Laurel Halo's Midnight Zone Turns Descent into a Dread-Soaked Drone Score
Pitchfork’s review of Laurel Halo’s Midnight Zone (Original Soundtrack) for Julian Charrière’s film frames a claustrophobic, lightless dive: a dense, continually shifting drone palette built from a Yamaha Montage through a TransAcoustic piano, with no conventional melody and occasional tonal flashes. The opener “Sunlight Zone” unfolds from a muffled hum into a crescendo of bells and shrieks, while tracks like “Polymetallic Nodule” meditate on the sea-floor nodules that sit at the heart of the film’s geology and greed. The score mirrors the film’s descent into the deep and stands alone as a bleak, hypnotic sonic portrait of geologic time and the unknown.
