Barrow co-composed Annihilation, contributing the electronic and textural side of a score that ends in a sustained, physically uncomfortable drone. His approach comes from record production rather than from film scoring: build a sound first in the studio, then find out what it does to a scene.
He is British and co-founded an influential group whose work combined sampling, live instrumentation and unusual studio technique, and he has run record labels and several other musical projects alongside his scoring. Analogue equipment, tape and deliberate degradation of sound are central to how he works.
Recurring subjects: unease, sound treated as a physical presence in a room, and analogue texture used deliberately against digital subject matter. He favours equipment that introduces noise and instability into a signal, and his scoring resists melody wherever a drone or a rhythm will do the work more effectively.
His group's albums are landmarks of British music of the nineteen nineties, and his film scoring partnership has produced several of the most distinctive science fiction scores of the past decade. His work is frequently cited by musicians moving from record production into film.
For listeners who want film music made like a record. Suited to anyone approaching the expedition film, and to those who should then hear the group's albums, which sound nothing like it and entirely like it at the same time.
