“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross

When Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was released in December 2011, the online film music fanbase had just calmed down from ranting and raving about the duo’s first foray into the holy realm of film scoring, The Social Network. Feelings ran high, especially after they snatched the 2011 Best Original Score Oscar from all the other honourable composers. So when Reznor announced a massive two and a half hour long 6-LP-Set for Dragon Tattoo, soundtrack critics around the world must have been completely baffled. And indeed they were… Regardless of the debatable quality of the music, the package it came…

“A Tale of Two Sisters” by Byeongwoo Lee

It’s my pleasure to offer a custom cover series to one of my all-time favourite scores. Byeongwoo Lee’s A Tale of Two Sisters. It is widely regarded as one of the finest horror scores ever written. And it is indeed, let me tell you that. Christopher Young, designated master of horror, came up with a very good score for the US remake as well, but Lee’s original is surpassing it in every way. The composer himself published the score on his own label musikdorf in 2004, coupling it with his other effort for the films director Jeewoon Kim, the score for Memories, a short segment of the anthology film…

Lost Covers, Vol. 1

I don’t know why, but a few days ago, late at night, I was thinking about all my “failed” attempts at creating well-crafted cover art. I was visiting the Final Fantasy Shrine Forums, browsing through all that awesome cover art posted there and I wondered how much time the people over there invest in this creative, time-consuming hobby. Are they as nitpicky as me? Everyone loves his own creations, otherwise we wouldn’t publish it, but for my part it sometimes degenerates a bit. I often spend hours on one single image. I’ve created one cover with thirty-three different font types,…

“Godzilla” by Alexandre Desplat

There are only a handful of new soundtracks each year that I want to support with custom album art. I normally pick my choices solely based on the respective directors or composers involved (this year that would be Gone Girl, Interstellar and The Hobbit). It happens very rarely that I encounter a new movie poster and immediately feel the urge to turn it into a custom cover. But it did happen in March with the SXSW poster to Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla. I quite enjoyed his directorial debut Monsters, but the art design for his follow-up project downright blew me away! From the posters campaign to the trailer (and hopefully so to Alexandre Desplat’s…

“Dawn of the Dead” by Tyler Bates, Various Artists

Dawn of the Dead by Tyler Bates was on my searchlist for a very long time. While the score on album isn’t quite the listening experience I wanted it to be, there were a few key sequences in the film, that captivated me on first sight – and still manage to do so. Part of that is due to Bates’ tightly focused tunes which added a melancholic undertone to an otherwise simplistic, not to say mindless story. The first publication of the score, more or less, was in form of a promotional release by Universal Music Group and Strike Entertainment in…