The Jordan Peele-produced remake of '90s horror classic Candyman is out next week (8/27), and as mentioned, the score was composed by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (aka Lichens) and features Hildur Guðnadóttir on cello and vocals, Matthew Morandi on keyboards and contrabass, with co-production and engineering from Randall Dunn. Lowe says that while he considered the original film and its Philip Glass score when composing his own, "it was necessary to then push away from what they have cemented in their cultural position. For me, Candyman 2021 had to be a new experience and have its own voice." He's just shared a track from it, a genuinely unsettling piece of music titled "Rows and Towers," which you can listen to below.
“‘Rows and Towers’ serves as one of many portals in the landscape of Candyman,” Lowe says. "The choir of voices is representative of the multiplicity of voices, not only deeply cemented in the folklore of Candyman, but of the characters navigating the space in real time. The piece acts as a bridge between what Cabrini Green was in the past and the gentrification there that is on full display in 2020. It is the outline of the history, of the tale and the apparition that floats around the interior of a newly developed condo. The skitter and insect like buzz that swirls throughout the voices at its core is the word CANDYMAN spoken and then pulled apart, crushed and turned inside out until you no longer recognize it as a voice speaking the word, but an otherworldly entity that has been summoned from another realm. The word is unintelligible as what it was, but the energy of it remains and carries through the chill and the terror. This is the writing on the wall."