Johnny Jewel - KARL (Original Soundtrack) (2026)

The IDIB don proves a natural selection to score a documentary biopic celebrating Karl Lagerfeld’s remarkable career spanning fashion design, photography, and publishing. Featuring Jewel’s label starlet Desire throughout, it includes exclusive runway versions of her ace Omar-S jams. RIYL Sally Shapiro, Supermodel, Romance.

‘KARL’ mirrors the opulence of its subject with apposite measures of lustrous atmosphere and disco glamour hustled by Johnny Jewel. Following his work on scores to Nicolas Winding Refn’s ‘Bronson’ (2008), and ‘Drive’ (2011), Jewel supplies a mix of original instrumentals, gems from his cult IDIB catalogue, and a number of ‘Runway’ re-tools of Desire’s coy club looks with Detroit staple, Omar-S, sure to snag attention of DJs.

Severed from celluloid, the soundtrack works on its own merits as an expansive backdrop to one’s own luxury problems and inner life, oscillating the pomp of opener ‘Legacy’ with a dry-iced ballad and an icy ode to Lagerfeld’s cat ‘Choupette’, next to custom mix of Desire’s slow Italo glyder ‘Dangerous Drug’, establishing a pattern he tailors to brief over the subsequent 60 minutes.

From a film edit of Chromatics’ ‘Tick of the Clock’ and The Hacker remix of Hawkwind’s ’Silver Machine’, thru the airs of ‘Mystery’ and ‘Disintegration’, to ‘Runway’ mixes of Desire & Omar-S’ Detroit house bops ‘Hard Times’ and ’54321’, plus exclusive edit of their brooding ‘White Horses’ with AF13 & Mitchell Yoshida; it’s all puckered with the sort of sexy élan that one should expect from a Johnny Jewel tribute to Karl Lagerfeld.