Synth Soundtracks

Synth Soundtracks

9 Episodes

Once the sound of the future, now awesomely retro, synth soundtracks add a splash of otherworldly atmosphere to some of the coolest movies ever made. Using state-of-the-art analog and digital technologies, pioneering musicians like Sun Ra (SPACE IS THE PLACE) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE) created immersive soundscapes that expanded cinematic storytelling and forever changed the art of movie soundtracking. Alternately eerie, icy, pulse-pounding, and thrillingly emotional, these scores tunnel into your eardrums at ecstatic frequencies hitherto unexplored.

Coprogrammed by Synth History/Danz CM

Synth Soundtracks
  • Solaris

    Episode 1

    Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky • 1972 • Soviet Union
    Starring Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis, Yuri Yarvet

    Ground control has been receiving mysterious transmissions from the three remaining residents of the Solaris space station. When cosmonaut and psychologist Kris Kelvin is dispatched to i...

  • Space Is the Place

    Episode 2

    Directed by John Coney • 1974 • United States
    Starring Sun Ra, Barbara Deloney, Raymond Johnson

    Avant-jazz mystic Sun Ra brought his pioneering Afrofuturist vision to the screen with this film version of his concept album. It’s a wild, kaleidoscopic whirl of science fiction, sharp social comment...

  • Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

    Episode 3

    Directed by Nagisa Oshima • 1983 • Japan
    Starring David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tom Conti

    In this captivating, skewed World War II drama from Nagisa Oshima, David Bowie regally embodies Celliers, a British officer interned by the Japanese as a POW. Rock star Ryuichi Sakamoto (who also composed ...

  • Scanners

    Episode 4

    Directed by David Cronenberg • 1981 • Canada
    Starring Stephen Lack, Jennifer O’Neill, Michael Ironside

    With SCANNERS, David Cronenberg plunges us into one of his most terrifying and thrilling sci-fi worlds. After a man with extraordinary—and frighteningly destructive—telepathic abilities is nabb...

  • The Last Wave

    Episode 5

    Directed by Peter Weir • 1977 • Australia
    Starring Richard Chamberlain, Olivia Hamnett, Gulpilil

    Richard Chamberlain stars as Australian lawyer David Burton, who takes on the defense of a group of aborigines accused of killing one of their own. He suspects the victim has been killed for violatin...

  • Stalker

    Episode 6

    Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky • 1979 • Soviet Union
    Starring Alisa Freindlikh, Aleksandr Kaidnovsky, Anatoly Solonitsyn

    Andrei Tarkovsky’s final Soviet feature is a metaphys­ical journey through an enigmatic postapocalyptic landscape, and a rarefied cinematic experience like no other. A hired gui...

  • Shogun Assassin

    Episode 7

    Directed by Kenji Misumi and Robert Houston • 1980 • Japan, United States
    Starring Tomisaburo Wakayama, Kayo Matsuo, Minoru Oki

    The legendary midnight-movie sensation that firmly embedded samurai mythology within American pop-culture consciousness, this English-dubbed reedit of the first two fil...

  • For All Mankind

    Episode 8

    Directed by Al Reinert • 1989 • United States

    In July 1969, the space race ended when Apollo 11 fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” No one who witnessed the lunar landing will ever forget it. Al Reinert’s documentary FOR...

  • White Rock

    Episode 9

    Directed by Tony Maylam • 1977 • United Kingdom

    British documentary film-maker and producer Tony Maylam invigorated the sports documentary genre with WHITE ROCK, an idiosyncratic and utterly engaging account of the XII Olympic Winter Games Innsbruck 1976. He did so by placing music front and cen...