Certainly, gauging by the initial promotional track, “Killing Hawk,” Ryuichi Sakamoto, Alva Noto, and Bryce Dessner’s music for *The Revenant* will be enthralling, just as gravitas-laden and epic as the forthcoming film looks to be. “Killing Hawk” balances an extended, slow-mo orchestral string section with what appears to be a digitally stretched version of the same audio, the backdrop a horizon’s-edge figment of generalized noise. It’s stunning, especially when a kind of ferrite pixie stick scatter appears, perhaps paralleling rampant birds in flight on screen. We won’t know until the film debuts, in about a week (December 25). Sadly, according to [factmag.com](http://www.factmag.com/2015/12/17/ryuichi-sakamoto-revenant-score-not-eligible-oscar/), the score won’t be eligible for an Oscar (Sakamoto won for The Last Emperor back in 1987), because three composers are involved.
Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/milanrecords](https://soundcloud.com/milanrecords/killinghawk).