Stoker soundtrack has enough layers to add to your collection

I had the opportunity last night to hear and see Clint Mansell perform all his greatest compositions live at Orpheum in Downtown Los Angeles. This was my second time seeing him live and he put on another exceptional show.  The last show was at the Largo in West Hollywood.  Honestly, I liked that venue better because it was smaller and more of a warm atmosphere.  Orpheum is an amazing venue, don't get me wrong, but there's always something better about smaller venues when you see a performance.  It's up front and personal.

Anyhow, the performace was great by the entire band. Clint Mansell always knows how to charm the audience with his stories about each composition. It's rare you hear an artist talk about a song before he performs but you get that with Mansell.   It's like a mini-audio-commentary before each song.

Now, lets talk about the Stoker soundtrack which is Mansell's latest offering of music.  There are definitely parts of this soundtrack that have that staple Mansell sound like the tracks "Blossoming" and "Becoming."  "Becoming" is the longest piece of the score and has that well known progression of most Mansell tracks.  It also has this really harsh string section that is very aggressive and familiar from Mansell's previous compositions.  Unfortunately, I couldn't embed that song on this post. Here's "Blossoming" which I mentioned above.

In a way, this soundtrack has more variety than some of the other Mansell film scores.  The work that he does with Darren Aronofsky tends to have one strong theme that just carries through the entire score but on this film it seems a bit more fragmented. Again, I really enjoyed the different landscapes of sound on this again.

Also, you get two really good songs from Emily Wells on this soundtrack.  "If I Ever Had A Heart" was composted with Mansell and Wells together actually.  "Becomes the Color" is the Emily Wells song that plays at the end of the film and at first listen it reminded me of the artist Poe from the 90's.  This album is worth picking up if you like Mansell and you're a general fan of soundtracks.

Maybe you were living under a rock back in the 1990's or too young to have heard Poe's music.  So,  here's "Angry Johnny" which was one the more popular songs from her.  Poe was my favorite singer back in that Lilith Fair era of the 1990's.  Again, if you were in college back then you know what I'm talking about.