Bleep

Having linked up to score the first season of Hanna back in 2019, the crew of Ben Salisbury, The Insects and Geoff Barrow joined forces once more to compose for Alex Garland’s recent sci-fi series Devs. All artists involved are known for creating work of cinematic scope - Barrow and Salisbury have worked on a number of Garland’s projects at this point while The Insects have also many years in the scoring business behind them. For Devs the contributors largely split off into their usual pairs, with Barrow and Salisbury in one corner and the two Insects in the other - though the nerve-wracking cluster-drones of ‘You’re Fired’ find Salisbury teaming up with the latter party.

Whoever is behind a given track, one can expect an air of uncanniness to exude from the music that reminds one of the best Black Mirror scores (a series that Barrow & Salisbury have contributed to in the past). While things remain tense throughout, the sonic sands shift across the tracklist. At times one is given cautious, pregnant-sounding chamber strings, at others we get rumbling industrial soundscapes. Choirs enter periodically, their wordless harmonies only adding to the uneasiness. Even the softest-sounding numbers - ‘Tramlines’, ‘Amaya Corporation’ - find foreboding lurking in the background.

The score for Alex Garland’s Devs sees two long-standing film and television compositional duos - The Insects on one hand, Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow on the other - converging on a set of sonic vignettes at once enchanting and unsettling.