Cool Stuff: Mondo's Westworld Season 4 Vinyl Soundtrack Completes The Series Score Set
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HBO's ambitious sci-fi series "Westworld" took the cable channel by storm when the first season became one of its most-watched shows. There was palpable excitement each week for a new episode, and it felt like the hype actually came close to capturing the eager anticipation audiences once felt between new episodes of "LOST," complete with a variety of compelling mysteries driving the series.
Sadly, "Westworld" came to an unfortunate end with the show's fourth season. HBO canceled the series due to the show's high cost and diminishing returns, with viewership taking an extreme dip as the series continued. That's genuinely disappointing, because co-creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy had just one more season left to complete the story they originally conceived, and as of now, fans will never find out how it was all supposed to end.
However, it's not all doom and gloom for "Westworld" fans, because today allows for some form of completion, at least if you're a collector of vinyl soundtracks. Mondo announced the release of the "Westworld" season 4 vinyl soundtrack with composer Ramin Djawadi's hypnotizing score pressed on an exclusive colorway. But that's not all, because if you've collected the vinyl soundtracks for the first three seasons so far, you'll also get a slipcase to house all four of the albums together. Mondo sent us the entire collection, along with an advance copy of the season 4 soundtrack, and we've got a closer look below.
Buzzing flies
Echoing the visual style of the soundtracks for the first three seasons of "Westworld," the fourth season soundtrack comes with a die-cut outer jacket featuring striking, close-up imagery of an earthly creature. This time, it's a housefly taking the spotlight, which makes sense when you consider their significance in the show's fourth season. In fact, this is the perfect image to use for the final soundtrack, because if you look at the covers of the first three seasons — featuring a horse, a cow, and an eagle — they all have a fly hidden somewhere in the artwork.
The "Westworld" season 4 soundtrack (available to pre-order for $60, including the slipcase) was conceived and art directed by Spencer Hickman, featuring original artwork by Greg Ruth and layout by Alan Hynes. Pressed on 140g colored vinyl (limited to an edition of 3,000 for Mondo's exclusive release), the 3xLP album has all 34 tracks from the soundtrack that was previously made available from digital music retailers and streamers. That includes Ramin Djawadi's incredible orchestral and piano adaptations of popular songs, such as "Bad Guy" by Billie Eilish, "Enter Sandman" by Metallica, and "The Day the World Went Away" by Nine Inch Nails. And they all sound exquisite spinning on the record player.
Mondo
Here's what co-creator, executive producer, and co-showrunner Jonathan Nolan had to say about their collaboration with Djawadi across four seasons of sci-fi television:
"As 'Westworld' came together, Lisa and I knew that we wanted to take enormous risks with the narrative of the show, tossing the audience into the deep end with our story. And we were able to take those risks, knowing that, in addition to our incredible cast, we were collaborating with Ramin Djawadi, an artist whose ability to translate even the most nuanced narrative idea into music is peerless."
But fans will be particularly touched, albeit in a bittersweet way, by what Nolan notes in the liner notes insert included with the slipcase for all four seasons.
Enter the maze
Featuring the famous symbol of "The Maze," which has been part of "Westworld" mythology since the beginning of the series, the slipcase comfortably fits all four vinyl soundtracks. But it's the liner notes from Jonathan Nolan that fans will be particularly interested in. I won't post the entire scribe here, but what Nolan says about the end of the series is worth noting:
"The show is long since over. But I find myself whistling Ramin's timeless theme. Often. And I smile. That's the power of this music: that the indelible experiences of making 'Westworld,' all of the incredible people who were part of it, all the days spent chasing the sun and capturing it on film, can all be conjured, instantly, in 8 perfectly chosen notes.
'Westworld' never died. It simply became music."
Mondo
Even though the series won't get a proper conclusion, fans who snag the vinyl soundtracks will have a memento of their loyalty to the puzzle that wound through "Westworld." It's just a shame that it's not quite so easy to watch the show anymore. Despite being an HBO original, "Westworld" was removed from the Max streaming service library at the end of 2022, and it's still missing today. Thankfully, you can still grab the entire series on Blu-ray (and digital). Between the Blu-ray collection and the complete vinyl soundtrack set, it's physical media for the win.