WaterTower Music releases Hildur Guðnadóttir's original score for Joker: Folie à Deux which features 19 tracks (33 min, 29 sec) from Todd Phillips’ movie...

Hildur Guðnadóttir builds on her original score for the movie Joker. As with that soundtrack, her compositions for Joker: Folie à Deux will divide listeners. It's by no means an easy listen, but there's no escaping the fact that it adds a lot of depth to the overall atmosphere of the movie.

Discussing the project, director Todd Phillips says: "There was no version of this film where we weren't calling Hildur to do the score. I think her music is basically the second biggest character in the first film."

Composer Guðnadóttir invented a new instrument specifically for this project: "Arthur’s theme is like a thread of sound that goes in many different scenes, trying to find its place, like what Arthur is going through in this film. He’s trying to find his place between reality and fantasy, Arthur and Joker, being in love or being made a fool of. The sound world we had before [on Joker] was very string-based, and I started imagining Arthur in the prison and how I could take that sound world and turn it into a prison, really make this confined space out of strings. I worked with instrument builders from Iceland to help me build what I call a string prison, which consisted of very long strings that are strung through a space forming a prison. I used a trench cello to play through the string prison, where Arthur is held captive by the sound of the strings, and bring this sense of joy married with claustrophobia in this horrific situation."

As unsettling and atmospheric as the music is, do you really want to listen to this on its own? For me the answer is definitely not, but what Guðnadóttir delivers here is unmistakably beautifully warped, showcasing that she's a master of manipulation with her skills at delivering a jarring score.

It is unsettling, it is technically perfect for the movie, but it won't be to everyone's taste as a standalone album.

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Darren Rea