Guys go watch Iron Lung. And then go watch it again for the details. And then go watch it AGAIN after listening to the soundtrack as a stand-alone with headphones because my god the music itself reveals so much more information than even the movie can, here are my favorite things about the tracks as a musician (SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT):
The indicator light beeps in sync with the rhythm during Ram It when he. yknow. rams it
Every main character has their own instrument, yes even the blood, yes even the ships:
The SM-13 sounds like a high pitched bending metal like if you ran a violin string on a sheet of aluminum
The blood sounds like waves of synths fading in and out (makes sense because. ocean) and usually is also paired with a constant, rhythmic thumping that sometimes mimics a heartbeat, sometimes not
The monster/creature/anomaly's theme first plays in Subsurface Tension and almost sounds like the waves of the blood, but is a low, droning bass of only two notes, and there are a lot of bass heavy tracks but you'll know it's the creature by how "in your head" it feels. The best, clear cut version of the creature's theme is Stalked, hands down, the motif plays in the beginning then fades away and every single time you hear those two notes again just know it was there. Anomaly itself sounds like a combination of Concussed with the ringing, plus the bass that already represents its theme, it's like the track is saying you can't be sure if what you're seeing and hearing is real
Lost Souls is unquestionably Simon's theme, it plays a shit ton in the other tracks and also, notably, gets more and more distorted as he loses himself. It plays a simple version in the beginning only playing the low notes, then in Ptsd when he irradiates Jack, then a full version when he discovers the pendant along with the note when I Will Get My Freedom plays, in all of the flashback sqeuences you hear the main chords in an almost ethereal trance-like way, again when Ava doesn't know his name, in The Shakes, Transformed, Coming Apart, Acceptance, and finally Rising Red Tides as he joins the voices of the rest of those who've fallen
Even the SM-8 has it's own motifs in the way that it has the most unique meters in the soundtrack which likely represent its broken systems, Weak connection's bar has 3 measures of 6/8 then one of 7/8 which does a pretty good job of throwing you off. Same deal with Connection Established with the triplets towards the end of the track. When Simon makes the 'deal' with Ava to recover the archive from the SM-8, Bargaining Chips plays in 7/8 exclusively
SIMON'S AND THE CREATURE'S THEME PLAYS AT THE SAME TIME IN Eye See You THEY ARE SEEING EACH OTHER
In Jaws of Life, you can hear at once, the motif from the SM-8, the bassline of Ram It, a woman's scream (that could be from the SM-8 or Ava cause she was already assimilated at this point) AND Simon's own
In Rising Red Tides you can hear all of the people the creature has claimed: the woman from SM-8, Ava, Simon and who knows how many others all melded together in a terrible distorted medley of agony
In Concussed if you have tinnitus (I do) that distorted pitched down ringing is a fantastic recreation of what that's like
The weird little fuckass noise that plays at the end of Hull Breach is killing me lmao
