Possessed

Laurel Halo’s first foray into film music marks a surprising shift for the American-born, Berlin-based electronic artist: Much of it is not electronic at all. Halo’s previous output has run the gamut from vaporwave to mutant techno, dancing daringly in the space between rhythm and pure texture, but her score for Metahaven and Rob Schröder’s 2018 film *Possessed*, a dreamlike visual poem about togetherness in the age of the smartphone, takes a hard left into acoustic timbres. In tracks like “Hyphae” and “Breath,” strings and woodwinds, thickened by reverb, amass into fogbanks; more striking still are instrumental pieces like the neo-minimalist piano fugues “Rome Theme I” and “Rome Theme III,” and “Marbles,” an aqueous etude informed by Debussy and Satie. These glances backward are a provocative choice, given the film’s techno-futurist themes, but the haunted, melancholy mood Halo establishes is a perfect fit for the directors’ dystopian lament.