Music From & Inspired By the Film Monster (CD & DTS DVD)

1. Childhood Montage
2. Girls Kiss
3. Bus Stop, The
4. Turning Tracks
5. First Kill
6. Job Hunt
7. Bad Cop
8. "Call Me Daddy" Killing
9. I Don't Like It Rough
10. Ferris Wheel
11. Ditch The Car
12. Madman Speech
13. Cop Killing
14. News On TV
15. Courtroom

Format: CD


Monster was an unflinching movie that took you to the edge of the abyss with Aileen Wournos, a prostitute who murdered seven of her customers in Florida in the 1980s. Director Patty Jenkins' film is a sympathetic portrait of Wournos and BT's (Brian Transeau) score ranges from hopeful to harrowing. Fans of BT's trance music won't find any of his familiar beats and techno strategies here, but a work that is just as immersive. Mixing ambient Americana, melancholic minimalism, and atonal atmospheres, this isn't the kind of score you might expect from a musician more associated with dance, trance, and pop music. But BT pulls out all the emotional stops here from the poignant opening theme, "Childhood Montage," with its haunting keyboard refrain, to the stomping guitar twang rave-up on "Ditch the Car." Instead of the usual soundtrack of truncated cues, BT has fleshed out his themes into extended works that segue through the disc. An additional bonus is a DVD-A 5:1 surround mix that puts you right in the middle of BT's spectral swirl. Adding an additional 9 tracks of music, BT paints a 360 degree sound world that is as enveloping as it is compelling. --John Diliberto