Max Richter

★★★ White Boy Rick OST

STUDIORICHTER/DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON. CD/DL/LP

Largely electronic score to Yann Demange’s Detroit crack wars movie, on vinyl. Max Richter’s music, whether orchestral or electronic, is hallmarked by soaring melancholy or womblike introspection, qualities film-makers have increasingly deployed, often as contrasting accompaniment to an abiding mise-en-scène (see Denis Villeneuve’s use of Richter’s chamber piece On The Nature Of Daylight in his sci-fi epic, Arrival). That is not quite the case here, as Richter’s mostly synth-based score is a darkly textured subterranean complement to a gritty narcocrime drama, his machine throbs and ambient miasmas generating an atmosphere of synapse-busting claustrophobia. Typically, opener Night Drive punctuates swelling electronic clouds with sudden, stark bass pulsations, while Ride To Marathon Station swaps synthetic tremolo shimmers for dystopian chords, and only Nonviolent Offender, with its delicately funereal piano descent and aching strings, and the valedictory I Got Everything I Need In Life, proffer Richter’s more familiarly poignant signature.