'The Hateful Eight' soundtrack can be streamed

Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight doesn’t technically open until Christmas (and even then, only in a limited-run “roadshow” format), but you can stream the soundtrack now. There are songs from The White Stripes and Roy Orbison, but most of the score was composed by Tarantino’s favorite composer, the legendary Ennio Morricone.

Morricone created some of the most iconic soundtracks to spaghetti Westerns of the ’60s and ’70s — tunes that Tarantino’s films loved to evoke. His original score for The Hateful Eight harkens back to those scores while also reflecting the unique characteristics of the new film.

“I didn’t expect a soundtrack similar to The Five Man Army or Two Mules for Sister Sara. I expected something very, very different, and I got it,” Tarantino says. “He gave me pretty much a horror film soundtrack, with that kind of music box theme that kicks in from time to time that’s really creep and spooky. Well, that is my movie. That’s what he was responding to. He was responding to the claustrophobia and the paranoia of the characters trapped in this situation together.”

Tarantino says Morricone’s ideas for the score came directly from his script and its themes:

“He even told me, he goes, ‘I just had this idea in my head when I read the script for a theme… It would suggest two things: it would suggest the stagecoach — moving forward and moving forward and moving forward — yet it would also suggest the violence that would come later.”

Listen below to get in the right headspace for The Hateful Eight’s arrival.

Reporting by Jeff Labrecque.