Thom Yorke puts out “Suspirium”, the first track from his Suspiria score

XL Recordings announced Thom Yorke's score for Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria on Tuesday 4 September and released its first track, “Suspirium”, the same day. The piano that opens it is the music Yorke posted with no caption the previous Friday, and it carries the theme that comes back again and again through the film and the score. Yorke sings over the piano, Pasha Mansurov plays a solo flute, and the animated video is by Ruff Mercy.

The album, Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film), is due on 26 October, the day the film opens in Los Angeles and New York. It comes out digitally, on two CDs and as a double LP on pink vinyl. The announcement came three days after the film's world premiere in Venice, where Yorke likened writing the score to making spells. On 5 September XL added night-time playbacks of the whole album, in eight cities from London to Mexico City on 12 and 13 September and in Tokyo on the 18th. The guests were drawn at random from sign-ups on W.A.S.T.E.

Yorke wrote all 25 pieces for the film: score, interludes and songs, three of which he sings (“Suspirium”, “Unmade” and “Has Ended”). XL describes ballads for piano and voice, layered vocals, and modular-synthesiser pieces in a Krautrock vein, drawn from the film's setting in Berlin in 1977. He arranged everything and recorded and produced it with Sam Petts-Davies, with the London Contemporary Orchestra and Choir. On “Has Ended” and “Volk” the drummer is his son, Noah Yorke.

Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film), double LP running order (the two CDs follow the same order, sides A and B on the first)