Contributors: Jonathan Cook, Hayley Joyes, Mark O'Donnell, Ashleigh Arnott, Matilda Egere-Cooper, Tristan Parker, James Manning and Oliver Keens. Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon! South London MC Michael Omari samples ‘Eastenders’ and his iPhone, shouts out Wiley and proves why he’s fronting grime’s new wave. An ebullient disco-house highlight from Shamir’s ace debut ‘Ratchet’. 10. Sometimes an aborted project can lead to greater things down the line. Movies use music, especially original arrangements, almost mathematically. The West Coast king gives hope to the masses on this bass-heavy war cry from 'To Pimp A Butterfly'. Who cares – Four Tet’s production gives our Rodney a new lease of life here. 1. RECOMMENDED: Wolf Alice – ‘My Love Is Cool’ album review. 20 "When Doves Cry" - Prince And The Revolution Hot 100 Peak Position: 1 (five weeks), Peak Date: 7/7/1984. Yannis Philippakis is the conduit for some wyrd energy on the opening track from Foals’ new album, also called ‘What Went Down’. These are not obscure cuts from the depths of James Murphy’s record collections, and they’re being used by a filmmaker who’s rarely had much facility with a needle drop, but that becomes part of the appeal: By the time the film’s closing out with a montage set to, all of things, “Love Train,” you realize that the soundtrack’s a microcosm of the movie in its deeply uncool, goofy populism. Like 2Unlimited’s ‘No Limit’ for the shuffling generation: derivative, dumb yet curiously lovable. Our favourite Liverpool lasses switched up their style in 2015, as exemplified by this sweet synth treat. Composed by Hollywood heavyweight Hans Zimmer, Chappie's score seemed to switch almost effortlessly from fast-moving and extremely intense action fight scenes to heavy and emotional moments between the adorable robot and his team of friends. Today, we talk music and books. The 100 best songs of 2015 as selected by the Time Out Music team. Déjà vu! It’s a score unlike anything we heard this year — and for that reason, and for many others, it’s our favorite of 2015. As with “Greenberg,” Murphy’s score is minimalist, but it’s more memorable here (his “We Used To Dance” is a truly gorgeous cue), while the film cannily deploys its very mixed bag of songs, including Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long (All Night),” Danny Kaye’s “The Inch Worm” and even “Eye Of The Tiger,” for god’s sake, in a highly effective and often very funny way. RECOMMENDED: Gregory Porter on jazz, black pudding and Skegness. With the film cut into three acts, Pemberton, like everyone else, has to permit for three different stories. Lamar's funk-infused rap track was the explosive precursor to his long-awaited and equally provoking To Pimp a Butterfly. But Williams manages to bring the magic back and even outdo himself, using new technology and new music trends to create an even larger arrangement than anything we've heard before. With updated release dates where available. If you only enjoy one neon-coated post-heartache pop banger from 2015, make it this one. As well as the video that launched a thousand memes, Drizzy’s megahit came packing at least three unshakeable hooks. Reader, he called her. The score to a Star Wars film has helped define the experience of watching it, and Williams' newest composition for The Force Awakens takes that experience to new heights. Tatiana Maslany Says She Is Not Playing She-Hulk, Tatiana Maslany said “it’s not actually a thing, unfortunately.”, Jerry Harris Allegedly Victimized ‘at Least 5 to 10 Children’. The band’s self-titled album was a musical highlight of 2011, but their score for Strickland’s film (which came about after the great video artist Chris Cunningham hooked them up) marks a significant departure from that, dropping the psychedelic mod-pop for a sort of haunting, baroque folk feel. One of the best parts about the score, however, is how authentic it feels, even when just listening to it. It’s vaguely remniscent of the best of his work for Gus Van Sant, but quite different too, more minimalist and chiming, pretty without ever becoming twee. The songs (nearly 50 in total) cover both the dizzying molly highs, and the thundering comedown, some impeccable sound design integrating the tracks into the movie whether they’re being spun on the decks or not. Fine work on “The Babadook” followed, but then 2015 brought first his inventively folky score for John Maclean’s “Slow West” — arguably the best aspect of that movie that isn’t Ben Mendelsohn — and then, best of all, a reunion with his brother on his Shakespeare adaptation. A transcendent, quarter-hour jazz-funk exploration by Kendrick Lamar’s favourite sax visionary. Yes, the expected Wilson classics are there (though only five appear on the soundtrack release, excluding a lovely piano version of “God Only Knows” by Paul Dano), but the film gets truly fascinating with the score, by Atticus Ross, best known for his team-ups with Trent Reznor on the last few David Fincher movies. Welcome back, gents! If music is the food of love, it’s also, cinematically speaking, the food of suspense, action, terror, drama, comedy, joy, ennui, sex, youth, madness, thrills and much more. The film focused on Shameik Moore’s hero, a ’90s-hip-hop-obsessed high schooler in a punk band with his friends, and Famuyiwa had help on the music side from about as big a person as you could hope for in the shape of Pharrell Williams, who came on board before the script was even written. Williams contributed a few original songs for the band-within-the-film, Awreeoh — genre-blending, noisy, joyous tracks reminiscent of his early work with N.E.R.D. RECOMMENDED: Courtney Barnett on dreams, ‘fuckheads’ and her guerrilla gig in London. Once it’s been reviewed, we’ll be discussing in the film full and will indicate where it would have featured on these best-of lists retroactively. The 100 Best Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now, Ice Cube in Hot Water After Revealing He’s Working With the Trump Administration, “He has actually hurt us way more than Donald Trump,” he says of Biden in a new, Kevin Morby’s Ode to the Midwest Rewards Patience. It’s hard to pick from the beautifully sad and intimate songs on Stevens’s latest LP, but ‘No Shade…’ edges it with an unshakeable melody. Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. “Joy” Listen to the soundtrack on its own and you’ll discover much of the film’s heart-pounding anxiety comes from its incredible score. You might've already heard (and made your winning predictions for) next year's Grammy nominatioss, but which songs won us over in 2015? The Best Hair Looks from Spring 2021 ... next year's Grammy nominatioss, but which songs won us over in 2015? Ryan Coogler proved with his installment in the Rocky franchise that he could deliver an action film with an emotional and hard-hitting (no pun intended) dramatic storyline. It can slither around in the background, allowing the characters to tell their story without any auditory distraction, and then it can come booming out to remind audiences that it exists. For a movie like Fury Road, it's absolutely perfect,  An anarchic, punk-rock score that doesn't play by the rules and uses heavy amounts of percussion to make itself known perfectly caters to the post-apocalyptic, deprived world that Mad Max, Furiosa and everyone else inhabit. The second of the movie has a more cocksure attitude as the disabused-of-her-dreams mom protagonist finally finds her way and voice — captured by The Rolling Stones, The Bee Gees, The Ronettes and Cream. Florence Welch’s vocals are nothing short of sorcery. Teenage flashback-inducing indie magic from this half-Swedish London band. Composed by Richard Vreeland, more commonly known by his stage name, Disasterpeace, It Follows uniquely blends traditional horror compositions, building up the anticipation to the big reveal, with new wave electronic arrangements that add a modern take on the genre's staple formula. Yes, we’re bending our rule that music documentaries doesn’t quite count to include “Junun” here — but then, few music-related movies, or movie-related music, gave us much joy as this, so we’d be utterly remiss in excluding it. “Magic Mike XXL” might have switched genres from Steven Soderbergh’s original, away from the dark examination of the American dream and the economic crisis, and more towards a sort of goofy road movie/dance flick hybrid about, and for, the female gaze (we don’t mean this as a bad thing), and actors from the original like Matthew McConaughey and Alex Pettyfer might not have returned. for the first time and heard that grand music emanate from the screen as Elliot and his alien buddy rushed from one place to the next. The bonus track from Drake’s surprise album ‘If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late’ is a glorious sequel to ‘9am in Dallas’ and ‘5am in Toronto’. Thank god, then, for “The Diary Of A Teenage Girl.” Marielle Heller’s coming-of-age drama is finely honed on a number of levels, but especially so when it comes to the music. MØ and DJ Snake. But Alex Garland, a writer and producer on the earlier film, remembered their work, and ended up hiring them for his directorial debut, the thrilling sci-fi chamber piece “Ex Machina.” As you might expect, it’s a mostly electronic piece of work, but some way from their aborted “Dredd” score, as informed by the icy expanses of the film’s Alaskan setting as by whatever electronics lie inside Alicia Vikander’s AI Ava. It’s one of the strongest horror cues in some time, and we hope Disasterpeace keeps on working, both within the genre and away from it. We really, really, really, really, really, really, really doubt it. It conveys both the utter beauty of this universe and the darkness underneath. Of Burwell’s four scores this year (including the mildly disappointing one for “Legend”), “Anomalisa” might be the most Burwell-esque of them all, but it’s not like that’s a bad thing; while there might be echoes of other scores here, the mournful woodwind and delicate piano does so much towards giving Kaufman’s film a lonely beauty that doesn’t tip towards being twee, as would be so easy for an animated picture like this one. A lifetime in a day, a yearning study of age and ennui, and the only piano ballad this year to come with its own laugh track. For the uninitiated, the term Northern Soul refers to a dance movement in the North of England in the late 1960s and 1970s, where the nightclubs (most famously Twisted Wheel in Manchester and the Wigan Casino) were full of American soul music, often more obscure cuts away from the mainstream. Anything is possible in The Force Awakens, and there's a sense of determined hope that accompanies that feeling. Tangerine. The young London duo staking a claim as the next LCD Soundsystem put out a string of excellent singles this year, but here’s the standout. RECOMMENDED: Miguel talks robot sex, his parents and queefs. Melbourne’s answer to Patti Smith showed off her self-deprecating wit on this dry-as-the-Outback garage rock hit, with a swirling riff to boot. Somehow the great Carter Burwell has never been Oscar-nominated, despite decades of tremendous work with the Coen Brothers and others.