Ludwig Göransson's The Odyssey Score, Separated From the Film

Göransson’s music for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is built for 70mm spectacle, but heard as a record it sits closer to dark ambient and Fourth World textures. A new film music column traces where that approach comes from.

Ludwig Göransson’s score for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey was written for a film of 70mm battle sequences and the percussion that drives them. Removed from that context and heard as a soundtrack release, it behaves differently, leaning on ambiguous instrumentation and recording technique rather than force.

Writing in his film music column for The Wire, Philip Brophy places the score alongside Göransson’s earlier work for Nolan’s Tenet, arguing that both use diegetic and instrumental ambiguity to disorient listeners in time and space. The