Rock Burwell on Scoring 'Obsession': The Craft, the Darkness, and What Waxwork Records Heard in It

There's a particular kind of composer who understands that the space between the notes matters as much as the notes themselves. Rock Burwell is one of them. In a recent interview with Vehlinggo, the score composer behind Obsession opened up about the creative process behind one of the more quietly compelling horror scores to emerge in recent memory — and why the resulting vinyl release from Waxwork Records feels like something of a full-circle moment.

The Score That Grew Sideways

What immediately strikes you in Burwell's account is how organic the whole process was. He didn't arrive at the Obsession score with a blueprint. Instead, the music developed alongside the film — a collaborative, almost intuitive process that horror scoring demands more than most genres. Horror doesn't give you the luxury of ambiguity. The score has to carry dread without telegraphing it, has to unsettle without announcing itself.

For those of us who grew up listening to the Tangerine Dream soundtracks of the late seventies and the John Carpenter synth work that defined an entire decade of cinema, there's something deeply familiar about what Burwell describes. That tradition of texture-over-melody, of sound design bleeding into composition, never really died. It just went underground for a while.

Waxwork Records and the Vinyl Dimension

The fact that Back Lot Music and Waxwork Records are involved says a great deal. Waxwork has built an extraordinary reputation over the past decade by treating horror and cult film soundtracks as serious artistic artifacts — pressing them on beautifully designed vinyl, often with extensive liner notes and archival artwork. It's a label that understands that the physical object matters.

There's a parallel here to what's been happening in the electronic music world since roughly 2022. As trance and progressive house experienced their own unexpected revival — driven partly by pandemic-era nostalgia, partly by a genuine hunger for music with emotional architecture — labels began pressing limited-run vinyl of classic nineties and early-2000s material. The logic was identical: some music demands a physical dimension to be fully experienced.

A score like Obsession isn't background music. It's the emotional infrastructure of the film — and hearing it separated from the images, on a Waxwork pressing, forces you to confront just how much weight the music is carrying.

Horror Scoring in the Revival Era

What makes this moment particularly interesting is how film scoring and electronic music have begun talking to each other again. The revival of cinematic synth aesthetics — the Stranger Things effect, if you want a shorthand — has pushed a new generation of producers toward longer, more atmospheric compositions. The BPM counts have come back up since COVID changed the dancefloor calculus, but the hunger for texture and tension never went away.

Burwell's work on Obsession sits in that tradition. Horror film scoring has always required the composer to think like a sound designer first and a melodist second. That sensibility is increasingly common in the electronic music producers who grew up watching the same films these composers scored. The loop has closed.

Why This Interview Matters

Vehlinggo has consistently been one of the few outlets that treats film and TV composers with the same depth and seriousness that music press reserves for rock or electronic artists. The Rock Burwell interview is a reminder that the composers working in horror and psychological thriller are doing some of the most emotionally demanding creative work in the industry — and that when a label like Waxwork decides to press it to vinyl, it becomes something more than a soundtrack. It becomes a document.

For anyone who still believes that the most interesting music exists at the intersection of sound design, memory, and emotion — whether that's a classic trance anthem or a horror score that won't leave your head — Obsession belongs in your collection.