October 9, 2017
The BLADE RUNNER 2049 soundtrack album has been released, featuring original music composed by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch, as well as the original song “Almost Human” by Lauren Daigle and classic tracks by Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley that feature in the film. The digital album has been released by Alcon Sleeping Giant (ASG) Records, under exclusive distribution through Epic Records. A limited edition collector’s item 2-CD set of only 2049 copies was released last week, causing a second printing of another 2049 copies to be issued – they can be ordered here as copies last. All physical copies additionally unlock a digital download.
In a feature story by Kristopher Tapley detailing the film’s Oscar potential, Variety highlighted the aural balance that Zimmer and Wallfisch achieve, writing, “[their] score maintains proper reverence for and distance from Vangelis’ iconic original work. ”
In order to do so, they implemented vintage synths such as “the star of the score” a Yamaha CS80 from the late seventies as well as modern technological innovations, yielding a rich sonic palette wholly cognizant of this world and the vision of director Denis Villeneuve.
“First of all, I realized that Denis is a director who has a vision; he has a voice,” said Zimmer. “Remember, I’ve done a lot of movies with Ridley Scott. So, it was important that this was an autonomous piece of work. Let’s just be honest. Ridley is a hard act to follow — as is Vangelis. While Ben was four-years-old, I had actually experienced all of this,” he laughs. “We watched and literally, as we stopped watching, we decided on the palette. We decided this wasn’t going to be an orchestral thing. The story spoke to us.”
“We all know what Blade Runner feels like and what that experience is to watch this incredible masterpiece,” added Wallfisch. The first question we asked ourselves was, ‘How can we reinvent and make it fresh and new, but still be in that world?’ The mission from the beginning was this idea of finding the heart of the film—what is its soul? When you discover the simplest possible theme, it sums up humanity almost. I feel like that’s what we were all striving for towards the beginning of the process.” Villeneuve’s usual composer, Johann Johannsson, left the project over creative differences,” added Tapley in a parenthetical note in the aforementioned Variety article.
