Lost Season Four Soundtrack Guide by McLeron

1.) Giving Up The Ghost – The music during the scene where Charlie chats with Hurley in Santa Rosa. The music here takes from what was hinted at in season three’s Fetch Your Arm. In that track there were slight dreamlike soothing sounds like from a synth, which are now always used for Hurley’s ‘sad’ theme.

2.) Locke’ing Horns – is heard in the scene at the cockpit of 815 where Hurley sticks up for Locke. It’s another variation of the ‘Losties Coming Together Over Something Mournful’ theme heard in Just Die Already, Win One For The Reaper, Charlie Hangs Around, Life And Death, Oceanic 815, The Last To Know, Under The Knife, Here Today, Gone To Maui, and many more, but specifically Looking Glass Half Full.

3.) Lost Away – Or Is It? – Takes place when Sayid leaves the island on Frank’s chopper, transitioning into the revelatory flashforward where we learn Sayid is a hitman for Ben in the future. This is a brilliant reworking of Sayid’s theme, which is unmistakably both mournful and ethnic. Giacchino takes this full blown, for the first time making a track that feels like a massive orchestral score holding its own on a big budget film.

4.) Backgammon Gambit – Takes place during the scene where Kate frees Miles while Sawyer distracts Locke with an irresistible game of backgammon. Open’s with Locke’s ‘Dawning On Something’ themes, and turns into Kate’s ‘Running’ theme. A snappy vibrant track with fascinating reworkings of our loved ones themes.

5.) Time And Time Again – Takes place during Desmond’s airborne electromagnetically induced dementia, wherein he is meant to calm down as the chopper is about to land on the freighter. It opens with the ‘Something Strange Is Going On With Lost’ theme (see: Claire’s Sessions With The Psychic) This is the first track on the soundtrack to play the ‘Helicopter Flies Over The Freighter’ theme. This hummable piece of music is fantastic as it employs the rarely used big bass drum, that hadn’t been heard since season three’s Under The Knife. The big bass drum is an incredible instrument when used in Lost, which highlights any scene.

6.) The Constant – God knows why this track is called the Constant. Just kidding, it takes place when Desmond finally manages to make contact with Penelope, ultimately saving him from death. The Constant, aka the Desmond Penny Love Theme. Season Four’s most beloved moment is recorded here in full to the delight of all fans. This is a more concise version of Distraught Desmond from season three’s soundtrack with more romantic violins thrown in. The track hits full swing two minutes in where there is overwhelming triumph, our two parted lovers are reunited a full 40 episodes before we all thought they would. The track loses momentum around the three and a half minute mark, to go back to the island to go through Daniel Faraday’s notebook.

7.) Maternity Hell – A very interesting piece of original music from Giacchino. It builds a scene tentatively, then drops in the theme usually used for Vincent and Hurley running, then hits you in the face with it full tilt.

8.) Karma Jin-Initiative – where Bernard talks to Jin about karma. This is a slightly shorter version of Season Two’s brilliant Rose and Bernard.

9.) Ji Yeon – The music used in the scene where Sun cries at Jin’s grave. Like Locke’ing Horns, but even MORE tragic.

10.) Michael’s Right To Remain Wrong – takes place during the scene where Michael sells Jin’s million dollar watch to buy a gun to kill himself with. What happened to the gun he had in the season two finale, I wonder? This is a wonderfully bizarre piece of music, that begins with Michael’s theme (finally! Glaring omission from season two!), last heard in Adrift where he gives Toddler Walt a toy polar bear. It quickly transforms into a mad piece of frantic violin scrubbings and magically crazy plinkly percussion.

11.) Bodies And Bungalows – the music used in the scene where Sawyer is shot at repeatedly in Dharmaville. This is a more dramatic version of season three’s Hold The Phone. It is brilliantly terrifying with drums bubbling and undulating perplexingly under the sharp violins.

12.) Benundrum – Plays over any scene where Ben fortifies his house against an attack from the freighter’s mercenaries. This is a mishmash of several ‘Impending Doom’ mood pieces from the Ben centric episode The Shape Of Things To Come. The base theme here is the same as the opening of Bodies and Bungalows, so I’m not exactly sure why it was kept in. I feel that instead we could have had the music where Ben says goodbye to his daughter amidst the apocalypse of Smokey

13.) Hostile Negotiations – The music used during IMO season four’s most shocking moment: the execution of young innocent Alexandra. It begins seriously, with abrupt bursts of brass, then the mournful strings of Ben’s ‘Humanising and Emotional’ theme come in building up softly, until we are hit full on with the theme, then it dies down and turns horrifically terrible as the high tensed strings draw out a note so offensively. Possibly the best piece of music on this soundtrack and the show itself, it captures every millisecond of the jawdroppingly powerful scene. You can show the scene to randomers who hate the show and no one can say a bad word about the execution. NPI

14.) Locke-about – The music used in Locke’s heartbreaking scene where he struggles to walk again, and is advised a Walkabout tour would do him good, by the oxymoronic appellation Matthew Abbadon. The second half of the track takes place during the scene where Keamy forms a Mutiny on the Kahana and kills Doc Ray and Captain Gault to coerce Frank Lapidus to pilot him back to the island to kill more innocent people. It’s an OKish version of Locke’s ‘sad’ theme. I, for one, would love to hear Locke’s original ‘Unbelievably Sad’ theme from season one’s Locke’d Out Again which was IMO Giacchino’s best music, but somehow only ever used twice on the show…and NOT in the scene where Locke first uses a wheelchair, WTF??? TRAVESTY!!! The song changes abruptly as it passes into the freighter scene. They should have just made that part of the track separate and replaced the Locke learning to walkabout music with the fantastic music played over the scene where Richard Alpert employs Buddhism to see if Locke is special enough to earn a place at his special school. The freighter part of the track is worth listening to near the end where the ‘Helicopter Flying Over The Freighter’ theme is played again with less triumphant sounds and more terrible undertones, now that we know that the machine is really ferrying a bunch of cutthroat bastards.

15.) There’s No Place Like Home – The first scene of the episode There’s No Place Like Home, where the Oceanic Six land in Hawaii. Michael Giacchino outdid himself here, with an amazing piece of original music with an Eastern tint that he hasn’t since bettered. It has strokes of Parting Words and The Gathering. It’s a piece of music that when you listen to, you wonder why no one had made something like this before, it’s so simple.

16.) Nadia On Your Life – Takes place during the scene WAY more important than The Constant scene, where Sayid, after eight fucking years of searching, and being blackmailed into setting up his old friends to be terrorists, is FINALLY reunited with his tragic exiled tortured soul mate, who had acid poured on her hands just for being a liberal. The music spills over onto the following scene where Sayid speeds the Zodiac raft to the island so that Faraday and Juliet can ship the Lostaways to the Freighter. This is basically season two’s A New Trade with season one’s Hollywood And Vines aka ‘The Losties Are Travelling For Important Reasons’ theme.

17.) C4-titude – Sun and Jin are shocked to see Michael aboard the freighter, but are interrupted by Desmond yelling for them to come see the ridiculous amount of C4 explosive on the boat. Uh oh. This is a dramatic mishmash of some of the tense themes of Lost and the freighter theme.

18.) Of Mice And Ben – A montage even better than the opening with There’s No Place Like Home. For me, this is where track 15 really hits its stride. It completes the best musical scene of the season as all our heroes pass off voluntarily on to certain doom…with a few more drums! Old feuds are forgotten as they act in the interests of their loved ones, which is basically all of what Lost is about. True heroes are sort of born out of moments and the reality is-is most of our characters are heroes…when the proverbial others are coming…do you man up and take action? These guys always act most nobly when they act in the spirit of the community, they protect each other. The question remains what is the fate of our castaways, how are they gonna get off this island? Ultimately it’s about these people, it always has been. This island has given them an opportunity to completely reinvent themselves and that change for these characters is really what the end game will be all about.

19.) Keamy Away From Him – The music played over the rescue of Ben and shootout between Keamy and the Islanders, ending with the stunning hand-to-hand fight with our own soldier of fortune, Sayid. This is a good piece of music using several ingredients from the soundtracks to season two and three. It’s mostly ‘The Hunt’ gone psychotic.

20.) Timecrunch – plays over Faraday coming back on the Zodiac to ferry more socks to the freighter. This is a great piece of music, drawing off The Moth theme from season one, or season two’s Charlie’s Temptation into music that gives a palpable feeling of dread, until the ‘The Losties Are Travelling For Important Reasons’ theme returns.

21.) Can’t Kill Keamy – takes place over the scene where the helicopter flies off the island. Because the main characters are too good to use the Zodiac raft, they wanna be all fancy and use a helicopter – well look how that turned out! The helicopter ended up crashing! If they’d been humble enough to use the Zodiac raft they would have crashed in the ocean. Look at the scoreboard, the freighter had TWO helicopters and one Zodiac. What’s still standing? Zodiac:1, Helicopters: Nil. This music opens with a new take on the Lost theme (Credit Where Credit’s Due, season one) and subtly lifts from the new There’s No Place Like Home and transforms it into a bit of an actioner.

22.) Bobbing For Freighters – Plays over the scene where Keamy, who obviously COULD be killed, and his dead man’s switch sets off the C4 on the freighter, causing it to explode along with several of our beloved characters. This track contains some of the best music, most notably in the final minute of the track, where the ‘Helicopter Flies Over The Freighter theme and the Jin Sun love theme become one, and it soars hopefully with desperately pounding drums, but ultimately tragic. This is a case of music completely taking you over. The great thing about Giacchino’s music is that it fully sucks you in and absorbs you into the Lost world and none more so than here with the emotionally devastating parting of our favourite married couple.

23.) Locke of the Island – The Frozen Donkey Wheel. It’s the longest Giacchino track ever released, and it throws in every instrument possible, going through so many scenes where farewells are given. It truly sums up the mood in the best possible way, giving us Locke’s theme, and Ben’s emotional theme, which is one of the strongest on the show. He brings out that big bass drum again, telling us, this is the most emotional event going on ever. Brilliant track.

24.) Lying For The Island – where The Searcher finds the survivors, and Des and Penny are reunited after three years. Sayid went for longer, pussies. In this track, curiously, are the beginnings of Jacob’s Theme, which will next be heard in the penultimate scene of the season five finale. The track is held by a long note on the violin, and then the piano comes in, with hope, then following on from that, in come the weeping cellos, and the Desmond Penny Love Theme returns more powerful and significant and more romantic than ever before.

25.) Landing Party – The music played over the slow motion scene where the Oceanic Six land on Manukangga. Because There’s No Place Like Home and Of Mice And Ben was not enough, we’re hit again with the original finale music one last time.

26.) Hoffs-Drawler – The music played over the final scene of the season, and we find what’s in the box. This is a four minute long track that only needs to be one minute. The first three minutes are just long drawn out notes that bubble under the scene that takes place. In the middle of the track we get a shout out to the music played in season one’s finale when Hurley sees the numbers on the Hatch, so it is nice to finally have that on audio to listen to. The music just murmurs under with a few keys of piano, and low low harpsichord plucks. In the final minute we get the ‘We Are About To End On A Shock’ piece of music, most recently heard in the final minute of Follow The Leader.

Overall as I am the world’s biggest Lost fan, I’m not going to rate this anything other than 100%. I’m upset at how we don’t have the music from when Sawyer kisses Kate and jumps off the helicopter, which was the creator’s favourite part of the finale. I’m glad that the music from when Michael first attempts to blow up the Kahana is omitted, as that’s just Eko Blaster from season two, aka the ‘Losties Are About To Blow Something Up’ theme. I’m also annoyed that we don’t have the music from the scene where Kate throws Jack out of her life in Something Nice Back Home, which is Jack’s season three theme, last heard in Flash Forward Flashback. However it wouldn’t be a Lost soundtrack if they didn’t forget to include musical highlights of the season (Season One: The Moth scene, and Don’t Tell Me What I Can’t Do scene; Season Two: Locke doesn’t push the button and Henry gets his face smashed in – the music is crazy climatic; Season Three: Locke walks off with his dead father on his back – if you end on a dialogue free music piece, make sure it’s on the soundtrack!)

So back next year to do the same thing for the season five soundtrack, probably to bitch that they didn’t include Ben’s Humanising and Emotional theme from the Monster scene in Dead Is Dead. And, also, why ARE the Lost soundtracks released so late? Is it because it takes a year to come up with puns like Karma Jin-initiative and Nadia On Your Life?