Film Reviews

Slow West Soundtrack Review

• 11th Aug 2015

Slow West is soundtrack of 25 songs but only 16 actual songs and the rest a mixture of sound bites from the film that connect to an actual song that will follow after.

Easy to listen to musical and made with creativity for how to use the music within the film, with pieces by the London Contemporary Orchestra flirt between moody and sombre, to light, sweet and gentle.

Without the film the music by Jed Kurzel and Django Django (a very contemporary band) is decent on its own, the playful use of different instruments and arrangements to the soundtrack to assemble a bygone Western feel but between some songs there is a boring similar element, which is the soundtrack’s own fault, period soundtracks can leave their period pacing and use a variety of contemporary elements (Great Gatsby) but this Slow West stays in it’s setting and the confines of slow and drawn out music, touching the elements of a typical Western (unless something happens, life in the Old West was slow and harsh).

Within the film the music is effective, repetitive and easy on the ear, the extra elements of the interlude pieces of the soundbites of the film aren’t need (since Pulp Fiction, soundtracks sometimes have this for some reason) but overly a instrumental soundtracks faithful to itself and its film genre, without being too cliched but just too similar to be anything memorable or different.

Antonia Mcguire