Hereditary (OST)

Hereditary (OST) is the best horror score of the last ten years and the single most useful fact about it is that there are no synthesisers on it.

Stetson is a saxophonist — bass saxophone principally, plus clarinets — who had come out of Bon Iver, Arcade Fire and Tom Waits sessions and a run of solo records built on a technique almost nobody else has: circular breathing, so that he never stops, with contact microphones taped to the instrument's keys and a throat microphone picking up his own vocalising into the horn. The result is that one man playing one instrument live, in one take, produces what sounds like a percussion track, a bass part, a drone and a lead simultaneously. Nothing is overdubbed into a grid. The clicking you hear is keys.

Aster's brief was reportedly for something that would not sound like a horror score, and what Stetson delivered sounds like no score at all: it is organic, wet, breathing, and permanently on the edge of becoming a voice. The main title is a slow groaning figure that most first-time listeners assume is electronic and which is a human being with no air left.

It is scoring grief rather than the occult

The film's first hour is a family after a funeral and Stetson scores that register rather than the cult material: low, slow, close, and physically uncomfortable without ever becoming loud. When the film's supernatural machinery finally declares itself, the score barely changes, which is the correct decision — the horror in Hereditary was always the family, and the music has known that from the first cue.

The best cues

The main title is the one everybody knows. "Reborn" is the clearest demonstration of the technique, with the key noise functioning as a drum pattern. "Charlie" is the quietest and the saddest thing on the record. And the material around the film's last movement is where the throat microphone comes forward and the saxophone stops sounding like an instrument.

Where it is less effective

Divorced from the film it is a difficult listen — repetitive, low, and without the images several cues are textures rather than pieces. It is also short, and the album is sequenced as a cue list. And the thing that makes it extraordinary is partly a technical fact about how it was made, which is not audible as such to most listeners.

For the vocabulary it is working inside, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima; for the other modern score built on an acoustic ensemble playing wrong, Under the Skin (OST); for the film, Hereditary.

The short answer: the score ends where the film does, in the treehouse, and it is the one point at which Stetson lets something resolve. Hereditary's last sequence is a coronation — the thing the entire film has been engineering finally happens, and it is presented as a celebration rather than as a catastrophe — and Stetson scores it with the most consonant, sustained, almost hymnal material on the record. After ninety minutes of groaning low saxophone and key noise, the final cue opens out into something that is recognisably choral and recognisably triumphant, which is horrifying precisely because it is beautiful: the music has switched sides. On album the running order follows the film and the closing material is that same sequence, so the record's shape and the film's are identical. Nothing in it is a release for the audience. It is a release for the cult.

Is there a synthesiser on Hereditary (OST)?

No. The score is bass saxophone, clarinets and Stetson's own voice, with contact microphones on the instrument's keys and a throat microphone on the player. What sounds like a synth pad is circular-breathed saxophone; what sounds like percussion is key mechanism; what sounds like a processed voice is Stetson vocalising into the horn while playing it. The absence of synthesis is the record's central fact.

What is circular breathing?

A technique in which the player pushes air out of the cheeks while inhaling through the nose, so that the sound never stops. Stetson's solo work is built on it, and on Hereditary it is what allows a single live take to function as a continuous drone with a rhythm and a melody happening on top. It is physically very demanding and almost nobody plays this way at this length.

Who is Colin Stetson?

An American saxophonist and composer, best known for his New History Warfare solo records and for session and touring work with Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, Tom Waits and others. Hereditary was his first major film score; he has since scored Color Out of Space and The Menu, and his solo catalogue is the place to hear the technique without the horror.

What is the main theme of Hereditary?

The main title: a slow, groaning, descending bass saxophone figure over key noise, which most listeners assume is electronic. It plays over the film's opening pull into the miniature house, and it is doing the film's structural work in advance — the sound of something being operated rather than lived.

Why does the end of the score sound triumphant?

Because the film's ending is a victory for the people who arranged it. The last sequence is Paimon's coronation, staged as a ceremony, and Stetson scores it as one — consonant, sustained, choral, and genuinely beautiful after ninety minutes of discomfort. The effect on an audience is nausea rather than relief, and it is the best single decision on the record.

Is Hereditary (OST) listenable on its own?

In parts, and less so than its reputation suggests. The main title and "Charlie" work as music; several other cues are textures that need the images. It is also short and sequenced as a cue list rather than as an album. Stetson's own records — particularly New History Warfare Vol. 2 — are the better listen if what interests you is the technique.

Scored against the published rubric, here is what the numbers mean.

Tone 006 is bleak — 7 works score lower. There is no consolation anywhere on the record, and the one beautiful passage on it is beautiful on behalf of the antagonists.

Era bias 090 reads modern — 96 works score lower, which is worth stating given that it is entirely acoustic: the contact and throat microphones, the close recording and the mastering are all contemporary, and nothing about this record could have been made in 1978.

Viscera 052 is just above the median — 59 works score lower. The record is unusually bodily for a score with no depicted content: breath, saliva, throat noise and mechanism are all audible.

Pace 034 is on the dread side — 50 works are slower. Nothing hurries and the cues are built on sustain rather than on movement.

The threat at 028 is on the supernatural side — 33 works score lower, although the score is attached to a film whose cruelty is entirely domestic until the last act.

Reality anchor 066 leans towards dream logic — 74 works score lower. The record keeps a pitch centre and almost nothing else, and the sources are deliberately unidentifiable.

On shocks: two or three, and the film's famous ones are silence rather than score.