to a very gorgeous thematic statement.  As we head into “The Town”, Cimini weaves a somewhat dark orchestral sound with Gothic overtones.  It is beautifully scored with piano and strings and little harp flourishes.  The horn adds a nice sense of warmth to the overall texture and feels like it is calling out, at least that is the sense as we head into “The Tower” at the opening though this moves to a piano statement of the theme before we are back to the vocalise, like a siren call (tellingly in “Love Scene”) that seems to have Morricone in mind.  Cimini’s music has this gentle lapping against the shore feel at times though it can dissipate to let large scale thematic ideas grow as they do here in “The Tower”.  The music tends to sneak up into these big moments by setting up small motivic ideas that help create thematic continuity in a cue.  Inevitably, the beautiful main theme will find its way to the forefront.  Monica Boschetti’s beautiful voice just soars above the music with these grand romantic gestures undergirding her work creating stunning music (“Hidden Mysteries”).  The undulating music helps create the perfect atmosphere and on occasion there are even some wonderful violin ideas (“Fragments of Memories”; “The Dressing”) for different color.  “The Secrets Revealed” kicks up the energy level with a bit more impassioned writing and a heartbreaking final minute or so of music that continues into the end credits.

The album includes a couple of “bonuses” if you will which follow the end credits.  The first is an extended version of “Follow Me” and the other is a wonderful concert suite representing the score.  A love song, used for the opening credits is provided as a final closing track.  It was composed by Marco Werba.  This helps fill out the CD to an hour playing time.

For fans of gothic horror scores, there is a great deal to recommend Dark Waves.  That said, others will certainly want to explore the gorgeous thematic material and orchestral writing that are reminiscent of Navarrete.  Cimini’s theme is quite stunning and coupled with the vocalise will stick with you long after the music has come to an end it is simply stunning music that recalls some of the great Gothic horror scores of the 1960s and 1970s.  The sequencing of the album works well for listening and the tracks have a chance to be well-shaped musically making for a very engaging listen.

Tha album is available from Kronos Records.

After a car accident, a young woman returns to her childhood Louisiana home only to be tormented by an evil spirit that will not let her go in Kevin Greutert’s (Saw VI) horror/thriller Jessabelle.  Anton Sanko, who also scored this year’s slight horror hit Ouija, gained a bit of attention recently for his work on the Ring of Fire (2013) miniseries and has been active in film and television scoring for a couple decades with many horror films under his belt.

The score presentation opens with a blast of sounds with ambient ideas floating underneath.  It gives way to the hint of a delicate thematic idea outlined in harp against tremolo strings.  Manipulated vocal sounds also appear along with a music box figure that becomes part of a Desplat-like texture by “Searching Through Drawers”.  Sanko tends to blend a variety of unsettling acoustic sounds with manipulated sounds and other design techniques for his chilling atmospheric backdrops (“Jessie’s Dream”, “Open the Gate”—featuring a lot of chanting and frightening vocal sounds; “Scary Movie”).  They are balanced with moments of calmer reflection as those which open “Hoame Movies”, “Boat Ride” or “Second Reading”; though they can, and often do, gradually become tempered with tinges of darkness and sudden hits that can be quite chilling (“Torches”).  The moody undulating string moments provide some tonal focus to the music that can easily be shattered by the vocal or electronic elements.  “Underwater Transformation” begins rather hauntingly before the clusters appear and the chanting overwhelms the sound making this track a fairly good representation of some of the score’s primary elements