I’m proposing here that Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s score for Smile can be viewed as an imaginary alternative to the official narrative of techno and trance. Tapia de Veer’s score echoes with the melancholic failure of exotica’s paradise wonderland, aired like medicating muzak in a veterans’ hospital. And isn’t this what film music at its most obsequious aspires to: servicing movies bent on codifying human behaviour for dramatic control? Tapia de Veer’s themes and arrangements map out a fascinating oppositional arc: from deconstructed techno to unrepentant exotica to reconstituted film music. Wire subscribers can read Philip Brophy’s original Secret History of Film Music columns online in the digital archive.