Recorded on what sounds like the type of upright piano you might find in the corner of an empty recreation hall, “Suspirium” drifts along with practically no production, a desolate snapshot of Yorke in his studio, quietly summoning with moody magic.
🎵 Thom Yorke: Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film)
Yorke’s score tackles a broader range of styles and ideas than any of his previous solo work, and all of them shine. There are appropriately cinematic, minor-key passages for piano and strings; great sheets of electronic buzz; gorgeous choral miniatures with a whiff of Arvo Pärt’s arctic grace; brooding, gothic Americana; and striking forays into pure electronic abstraction, the kind of thing you might have found on the German experimental label Mille Plateaux in the late 1990s.
Pitchfork also wrote a review of the title track.
I always love Yorke’s thinking about music. In a short discussion at the start of his set he discusses his love of tape for recording, the place of mathematics within art and different possibilities and potentials out there. It was this last point that really left me thinking. Listening to Autechre or Father John Misty is not about reproducing their sound, but simply being aware of what sounds are in fact possible. This was in part in reference to his work associated with his soundtrack for Suspiria.