Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ Challengers [Mixed] Might Be Their Most Fun Score — Thanks to Boys Noize: Review
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The post Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ Challengers [Mixed] Might Be Their Most Fun Score — Thanks to Boys Noize: Review appeared first on Consequence.
Boys Noize has reworked Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ buzzing score for Luca Guadagnino’s new film Challengers into a 28 minute-long DJ set — and it’s astounding. Sequenced as one throbbing, hypnotic mix, the German-Iraqi DJ, producer, and songwriter creates a dreamscape of dance music that exhilarates at every turn. It’s one of the more unique collaborations spawned from a film score, and one of the finest dance albums of the year.
Reznor and Ross hand-selected Boys Noize to distill their score into an album. All of the composers’ touchstones are prominent in the mix — their industrial background, the cinematic synth sequences, the moments of majestic clarity offset by a dark chord change or a swallowing transition. The sheer pace of Challengers [Mixed] can almost keep the scores’ emotionality at arms-length. Almost, but not quite; Reznor and Ross’ softer elements emerge with devastating effect.
That emotional rawness can be heard on “L’oeuf,” a song bathed in a menacing light, with side-chained synths encircling a lone piano line. As the piano is overtaken by the synth’s warbling, icy crescendos, the experience is like drug-addled nausea. Then, “Challengers” races in like a bump of coke and brings you straight back to the dance floor.
These kinds of transitions make the continuous loop of Challengers [Mixed] more than just a film score, and more than just a dance album. If the film’s techno-ecstasy was meant to mirror the tête-à-tête of a tennis match, Boys Noize’s newly-throttled tempos feel like the match is playing out at Ping Pong speed, with so much frenzied action that visions begin to blur.
Listening to Challengers [Mixed], it’s clear that the Nine Inch Nails members and Rock Hall of Famers have found one of their great creative partners in Luca Guadagnino. “[It] was truly one of the best experiences we’ve had in this medium or as artists,” Reznor and Ross told Consequence in 2022 about their experience working on Guadagnino’s last film, Bones and All. Now, with the tennis drama as their latest Guadagnino collaboration, Reznor and Ross expanded their approach once again, offering an energetic, primal feel to the original score.
Reznor noted that Guadagnino asked the duo to create their score based on “unending homoerotic desire,” to great success. In her review of the film, Senior Entertainment Editor Liz Shannon Miller described the score as “bringing a level of bombast to the sports action that at times threatens to overwhelm the action, without ever actually proving distracting.”
Meanwhile, two decades into his career we are witnessing a renaissance from Boys Noize. Already this year he put out “tell me” with Shygirl, a blast of euphoria rooted in 2000s-style euro trance, and the delightfully unhinged HARDC0RE DR3AMZ with Rico Nasty, which similarly turns the tempo dial up to maniacal speeds.
His style is a perfect fit here, where the ebb and flow of each song is sequenced with careful deliberation. Sometimes it feels like a drop is imminent, only for the beat to flatten out completely. “The Signal” builds and dismantles its central groove repeatedly, resulting in a disco-tinged track that twists and winds like a slithering snake. It’s followed by the five minute-long “Brutalizer,” which is so quick that it’s disorienting. There are seductive whispers (assumedly from Challenger’s star, Zendaya) and displaced vocal samples littered throughout the mix.
The album reaches a climax of tension — and a holy trinity of its three creative forces Boys Noize, Reznor and Ross, and Guadagnino, on the penultimate song, “Compress/Repress.” It’s the only track with vocals from Reznor, and the lyrics (they’re very horny) were written by Guadagnino. The song burns with the immediacy of desire, made more urgent by Reznor’s constant requests for “touch” and Boys Noize’s pounding, pumping percussion. The ending track, “A New Year Carol,” is the only trace of genuine tenderness on the album, and it’s barely over 30 seconds. The rest is all action, completely riveting in a whirlwind of throbbing sound.
Dance music at its core is built from what came before; it is meant to be extracted and expanded, remixed and recontexualized. A film score is not usually the subject of such chopping and screwing, but if anyone was going to do it and absolutely nail it, it’s Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Boys Noize.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ Challengers [Mixed] Might Be Their Most Fun Score — Thanks to Boys Noize: Review
Paolo Ragusa
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