San Junipero

December’s here. Woo. Let’s celebrate the arrival of advent with some soundtrack music from Clint Mansell. San Junipero was the fourth episode from last year’s Black Mirror series, Charlie Brooker’s stories of future shock and technology gone wrong. In San Junipero two women, Yorkie and Kelly, meet in a bar in a beach resort in 1987 and fall in love. The beach resort and bars and entire existence turn out not to be entirely as they same. Ditto the people. I won’t spoil it if you haven’t seen it- get thee to Netflix and watch it. For a Black Mirror episode it had an upbeat ending too.

The episode is peppered with songs from 1987, including a brief snippet of Girlfriend In A Coma and a repeating Heaven Is A Place On Earth. The rest of the soundtrack was by Clint Mansell, formerly of Pop Will Eat Itself. The 10 tracks Clint recorded came out as a stand alone album and work well independently, with washes of synths, pulses of bass, strings, bleeps and static and repeating melodies. This is the closing piece. It’s a long way from Beaver Patrol.

San Junipero (Saturday Night In The City Of The Dead)