CMU Approved

Approved: Mogwai – Les Revenants

By | Published on Wednesday 31 July 2013

Les Revenants

Mogwai are really flying of late, mainly thanks to a pair of scores: the first, an OST to 2006’s ‘Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait’, and, more recently, one featuring the eerie themes and scene-backing tracks you may have heard on Channel 4’s glacially-paced new French thriller ‘Les Revenants’ (trans ‘The Returned’).

Beautifully timed to fit each crack in the storyline’s slow thaw – which, as an eerily realist trip into death and bereavement, is less kin to ‘The Walking Dead’ than it is like ‘Six Feet Under’ – ‘Les Revenants’ the score (like the show) drips in hostile doom from the off.

By baring itself in varying lights and shades – for instance the brittle click-clack of main theme ‘Hungry Face’; to the swarming ditchwater guitars in ‘This Messiah Needs Watching’; to a wintry, straight-faced take on the ‘What Are They Doing In Heaven Today?’ (ha ha ha) – it avoids the one-note monotony that was always a risk, given the series’ relentlessly ‘dark and drear’ aesthetic.

Hear all of ‘Les Revenants’ via this Spotify link and, while you’re at it, give the show’s first season a go (possibly, again) via 4OD.



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