Stream Spacey Soundtrack to Foo Fighters’ ‘Sonic Highways’

For the HBO series/Foo Fighters studio album Sonic Highways, Dave Grohl and company trekked around the United States to explore the country’s diverse musical history, recording a new song in eight cities inspired by the individual local scene. But the show’s unsung sonic element – its rich, ambient original score – came from Bryan Lee Brown, a composer who often records under the moniker Dark Brown. His official soundtrack, Sonic Highways (Original Score Music From the Original Series), is out June 16th via Memory Bulldozer Records – and it’s available to stream below.

The 30-track set features a blend of spacey and rustic guitar textures (“Another Spirit,” “You and I”), ambient pulses (“Accord”), psychedelic asides (“North of Rome”) and more fleshed-out pieces that incorporate percussion and other instrumentation (the banjo-driven “Many Branches”). The album is available to pre-order on iTunes.

“[The soundtrack] is a bit of a rebirth,” Brown tells Rolling Stone. “Musical score without picture is simply music. Without picture, the music takes on new meaning by each individual who listens. The album is a combination of melodic psychedelia mixed with ambient soundscapes. Helping director Dave Grohl tell the stories of some of America’s greatest musicians was a huge responsibility as much as it was an honor. I’m grateful that Sonic Highways (Original Score Music) will now be able to reach new audiences and take on new life.”

The eight-episode first season of Sonic Highways ended last fall, but Grohl is already planning the next installment – with a twist. 

“There is going to be another Sonic Highways season,” the Foo frontman recently told NME. “It might or might not be international…It might only be in England. It might be in England and other places.”

Grohl added that the change of setting would be logical, given the amount of innovative music that originated in the UK. “The great thing about the idea, the concept of the project, is that it can be anywhere because every city has some sort of musical history,” he said. “But I don’t know. Of all places in the world, England and the UK just seems like it would be shooting fish in a barrel. There’s just so fucking much here.”