Canadians Who Score
Art rockers Absolutely Free recently branched out with their ambient-leaning score for Two Cares Due None. Here are some other must-hear film scores by Canadian musicians.
ARCADE FIRE
Spike Jonze’s Her hasn’t gotten a proper soundtrack release, but a YouTube search uncovers the full score in all of its Satie-pilfering melancholy.
DIRTY BEACHES
One of Alex Zhang Hungtai’s most striking, underappreciated works is his ambient music for the West Edmonton Mall doc Waterpark.
WADE MACNEIL
Known for kicking up a racket with Alexisonfire, the guitarist dabbled in eerie synths for wrestling docuseries Dark Side of the Ring.
METRIC
Toronto’s own Howard Shore is known for scoring The Lord of the Rings, but he went electro-rock with a Metric collab for David Cronenberg’s 2012 film Cosmopolis.
A.C. NEWMAN
The New Pornographers’ leader showed his sentimental side with acoustic strums in Daniel Radcliffe’s 2013 romcom The F Word.
COLIN STETSON
The sax god has honked on numerous films, most recently concocting chilly soundscapes for the Nic Cage sci-fi Color Out of Space.
SINOIA CAVES
In 2014, Black Mountain’s Jeremy Schmidt evoked the retro-futurist sounds of John Carpenter for Panos Cosmatos’s Beyond the Black Rainbow.