Jóhann Jóhannsson (1969–2018)

Jóhannsson's hypnodrone Oort Cloud cello-synth score takes phantasmal form from the vacuum of space, "a volume of non-luminous gas" ushering Tilda's Swin-tones to our primitive ears from two thousand million years in the future. She's an infinitely-evolved form of humanity, a telepathic being from Neptune of unknowable depth, so she's well-cast here, as are the Cyclopean Yugoslav spomeniki as the kind of structures a race of Swintons with "astronomical eyes" and bodies "covered with fur, or show more mole velvet, revealing the underlying muscles" might come up with if left to themselves for untold millenia. One spomenik in particular is reminiscent of the Easter Island moai, the work perhaps of another people confronting their own annihilation. The narration is gently anthropological, Attenboroughsian even, priming us on the peculiarities of our future selves ("the fetus is carried for twenty years. Infancy lasts for about a century") and touching on Ballardian eco-horror with talk of polar migrations and evaporating oceans before zooming out and losing itself in Saganesque cosmic awe. Like all great science fiction, it's a deeply human story.

Great are the stars, and humankind is of no account to them. But humankind is a fair spirit, whom a star conceived, and a star kills.

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This was an excellent soundtrack CD for the movie Arrival, which came out in 2016. It has a kind of
ambient sound, bit it is appropriate to the movie in setting the scene for what turns out to be a friendly alien encounter. The movie does turn based on a positive view of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The actors do not sing, but there is an important background chorus.