MARK JENKIN

Enys Men OST (Invada)

With his 2019 film Bait, Cornish film director Mark Jenkin announced himself to the wider world with his depiction of increasing tensions in a community split between working-class locals and the second home-owning classes. Jenkin’s score for that film captured those tensions with a mix of drone, dialogue and ambient noise; now he returns with Enys Men, a 1970s-set psychological horror and a new score to boot.

In recent interviews, Jenkin has alluded to influences ranging from public information films to the 1973 horrors The Wicker Man and Don’t Look Now – and the recurring presence of the sea does nothing to ease the sense of dread that Jenkin builds with these eerie soundscapes. This is haunting and discordant electronica, the sound of impending mental collapse, of unnamed, unnameable terror. Radio static and human voices crash in like unexpected waves throughout, keeping the listener on edge. One to be listened to alone on a quiet, dark evening.

words PAUL JENKINS