Updated February 11, 2022
Colin Stetson’s 2022 TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE Soundtrack Releases Feb 18th
Composer Colin Stetson, known for scoring JT Mollner’s OUTLAWS AND ANGELS (2916), Ari Aster’s HEREDITARY (2018), and Richard Stanley’s COLOR OUT OF SPACE (2019), has scored the music for David Blue Garcia’s update of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. Milan Records will release the digital soundtrack album on February 18th, the same day the film premieres on Netflix.
Speaking to Jazz Tangcay of Variety about the new TCM score, Stetson said, concerning the music for Tobe Hooper’s original 1974 movie, “That score was genre-exclusionary and abstract. It was trying to divorce itself from the shackles of the score and sound design to enter a new space.” That separation of genre, Tangcay writes, opened up doors for Stetson when it came to scoring the new film; director David Blue Garcia gave Stetson permission to run with his ideas and create a no-holds-barred palette that would scare the crap out of audiences.
Stetson’s initial approach was not to use sonic materials such as those used by Hooper and musician Wayne Bell, which mixed instruments like double bass and cymbal effects with musique concrete elements such as pieces of metal and power tools to give their original TCM film a unique and disturbing musical tone. “I took my bass saxophone and an old Tibetan singing bowl and I taped it over the top of the saxophone to create a seal,” Stetson told Tangcay. “What you get is scraping and [a] high growl scream that still feels like music… It would come back around and around; that makes its way through all permutations in the cues.” Stetson also used recordings of hog grunts for the film’s iconic villain, Leatherface.
Stetson has also scored the video game RED DEAD REDEMPTION II (2018), the Danish television crime series DELIVER US (2019), MAYDAY (2021), and the Japanese animated horror series, UZUMAKI (2022).
The lead single from the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE has been released – listen to “Every Last One” here.
Watch the film’s trailer:
