MICHAEL ANDREWS - Donnie Darko: Music From The Original Motion Picture Score LP (Silver Vinyl)

Label: Everloving

The most remarkable thing about Richard Kelly's directorial debut, Donnie Darko, is its sheer tenacity. After suffering the fatal blow of a post-September 11 release date, the ominous film was pulled from theatres. Its subsequent release on video garnered a rabid fan base that elevated the movie to cult status, spawning hundreds of websites devoted to untangling its spidery threads of time-travel logic and spiritual chicanery.

Rookie composer Michael Andrews, whose only previous work was for television's Freaks and Geeks, captures the underlying dread and unsettling beauty of the film by remaining reverent to it. His use of period (1980s) synths and a voxophone, tastefully punctuated by sparse choral arrangements, evoke a Danny Elfman score leached of bombast and quivering in its naked form. Gary Jules' cover of Tears For Fears' "Mad World" still sounds as good as it did when then film was initially released.