TRON: Legacy (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Anyone coming to Daft Punk’s soundtrack for 2010’s Tron: Legacy expecting a wondrous, synth-speckled ride through innerspace will be surprised not just how orchestrally driven the music is, but how dark. On some level, Daft Punk’s genius was always their ability to parlay imitation into innovation. Here, they not only echo the work of original Tron (and A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining) composer Wendy Carlos (“The Son of Flynn”), but horror legend John Carpenter (“Rinzler,” “End of Line”), Hitchcock standby Bernard Herrmann (“Outlands”), and a history of music that—electronic, acoustic, or both—proved soundtracks could be just as interesting without the movies they were written to complement. Pair with 2005’s Human After All for a stark double feature in the DP universe.