Andor Just Dropped Its Fantastic Club Beat to Stream

It’s all very good—Britell has carved a sound for Andor so far that feels Star Wars when it needs to be, but very different from the oeuvres of John Williams or the Star Wars streaming contemporaries like Ludwig Goransson or Natalie Holt. “Niamos!” is perhaps the apex of that idea. Usually, when Star Wars gives us club music, it’s a riff on the smooth Jizz of Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes—the same brassy, vaguely spacey faux-jazz that we first heard back in A New Hope—because that’s what we’re trained to expect of every cantina in the galaxy far, far away.

“Niamos!” sounds nothing like that. It’s a dark, almost oppressive repetitive beat that drills its way inside your head, both befitting the first moment it blares into Andor’s soundscape when we arrive on the planet the track’s named for, and then again when it plays over the credits of “Announcement” given the dire straits we leave Cassian in at its climax. It wouldn’t be out of place in our own world, but still feels distanced enough to be a part of the world of Star Wars. In a way, it’s reflective of Andor at large—this grounded, grimy look at the realities of its worldbuilding that roots a realistic, human view of the Empire’s rise that feels like a mirror to our current moment.

Also, it’s just a good beat.

The first volume of Andor’s soundtrack is now streaming on Spotify, Apple Music, and Deezer.

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