Looper (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Composer Nathan Johnson, who heads up the rock group The Cinematic Underground, received a fair amount of attention for his score for Brick, the excellent 2005 neo-noir directed by his cousin Rian Johnson. Nathan combined traditional and custom-made instruments to create the film’s effective music, and he went on to score Rian’s next two features, The Brothers Bloom and Looper. The latter movie is set in 2044, when Mafia-style hitmen known as loopers are hired to kill marks that are sent back to them from even further in the future. Johnson is clearly expert at blending musical instruments with other sonic phenomena. It’s unclear what sources were used to craft “A Body That Technically Does Not Exist,” but it successfully creates a sense of intrigue with just a handful of sounds. Johnson certainly knows how to write requisite action-scene music where strings chug, horns blast, and drums pound, but the most interesting tracks are the more atmospheric ones, like “Seth’s Tale.” The album concludes with “Everything Comes Around,” a piece for piano, strings, and music box.