Daniel Lopatin (better known as Oneohtrix Point Never) has conjured something that shouldn’t exist—and yet here it is, pulsing with an impossible life. The Marty Supreme soundtrack ricochets through your consciousness like a game of possessed ping-pong ball, bouncing between dimensions with manic precision.
Working under his own name, as he did for another Safdie film, Uncut Gems, Lopatin delivers a synth-driven score so intricate and voluble that it functions like a second screenplay. This is a hallucinogenic journey bonces between sonic realities, each beat a paddle strike that sends you careening into another world entirely.
One moment you’re floating through whimsical, carnival-esque passages that sparkle like champagne bubbles caught in strobe lights (“Endo’s Game”). The next, you’ve plunged into the shadowy depths of ’80s horror, where synthesizers growl and pulse with Carpenter-esque dread (“Tub Falls” and “Vampire’s Castle.”) The film may take place in the ’50s, but the score screams the ’80s, the weird side of The Human League and some Brian Eno, filtered through a fever dream, where neon-soaked horror films collide with playful synth-pop in mid-air and explode into prismatic fragments.
The pulse-pounding synth-pop score soundtrack moves with the frantic geometry like the sport of Marty Surpeme itself—back and forth, light to dark, joy to terror, never settling, always in motion. If you haven’t seen the film, do it, and know that one fo the reason’s it sticks with you is due to Lopatin’s marvelous score.
