Gazelle Twin & Max de Wardener – The Power OST: Album Review

By Simon Tucker on 7th April 2021 • ( Leave a comment )

Brand new collaborative score between Gazelle Twin & Max de Wardener for soon-to-be-released supernatural thriller The Power.

Release Date: 8th April2021

Label: Invada Records

Format: Digital with Vinyl to follow.

We’re not even halfway through April yet and 2021 is turning into the year of Gazelle Twin. Already this year, we have seen Elizabeth Bernholz collaborate on songs by the likes of Gary Numan and Alexander Tucker, release an early contender for Album of the Year with the NYX Choir (Deep England) and now, working alongside composer Max de Wardener, Bernholz is set to release one of the most affecting and frankly disturbing scores of the last 12 months.

The Power is a supernatural thriller set in a crumbling East London Royal Infirmary in 1974. Written and directed by BAFTA-nominated British filmmaker Corinna Faith, The Power will be available exclusively to stream on Shudder from 8 April 2021.

For the score, Gazelle Twin and Max de Wardener have managed to create a sound that is sometimes familiar, often terrifying and always nothing less than gripping. The score taps into elements and stylistic touches of some of the classic horror scores of the 70s with sudden jarring sounds exploding from a build-up of tonal dread. There are times like on Confrontation and especially Basement where you feel the nod towards Tobe Hooper and Wayne Bell’s acclaimed score for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. You can also feel the legacy of Krzysztof Penderecki on Dark Won’t Hurt and Possession but that is no way to the score’s detriment. In fact, by seemingly using these touchstones of the classic era of horror, Gazelle Twin and de Wardener manage to place you within the film’s time period even before you have seen a single frame. Throughout the listening experience, you are surrounded by the ghosts of the 1970s and the films you would sneak a peek at when your parents were in bed.

The Power also highlights once again the strength of a project by Gazelle Twin when it comes to the human voice. Working in conjunction with de Wardener she contorts and layers the voice traveling between the serene to the guttural, arranging wordless vocals like painters layering a canvass. It is remarkable that throughout the score the human voice can feel so abstract and formless yet impactful and emotional. A piece like Back Pages highlights this as the voices scatter and flicker around you spinning and splintering your mind into a thousand pieces. Aside from The Well (which is solo Gazelle Twin), The Power is a truly collaborative effort and it is this that makes it work so well as a score. You get the feeling of two artists who have complete faith in each other working in sync and that leads to the whole score feeling united and well rounded with no dominating factor. Two minds combining to make a magic third. The language of heritage morphed into a new way of film scoring for the modern age.

The Power already feels like a classic score. As a listening experience, it can be as exhilarating as it is utterly terrifying. It is the sound of artists looking page to see a new way to progress forward. This isn’t a casual listen and nor should it be. You need to fully commit to giving yourself time to journey through its running time. On every listen you will hear something new that will excite and inspire. The Power is a truly magnificent score and it will no doubt in time be looked upon as a classic of the genre.