The Spool / Podcasts
Steven Price on remixing nostalgia for terror in Last Night in Soho
The Oscar-winning composer talks about peeling back the sinister layers of '60s London for Edgar Wright's thriller.
Read also: popular streaming services that still offer a free trial>

On Right on Cue, Editor-in-Chief Clint Worthington talks to film, TV, and video game composers about the origins and nuances of their latest works, along with commentaries on the score’s most important tracks.

The latest film from director Edgar Wright, Last Night in Soho, is a time-twisting psychological thriller about a young woman named Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) who moves to London to enter fashion school. Once there, though, the sheltered Ellie finds herself haunted by dreams in which she’s transported into 1960s Soho, viewing the young life of an aspiring singer (Anya Taylor-Joy) and the impending doom she may be hurtling towards.

It’s a film as informed by 1960s British gangster movies and kitchen sink dramas as it is by Italian giallo pictures and psychological horror, which fits Wright’s innately cinephiliac style. References to the films of Ken Loach and Michael Powell abound, alongside the swinging ’60s soundtrack with tracks from Cilla Black to Dusty Springfield. Not only that, the film puts its own ominous spin on classic ’60s hits like “Downtown,” Anya Taylor-Joy’s vocals turning the sprightly pop tune into a harbinger of dread.

But alongside those groovy crate pulls is an atmospheric score courtesy of today’s guest, Oscar and BAFTA-winning composer (and regular Wright collaborator) Steven Price. He’s scored works from Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block to Wright’s own The World’s End and Baby Driver. His most famous work is likely Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, for which he won an Academy Award and cemented himself as an idiosyncratic composer whose works blur the line between incidental score and sound design. Now, he joins me to talk about the eerie, time-warping score for Soho.

You can find Steven Price at his official website here.

Last Night in Soho is currently playing in theaters. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Back Lot Music.