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MUSIC.
Film scores, soundtracks, Australian composers, music documentaries, sound design features.
MUSIC№ 01
Every Australian film has a sound and most of them go unheard
This column has spent six years listening to what Australian cinema sounds like, and the answer keeps changing.
KIERAN BOUSTANY01.05.2026
MUSIC№ 02
The newest Australian score worth hearing is the one nobody is talking about
The film opened in twelve cinemas, the score opened in none of the conversations about it, and both deserve better.
KIERAN BOUSTANY08.04.2026
MUSIC№ 03
Streaming killed the film score budget and Australian composers adapted first
When the scoring budget dropped, Australian composers did what they have always done: made do, made less, and made it work.
KIERAN BOUSTANY10.03.2026
MUSIC№ 04
Australian film music in 2026 sounds closer to the ground than it used to
The orchestras are smaller, the budgets are tighter, and the music is better for both.
KIERAN BOUSTANY18.02.2026
MUSIC№ 05
The score for The Surfer never lets the tide go out
The surf does not stop, the score does not stop, and the difference between the two is where the film finds its dread.
KIERAN BOUSTANY10.02.2026
MUSIC№ 06
The sound of the Wasteland from Brian May to Junkie XL
The Mad Max franchise has been scored four different ways across forty-five years, and the engine noise is the only constant.
KIERAN BOUSTANY20.01.2026
MUSIC№ 07
Five Australian composers who are about to score everything
The next generation of Australian screen composers learned on laptops, scored shorts for free, and are now getting the calls the orchestras used to get.
KIERAN BOUSTANY16.12.2025
MUSIC№ 08
The score for Territory sounds like the land itself is deciding who inherits
The cattle-station saga runs on dust and family betrayal, and the score sits underneath both like heat rising off a dirt road.
KIERAN BOUSTANY18.09.2025
MUSIC№ 09
Three scores at MIFF 2025 that earned their silence
The best-scored films at this year's MIFF used restraint as an instrument and silence as a statement.
KIERAN BOUSTANY18.08.2025
MUSIC№ 10
Australian sound designers do the work nobody hears and that is the whole point
The best sound work in Australian film is designed to be invisible, which makes it the hardest craft to praise and the easiest to overlook.
KIERAN BOUSTANY24.06.2025
MUSIC№ 11
Better Man scores Robbie Williams as a CGI monkey and the music has to hold the whole trick together
When the lead actor is a digital chimpanzee, the music is not accompaniment; it is the only human thing in the frame.
KIERAN BOUSTANY08.05.2025
MUSIC№ 12
The APRA Screen Music Awards honoured craft the rest of the industry forgot to watch
The ceremony was small, the room was full of composers, and nobody outside it knew it happened.
KIERAN BOUSTANY12.02.2025
MUSIC№ 13
The score for Memoir of a Snail moves at the speed of grief
Elena Kats-Chernin's score for Adam Elliot's claymation opus is patient, fragile, and refuses to tell the audience when to cry.
KIERAN BOUSTANY14.01.2025
MUSIC№ 14
The five Australian film scores that defined 2024
From claymation grief to outback dread to a CGI chimpanzee singing Angels, Australian composers carried more weight in 2024 than the films sometimes deserved.
KIERAN BOUSTANY18.12.2024
MUSIC№ 15
Late Night with the Devil designed its horror in the hiss of a live broadcast
The sound design recreates 1977 television so precisely that the horror arrives in the frequencies you forgot existed.
KIERAN BOUSTANY28.10.2024
MUSIC№ 16
Boy Swallows Universe soundtracks Brisbane in the 1980s with precision and one deliberate lie
The needle drops are forensically accurate to 1985 Brisbane except for the one song that is not, and that exception tells you everything about what the show thinks nostalgia is for.
KIERAN BOUSTANY24.09.2024
MUSIC№ 17
Streaming put Australian film music on a playlist and took it out of the cinema
The score that used to live inside a cinema now lives on a playlist between a lo-fi beats mix and a podcast, and the context changes everything.
KIERAN BOUSTANY22.07.2024
MUSIC№ 18
Junkie XL scored Furiosa like an engine that remembers being a heartbeat
The score carries the franchise's mechanical pulse into a prequel that needs to feel human, and the transition is where the music earns its weight.
KIERAN BOUSTANY22.05.2024
MUSIC№ 19
The score for Force of Nature thaws what The Dry kept frozen
Peter Raeburn scored the sequel wetter, colder, and more anxious, and the alpine setting gave him room to breathe.
KIERAN BOUSTANY24.04.2024
MUSIC№ 20
Two Australian scores landed at Sundance in 2024 and the festival did not notice
The scores were there, the composers were not credited in the headlines, and that is the usual arrangement.
KIERAN BOUSTANY30.01.2024
MUSIC№ 21
The five Australian film scores that shaped 2023
From horror to period drama to genre noir, Australian composers carried more of the storytelling in 2023 than anyone gave them credit for.
KIERAN BOUSTANY20.12.2023
MUSIC№ 22
The score for Shayda sounds like a lullaby sung through a locked door
The score carries two musical traditions at once and lets neither one win, which is exactly the position its protagonist occupies.
KIERAN BOUSTANY12.12.2023
MUSIC№ 23
The Royal Hotel scores its danger in what it refuses to play
The score sits so far back in the mix you forget it is there, which is exactly how the threat in the film works.
KIERAN BOUSTANY04.10.2023
MUSIC№ 24
The Deadloch soundtrack freezes the crime scene and then plays indie rock over it
The needle drops are cold, the score is colder, and the temperature is the joke.
KIERAN BOUSTANY18.07.2023
MUSIC№ 25
Cornel Wilczek scored Talk to Me like a party that will not let you leave
The score pushes forward with the momentum of a YouTube video you cannot close, and that restlessness is the whole engine.
KIERAN BOUSTANY22.06.2023
MUSIC№ 26
The score for Godless drags the exorcism through the dirt and leaves it there
The score treats the possession not as spectacle but as a domestic accident, and the flatness is where the horror lives.
KIERAN BOUSTANY28.05.2023
MUSIC№ 27
The score for Blaze chases the animation and catches it in a different key
When a film splits between live action and fantasy animation, the score has to bridge two visual languages without flattening either.
KIERAN BOUSTANY18.04.2023
MUSIC№ 28
Baz Luhrmann re-scored Australia and called it Faraway Downs
Luhrmann re-edited his most contested film into a six-part series, swapped half the score, and the musical logic changed everything.
KIERAN BOUSTANY20.02.2023
MUSIC№ 29
The score for You Won't Be Alone sounds like soil remembering rain
The score breathes with the body-swapping rhythm of the film: slow inhalation, held silence, a different exhalation.
KIERAN BOUSTANY10.01.2023
MUSIC№ 30
Baz Luhrmann uses music the way other directors use architecture
The soundtrack is not accompaniment; it is the load-bearing wall of every scene Luhrmann builds.
KIERAN BOUSTANY08.12.2022
MUSIC№ 31
The score for The Stranger carries the weight the actors are not allowed to show
The score does the emotional work that Joel Edgerton's blankness forbids, and the restraint in both is what makes the film unbearable.
KIERAN BOUSTANY14.11.2022
MUSIC№ 32
Jed Kurzel scores the silence inside Nitram
The score does almost nothing, and that nothing is the hardest thing a composer can be asked to hold.
KIERAN BOUSTANY06.09.2022
MUSIC№ 33
The score for Gold keeps one note going until the desert swallows it
The scoring challenge is simple: one man, one hole, one piece of gold, and ninety minutes of waiting for something to go wrong.
KIERAN BOUSTANY16.08.2022
MUSIC№ 34
The score for How to Please a Woman plays it straight and the comedy plays better for it
The score refuses to wink at the premise, and that refusal is what lets the comedy land with dignity intact.
KIERAN BOUSTANY30.05.2022
MUSIC№ 35
The score for Wyrmwood: Apocalypse treats the end of the world like a pub brawl
The scoring budget was nothing, the energy was everything, and the result sounds like a garage band surviving the apocalypse.
KIERAN BOUSTANY26.04.2022
MUSIC№ 36
Spiderhead was scored in the space between pleasure and control
The retro needle drops do the seduction; the original score does the surveillance; and the two never quite agree.
KIERAN BOUSTANY28.03.2022
MUSIC№ 37
The score for Love Me sits so close to the characters you can hear them breathe
The score matches the show's emotional register: close, careful, and willing to sit with silence rather than fill it.
KIERAN BOUSTANY10.01.2022
MUSIC№ 38
Peter Raeburn scored The Dry with heat and the absence of water
The score is a heatwave set to strings: dry, persistent, and impossible to escape.
KIERAN BOUSTANY08.11.2021
MUSIC№ 39
The score for High Ground maps the frontier in two musical languages
Teague scores the colonial violence with orchestral weight and the Indigenous resistance with rhythmic patience, and the gap between the two is the film's argument.
KIERAN BOUSTANY20.10.2021
MUSIC№ 40
The score for June Again knows exactly when to stop playing
The score for JJ Winlove's film does its best work in the silences between the cues, where Hazlehurst's face carries everything the music chose not to.
KIERAN BOUSTANY28.09.2021
MUSIC№ 41
Cezary Skubiszewski has been scoring Australia's conscience for twenty years
From Jasper Jones to Breath to Go!, Skubiszewski scores the gap between what Australian characters say and what they cannot bring themselves to name.
KIERAN BOUSTANY22.06.2021
MUSIC№ 42
Mortal Kombat was built in Adelaide and it sounds like a city trying to punch above its weight
The score lands somewhere between orchestral bombast and electronic bruise, and Adelaide's sound stages gave both room to echo.
KIERAN BOUSTANY04.05.2021
MUSIC№ 43
The score for Penguin Bloom knows the bird is carrying the emotion
Zarvos scores the recovery around the magpie rather than the woman, and the displacement is exactly right.
KIERAN BOUSTANY22.04.2021
MUSIC№ 44
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis made Carnage in a locked room and it sounds like it
The album was recorded during lockdown, alone, and it carries the specific weight of a room that has not been left in months.
KIERAN BOUSTANY28.02.2021
MUSIC№ 45
Relic lets the house do the talking
The house in Relic creaks, drips, and breathes on a frequency that sits just below the one you can name.
KIERAN BOUSTANY10.12.2020
MUSIC№ 46
The score for Rams sounds like two men who share a fence line and nothing else
The score sits in the paddock between two brothers, and the distance is measured in sustained notes that never quite resolve.
KIERAN BOUSTANY28.10.2020
MUSIC№ 47
Amanda Brown scored Babyteeth like a body that knows it is running out of time
The score moves at the speed of a pulse that is not quite steady, and the irregularity is the whole design.
KIERAN BOUSTANY20.08.2020
MUSIC№ 48
Australian musicians played to laptop cameras and the sound changed
The venue closed, the laptop opened, and the room the mic was in became a bedroom.
KIERAN BOUSTANY26.06.2020
MUSIC№ 49
Australian composers spent lockdown scoring podcasts and games and it changed how they work
When the films stopped, the composers did not; they just scored different things, and the habits they built in lockdown stayed.
KIERAN BOUSTANY28.04.2020
MUSIC№ 50
The last Australian film scores released before cinemas closed
Three scores dropped in the two weeks before every screen went dark, and nobody heard them the way they were designed to be heard.
KIERAN BOUSTANY18.03.2020
MUSIC№ 51
Five Australian screen composers to listen for in 2020
The year's film calendar is loaded with Australian productions, and the composers attached to them deserve to be named before the reviews land.
KIERAN BOUSTANY22.02.2020
MUSIC№ 52
Jed Kurzel turned the Kelly Gang into a punk song
The score for Justin Kurzel's Ned Kelly film sounds like a garage band locked inside a colonial jail, and that is exactly right.
KIERAN BOUSTANY28.01.2020