For the soundtrack of his 2007 film Zodiac, David Fincher told composer
David Shire not to write music with too high a melodic profile. Fincher had initially intended to use only popular music from the period for the soundtrack, but he later decided that some scenes called for something both bigger and more intimate. He asked
Shire, whose scores for The Conversation and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three are considered classics in the genre, to provide him with a score that was essentially music without melody.
Shire delivered. With its desiccated textures, etiolated tone, saturated colors, and bone-deep sense of fear, his score for Zodiac is proof that, in some films at least, music is more effective if it's not memorable. Unlike earlier scores by masters like
Steiner and
Newman, who generally introduced the film's main theme with its opening titles,
Shire's score presents only fragments and phrases above shifting harmonies over restless rhythms for the entire length of the film, fragments, and phrases that finally come together as the main theme with the end titles. As bonus tracks, the CD also includes an unused cue plus a piano version of the main theme -- a version that proves maddeningly unforgettable. The Skywalker Symphony Orchestra plays brilliantly for
Shire and deserves every line of credit in the booklet.