Sinister, sensual, dark, foreboding, and passionate are the electronic effects all at once in Basic Instinct, the bubbly, fluid, and falsely hopeful aspect of a hazy and confusing experience foreshadowing channel-sparring sounds heard with greater volume in The Shadow a few years later. A few strikingly bold and powerful action sequences in Basic Instinct remind of Goldsmith's previous collaboration with Verhoeven, Total Recall, allowing brass and drum pat hits to explode with angry force. When the gravity of the film's weight begins to collapse in on Douglas' character, Goldsmith increasingly applies extremely heavy, deep bass strings that also establish the dread of the sex scenes. In fact, the most momentous crescendos of fear in this score are almost entirely string-based. Thematically, Basic Instinct is a rich tapestry of three constantly battling major themes, often overlapped or finishing each others' statements. All built upon melodramatic and sometimes shared minor key structures, these themes are so prevalent that it's challenging to find any extended sequence without one of them. The primary theme is a sultry descending and ascending figure that blows in the wind with little tethering, an ambiguous expression of false romance heard in concert form during the opening and closing titles. While this theme is the most famous representation of the score, adapted in various guises throughout the picture, Goldsmith's two secondary ideas for Basic Instinct are where the real action is happening. The first of these themes is the "pursuit" or "travelling" motif, an elegant if not slightly urgent idea that stretches across more than an octave in its dynamic and futile search for resolution. After being heard first in the middle of "Catherine & Roxy" on high strings and with an accelerated pace and depth in the opening minutes of "Night Life," Goldsmith saves the most truly noir-like performance for trumpet at the outset of "Unending Story," and that cue's bridge to the "End Credits" contains a monumental fanfare-like expression of its tragic noir inclinations. Structurally, the twists and turns of this theme make it the strongest identity in the movie, and it's interesting to ponder how it could have been manipulated to serve as the primary theme as well.

Often under the top two themes is the other identity in Basic Instinct, a rumbling bass figure of eight to ten notes usually performed on piano to represent the suspense of the story. Its use underneath the pursuit motif increases as the score progresses, culminating in an impressively forced merging late in "She's Really Sick." Likewise late in the picture, it begins to interrupt the flow of the main theme as well, "It Won't Sell" and "Unending Story" both exhibiting this encroachment. The suspense theme eventually prevails completely in the last moments of the film, supplanting the main theme in a full ensemble performance during the strikes at the conclusion of "An Unending Story." A few lesser motifs also exist in the score, highlighted by the literal stabbing motif for the killing scenes and their suggested equivalents. Stone's character receives a rather uncertain, descending minor-third pair that can be supplied in any situation in the score. Goldsmith also seemingly plays an in-joke in "Pillow Talk," reprising the tone and a phrase of the music heard in an early scene in Total Recall involving Stone in bed. The sex and orgasm motifs in this score are the last piece of the puzzle but obviously very memorable ones. Pulsating strings reaching for painful rhythmic crescendos to accompany the graphic sex scenes with remarkable accuracy, the rapturous tempos for these scenes are almost a bit too amusing to appreciate outside of context. Overall, Basic Instinct is a score with too many built-in contradictions to describe, a perfect but sometimes overwrought accompaniment for the unusual behavior in the story. It's easy to imagine that Goldsmith took weeks on end to finally nail down the right themes for the picture. The battle between innocent violin and woodwind tones and the deep bass strings and thunderous piano is perpetual, as is the dissonance punctuating the start of each measure during the sex scenes. While the title theme and the material for those raunchy depictions of depravity are the most lasting highlights of this soundtrack, the secondary themes are just as compelling and complete the narrative of the film wonderfully. The musical arc in Basic Instinct is extremely clever, creating an emotional roller coaster with all the twists and turns of the film, especially by the time Goldsmith leaves untrusting listeners perplexed by a concluding track that is desperate and unfinished. Another general asset of the score is a simply stunning recording, the crystal clear sound quality a precursor to the wet ambience that defined the composer's scores of the late 1990's.

While fans of the score have always claimed that the complete recording has not been commercially released (going so far as to unnecessarily worship amateurish double-CD bootlegs of the music), the available products are more than sufficient. The Varèse Sarabande album released at the time of the film's debut offers ten tracks totaling over 45 minutes that serves as an adequate representation of Goldsmith's various thematic ideas and instrumental motifs. A dozen years later, the Prometheus label released an expanded album for Basic Instinct that presents the bulk of Goldsmith's effort in film order, advertising itself as complete but confusing some fans due to some rearrangement of material that happened in the final editing phase of the movie's creation. (The director shifted around the music heard in "First Victim" for multiple applications.) In 2015, Quartet Records rearranged this fuller selection again, including the original album presentation and alternate recordings for the R-rated version of the movie on a second CD in a limited set that was eventually reissued by the label for another limited pressing in 2021. While casual fans could probably remain content with the original 1992 album, any significant Goldsmith collector should investigate one of the longer albums. As time has passed, Basic Instinct has proven to be an even more fascinating and unique work in Goldsmith's career, and while the material absent from the original album is not earth-shattering outside of the massive pursuit theme insertion at the end of "An Unending Story" on the longer albums, it is still as interesting and top notch as the music originally released. The shorter filler cues for the film are just as eerie and tense as the rest, and they expand upon the mood of the original 45 minutes with numerous impressive ambient sequences. Highlights on top of the longer of "An Unending Story" on the expanded albums are "Catherine & Roxy" and "Don't Smoke" (with great electronic work performing the pursuit theme), "Beth & Nick" (a pivotal and disturbing cue), a slightly longer alternate version of the first killing cue for the unrated cut of the scene, the elegant piano of "It's Won't Sell," and the "That's Real Music" source cue for the clip from the movie Hellraiser on a television seen in the background of a scene (there's more 1950's horror in this cue than Christopher Young's tone). Overall, any album is a winning presentation of Basic Instinct, though the expanded offerings do sustain their length quite well. As disturbing as this score can be when you match the music to the visuals, it's a solid solo listening experience in the suspense department. Music for harrowing sex scenes and vaginal flashes has never been the same.  ****   @Amazon.com: CD or Download