News: • Film & TV Music News • New Soundtrack News • Non-Film Musical Works by Film Composers • Documentary Film & Soundtrack News • Vinyl & Video Game Soundtracks
THE REGIME is an American political satire limited television miniseries from HBO starring Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Guillaume Gallienne, Andrea Riseborough, Martha Plimpton, and Hugh Grant. Stephen Frears and Jessica Hobbs have directed the episodes and serve as executive producers. The series depicts a year within the palace of a crumbling authoritarian regime. After not leaving the palace for quite some time, Chancellor Elena Vernham (Winslet) becomes increasingly paranoid and unstable and turns to a volatile soldier, Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts), as an unlikely confidant. As Zubak’s influence over the chancellor grows, Elena’s attempts to expand her power eventually result in the palace and the country fracturing around her
Alex Heffes scored the final three episodes of the series, while Alexandre Desplat scored the first three episodes and composed the main title theme. Heffes’ portion of the score darkens as the series progresses to mirror the tone of the series. To reflect the quirkiness and drama of the series, Heffes incorporates unusual world instrumentation into the orchestral score including Balalaika, (Eastern European guitar), didgeridoo (Australian wind instrument), Ocarina (Mexican flute), along with military percussion with choir. The entire score was recorded at Abbey Road.
Watch the series’ trailer:
Q: How did you come to score the season 3 episode of THE REGIME?
Alex Heffes: You never know how you end up on a project- things are often very random. I had worked with Stephen Frears before, as had Alexandre. I think because the series goes off on a bit of a tangent, it starts as a little comedy/satire, and then it goes into this whole dark drama thing, and there was a lot of music to cover, so it made sense to have two people cover the project. So, Alexandre covered the first half of the series, and then I picked it up from where Hugh Grant comes in when things start taking a turn towards the darkness, and then the drama gets more and more frenetic. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but there are a lot of different characters in different parts of the series, and it seems to work creatively for all of us to split it up like that.
I love working with Stephen Frears and Jessica Hobbs, the other director, on some of the episodes. She’s known from THE CROWN and many other things and is quite experienced; she worked very well with Stephen. We were all working, doing our own thing but trying to keep an overview of the character’s journey and the plot to give it this sweeping arc.
Q: How was it having Alexandre Desplat scoring earlier episodes and then taking on the final three episodes yourself?
Alex Heffes: We’ve known each other but never worked together, so it’s an unusual scenario. Sometimes, it just works for everyone, schedule-wise, and the way it was split up, with the different characterizations of music for other parts of the series. I’d got a call from Stephen to see if I was interested in doing that, and it was a fascinating thing to do. When I came on, Alexandre had written his episodes, so I wanted to do my own thing. I wasn’t trying to take his material; I took one theme of his, which I do reference, to give a bit of a thorough line, but, the way the show goes, I needed to write my own themes. The character had changed quite a lot through the show, so there was an exciting thing, just from a technical standpoint, to think of it more as a handshake in the middle where I start with the same tone and then gradually that tone moves away into somewhere else. That was an exciting thing to do as a composer.
Q: How would you describe the instrumental palette of your episodes?
Alex Heffes: What we wanted to do, for continuity, I used the same broad lineup that Alexandre Desplat used, and I recorded it in the same room at Abbey Road with the same engineers so that there would be some sonic consistency that the show doesn’t get a weird bump in the middle. But I wanted to find a way of introducing my palette to it well, so as the drama darkens and things get more frenetic and a bit crazy, I add bits of new color to the sounds. First of all, we added little bits of choir that sneak in very quietly, which are quite harmonious, and then they gradually get more guttural and aggressive as the drama progresses. So, the choir gets a bit twisted through the show.
Then, instead of using synths – it’s not a synth type of show – I was trying to find music that would sound more organic. Instead of using a bass synth, I came across the idea of using a digeridoo, which I’d never used before in a film score! It turns out it sounded great as a bass drone. I started combining that with marching band; I’ve never heard a marching military band with a digeridoo playing! So, trying to find combinations of things that are not that strange on their own, but when you put them together, we have a bit of a “what is that?” combination. Another one I can show you is that I collect all sorts of exciting things, and this clay ocarina came from the pyramids in Mexico City; it looks like a little dragon. I played that, combined with some electric cello, in episode 6 – again, trying to combine two things to make a new, slightly odd sound, which I then put on top of the orchestra. So, the orchestra was the backbone of the palette, and then, throwing in some electric cello, which I also played a little bit, gave the show an exciting sound that was not set anywhere specific; it could be in all sorts of different places. That gave the music a unique sound or feel without precisely placing where it came from. So, when that sound was set against the impressive backdrop of the orchestra at Abbey Road, it sounded fantastic.
Q: Is there a specific period in which the film is set? How did you configure your score accordingly?
Alex Heffes: That’s the thing, you don’t know. Visually, it has an exciting mixture of something slightly retro, almost sort of ‘50s Eastern Block way of looking at things, but it’s modern because people have cell phones, and it’s in the modern day. It’s not specific, and that’s one of the things I like about it. I’ve tried to play on that a little by, partly, not being at a geographic place with those strange instruments but also, harmonically, making it slightly stylized in areas where it almost could sound like it was out of a Hitchcock movie or something else. And then it goes very modern so that you’re always on your toes about where exactly you are. Not having it be too specific gives it an exciting assignment from that point of view!
Q: How did that unique variety of sounds work with the musical needs of your episodes, and how did it accommodate the series’ music?
Alex Heffes: There are so many characters and different plot lines that I needed to write some new themes straight off the bat for things that happen. That immediately opened up all sorts of possibilities. I don’t want to give any spoilers away, but Zubak is this character who gets plucked out of obscurity to become Elena’s lover and right-hand man in the palace. He goes through this incredible journey, so I needed to write something that could become major in the series for him. So I started to seed little ideas at the beginning of episode 4, all the way through 4, that could then begin to play off through 5 and 6, where they suddenly start coming into their own and being more developed. That’s what I love doing: threading a long musical story through a movie or a series.
Q: How did you treat Kate Winslet’s character thematically? I imagine that Desplat has created a theme for her in his episodes. Have you kept that, or have you given her something else as she grows increasingly unstable throughout the tail end of the series?
Alex Heffes: Yeah. Alexandre had written an excellent love theme for her, which Stephen liked throughout the episodes. He asked if we could use some of that at crucial moments, so I placed a few of those at very strategic places through 4, 5, and 6. I didn’t want to overuse it because it’s Alexandre’s material, and we wanted to use it when Stephen felt it continued that thread. That was the one theme that I quoted. It was fun to play with that theme, so where it comes back right at the end of episode 6 – no spoilers! – is quite different than how you initially hear it.
It’s been fun to take it and put it through the mangle, as Kate’s character does through this massive transformation, and it felt like it needed to be transformed to reflect her character. She’s so great on the screen; she’s got everything – she’s got comedy, she’s got the range, she’s a brilliant dramatist. That’s her bread and butter. I haven’t seen her do broad comedy so much in this way. I’ve always found that Stephen Frears has a wicked sense of humor. It doesn’t take very much for him to want to dig into that a little bit, so I was trying to find the spikiness in her comedy and trying to musically draw out anything that’s just a little bit sort of touchy and spiky and edgy. We did that with short strings and sometimes just cutting the musical phrases off in the middle, where something starts and then “bump!” it stops, and we move on. She’s very like that. When she’s done with something, she’s done with it! Just embracing that musically was fun. It’s a wonderful thing for composers when you have terrific performances on screen. That’s one of the joys of it because it gives you something to feed off and try to dig into musically immediately. You don’t ever crowd the performance – you want to find its essence and how you can enhance it, support it, and bring strands of it out.
Q: What about themes for other characters you’ve either gotten from previous episodes or were new in these last three episodes?
Alex Heffes: Almost everything, really, thematically in my episodes is new, except for that love theme. The Hugh Grant character appears for the first time in episode 4, which is the first episode I did, and he needed something new. He’s a mysterious character who appears out of nowhere, and we’re not quite sure what he’s about, so I wanted to do something that had absolutely no base notes. All the violins and cellos are playing very high up in harmonics. They’re playing a harmony that doesn’t quite sit – it’s not grounded, and there are no low notes to tell you exactly where the roots of the chords are. That was fun to do, and the players, when they looked at it on the page, were first like, “This is a bit odd!” but once we started hearing it, they’re like, “Ohhhh! This is interesting! I see where you’re going with this!” It was trying to get that feeling of uncertainty and strangeness.
An interesting thing happens in Episode 6, where Elena, after being in a very gritty, dark situation, which I won’t describe, ends up in a very sterile, white room. Again, I wanted to do something similar where all the musical tonality was very high, without any bass notes, to get certain color senses into different parts of the show. I’ve found that to be quite interesting sometimes. I’ve seen great directors of photography do this. I did a film called LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, with Kevin Macdonald, they did this thing where the first half hour of the movie in Africa has lots of rich oranges and yellows and is very warm. Then, gradually, what they do is wash the colors out all the way through the film, so when you get to the end of the movie, it’s almost in black and white. That happens incrementally, so you don’t realize it until you get to the end of the film, which adds to the tension. That gave me the idea, through these episodes, of starting with something that is slightly lush, slightly comedic, and then washing out the musical palettes, so you get to the very end in this sterile room, and everything is really high up and very simple. I want to get a broad sweep of how this crazy story goes from one place to another. I know that sounds quite abstract, but I like to think in long story arcs, which Stephen Freas finds particularly interesting. I think what Stephen looks for from a composer, to speak for myself, is that he wants a composer to bring his vision, musically, to him. So he likes to talk about drama and character, and then he says, after, to you – let’s see what you’ve got. That’s refreshing because he knows what he wants, has his vision, and is incredibly clear in his mind. But he wants you to bring your vision to the table. So, conversation about characters and stories rather than music initially keeps it open. I find that is refreshing when working, rather than saying, “I think we need a piccolo here or we need a double bass there.” That’s how I like to discuss it.
Q: What was most challenging for you in scoring these episodes?
Alex Heffes: I wrote 75 minutes of music in quite a short period over Christmas. We’re used to that as composers, but that was a challenge because it was done pretty quickly. I think the exciting challenge of taking a baton in the middle of a series and making it work so that it’s not a big bump for the viewers, so they don’t feel like a different composer is taking over. Still, they can feel a change organically happening. It’s an exciting task that I’ve enjoyed.
Q: What’s coming next for you that you can discuss?
Alex Heffes: There are a few things. I have a movie called KNOX GOES AWAY that Michael Keaton has directed and starred in [When a contract killer has a rapidly evolving form of dementia, he is offered an opportunity to redeem himself by saving the life of his estranged adult son.”] That’s coming out shortly. Michael is starring opposite Al Pacino, so it’s a fantastic cast. Michael was excellent to work with as a director, and lots of fun, and very interesting to have an actor’s insight – to have an actor/director as the lead actor sitting next to me and telling me what his character is thinking. Musically, it’s something you don’t get very often, which is unusual! And then we have an enjoyable and exciting series for Disney+ coming later this year called SHARDLAKE. I would say it’s a murder-mystery set in the times of Thomas Cromwell, with Sean Bean as Cromwell, and musically very, very different than these other shows – but that’s me, I like to be doing something very different. That’s my character, I guess!
Special thanks to Samuel DeFrank and Ray Costa of Costa Communications for facilitating this interview. Portions of the interview have been edited for length and clarity.
The soundtrack album for THE REGIME is available from various streaming services:
Read my previous interview with Alex Heffes about MAFIA MAMA, posted in my April 2023 Soundtrax column: Listen to Alex Heffes’ “Hope (feat. Grace Davidson)” from THE REGIME, via YouTube:
DAMSEL is an upcoming American dark fantasy film directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and written by Dan Mazeau. The film stars Millie Bobby Brown, Ray Winstone, Nick Robinson, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Angela Bassett, and Robin Wright. DAMSEL sees Brown as a dutiful… well, damsel, who agrees to marry a handsome prince – only to discover it was all a trap: the royal family recruits her as a sacrifice to repay an ancient debt. She’s then thrown into a cave with a fire-breathing dragon, where she has to rely solely on her wits and will to survive. As Elodie fights alone in the bowels of the monster’s lair, she is the audience’s eyes and ears. “You feel that you are experiencing the journey of surviving and facing this creature with Elodie,” Fresnadillo says. “The emotional arc is so intense.” Composer David Flemming (MR. & MRS. SMITH, THE LAST OF US, THE NIGHT LOGAN WOKE UP, BLUE PLANET II) provides the film’s score. Fleming is known for scoring BLUE PLANET 11 (2017), SOUTH OF HEAVEN (2021), THE LAST OF US (2023), MR. & MRS. SMITH (2024; Prime Video), DUNE: PART TWO (2024; additional music), and other films beginning in 2011. In DAMSEL, Fleming aimed for a traditional, timeless feel in contrast to contemporary trends. He crafted two distinct themes for Elodie and introduced The Dragon’s Theme using a carnyx for a unique sound. The score features a Phantom Choir with nine voices chanting in an ancient language. As the film climaxes, an electric guitar and cello bring a decisive departure from the orchestral sound.
Watch the film’s trailer:
Q: You’ve been scoring films since about 2012. What brought you into your role in film music?
David Fleming: I feel like there wasn’t much of a decision, strangely, when I look back. It just seemed to have come up in my life. I was always playing music, playing in bands, and doing things like that. Strangely, a friend of mine ended up making a fake movie trailer and asked me to score it, and all of a sudden, I was like, Oh, I think there’s some outlet for…I love stories, and I love music, and I like the idea that there was something that felt very specific to me. In terms of how I got involved in business, I was going to business school. I ended up answering a flier for a contest that BMI was sponsoring for young film composers, and I ended up winning this contest and going to work for Mike Post for six weeks. Mike is this fantastic guy with this amazing way of talking; you’re ready to jump when he says jump! He convinced me, saying, “You should be out here; you should be trying to figure this out.” So I left New York and came out to LA, and it’s been a string of sleepless nights ever since then!
Q: DAMSEL is a fresh and exciting take on the damsel-in-distress-via-dragon story. How did you get involved in this project?
David Fleming: That started with a conversation with the director, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. They wanted to figure out something with the music; they had tried several things… You know, it was funny. Before I talked to him, I got the elevator pitch of what he was doing and this idea that they were going to turn the damsel in distress story upside down. Just the general gestalt of the past couple of years that he was going to be trying to subvert the genre in every single way, including musically, and I was maybe I was going to be asked to do something very modern – I’ve done a lot of scores that were very synth heavy and sound design heavy. I was led to believe it would be the same thing, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear him say how much he loved the orchestra and wanted a thematic score and to tell Elodie’s story very sincerely. Strangely, because of what I just mentioned, many films lately and many films I’ve worked on, it became a radical approach to do something a bit more traditional and symphonic. So it was a welcome surprise that I would be working with somebody who was not only wasn’t afraid of significant themes and melodies but wanted to embrace the power of music and what it could mean for his film. And it was just a dream project after that, and getting to do a score that 12-year-old me would have died to do!
Listen to the “Kingdom of Aurea” theme, via YouTube:
Q: What was Hans Zimmer’s role as score producer, and how did the two of you work together to develop the score?
David Fleming: Hans was the one who initially recommended me when the producers reached out to figure out what could be done musically. I’ve been lucky enough to work on Hans’s films as an additional music writer, and we’ve co-composed some films together. Then, on this and one other, he’s been a score producer, and effectively, he’s there for whatever I and the producers need. He’s always a backstop to catch me if I need something or something’s not going right. In this case, I think it was a relief to both him and myself.. it was pretty much sympatico with the director and producers right from the get-go. I always love to bounce things off of Hans because he’s a great filmmaker and a storyteller in his own right. In this case, he was always available to me, but Juan Carlos and I got off well right from the start, and thankfully, my ideas seemed to be on point.
Q: How would you describe your overall instrumental and choral palette for this score?
David Fleming: The orchestra is the backbone of the score, and the female voice is its centerpiece. To speak to the choral aspects, specifically, we had three vocal identities in this score; we had this big, grand choir - the typical big fantasy score – but the more critical choir was that we took nine women from that choir and created what I call “The Phantom Princess Choir.” We had them all in a room, singing together, but barricaded – closely miked like I am now, and the idea, sort of the opposite of a typical choir – usually you want all these voices to form a homogenous sound, in this case, it was the opposite. Let’s isolate these individual voices and lean into the differences. The idea with the close miking is to play with the stereo image. There are these characters in the film, spirits of princesses who have been sacrificed before Elodie, and they actually appear on screen, so there was a literal connection point there. I liked the idea that they were there to guide and warn Elodie throughout the score, but I also wanted them to represent a thread of doubt that Elodie herself had. One thing Hans always says is, “Protect your main character. Don’t let your main character seem foolish. You want the audience to be able to root for them wholeheartedly and understand their motivation.” So, just like anybody who has the experience where you go into a situation in which you have something at the pit of your stomach that feels like it’s not right, but “no, it’s gonna be ok.” I wanted Elodie to have both sides, this optimism about what was happening, but also like a thread of doubt going through.
Listen to “Elodie’s Maze” via YouTube:
That leads me to the third choral thing, this solo voice, which was applied by my wife, Monica Sonand, who was also the score supervisor. That’s what you hear at the beginning of Elodie’s central theme; you listen to it at the start of the film and at the end. The idea I had with that – and this is an idea maybe only vital to me – but that perhaps this theme, this feeling inside Elodie that there was this internal journey that she needed to go on; maybe this originated with a lullaby sung by her mother. Her mother is mentioned peripherally as if she’s long passed, but she seems to represent some strength inside Elodie. Maybe this lullaby that her mother had sung became her internal voice. So, when I first presented themes to Juan Carlos, I did a very foolish thing by saying, I have two themes for your main character – and they’re each valid! But I had this feeling that Elodie had these two journeys. The outward journey – she starts as almost a child and has this optimistic, outward journey that she thinks she’s going on. She thinks she’s going to find herself out in the world, and in actuality, there’s this inner voice calling her that’s going, no, you’ve got to go down into these dark caves and confront a beast, and there’s an internal journey. So, finally, at the very end, when I think she entirely becomes herself, the themes start to work together, but until that point, there are these separate parts of her personality.
Q: How would you describe your overall instrumental and chorale palette for the score?
David Fleming: I’d mentioned that the orchestra is sort of the backbone, an incredible orchestra in London, and the choir is the centerpiece; we used several other colors. For the dragon, which has its own thematic motif, I also have an ancient war horn called a carnyx, to highlight more feral, primal, beastly moments. The non-thematic moments of the dragon almost use it like a sonic signature, that there’s something pre-orchestra about this creature. In addition, at the very end, I mentioned when the theme starts together, right at the end when Elodie embraces the dragon’s power and they start to work together, all of a sudden, electric sounds are interjected. So an electric cello appears, and an electric guitar is played by Peter Greggson and Yvette Young, respectively. The idea is that she’s been a passenger to her circumstances until that point. Now, she’s finally this completely formed person, and her themes start to work together. Still, highlighting the damsel in distress being upside down, something modern is injected into the story. There is something about how she sheds the vestiges of being a princess; she’s cut her hair and embraced this new power. I liked the idea that all of a sudden, electricity would enter the score. It’s not like the idea that we’re doing a full, electronic remix, but just the idea that something from the future sort of enters.
Q: How does your main title theme fit within these motifs, and is it separate from the other themes?
David Fleming: Yeah. Elodie actually had two main themes. I would say that “Elodie’s Maze” is the film’s main theme; it’s ultimately the more important journey she has to go on. That came pretty quickly. When I took the first meeting, I was in Australia with my in-laws, stuck without my studio, and all I had was a little Casio electric keyboard. It was nice because I couldn’t go to easy sound design or produce something; I had to get to the bare bones and make some tunes. So “Elodie’s Maze” and what I called the “Horizon tune” are her themes. Then, in addition, there’s a theme for The Kingdom itself, which is like a siren song; it’s shiny, but it’s got a dark undercurrent, and that is directly linked to the Queen’s Theme, which is also built on these rhythmic chants of the Phantom Princesses. The final one, probably the one that changes the most, from the beginning to the end and several times in between, is the Dragon’s theme. The Dragon was the most complicated character because it had to be highly terrifying sometimes, but it has this tragic backstory. So, my goal was, even when it was horrific and cacophonous, that it was still related to this tragedy (which for this Dragon was losing its three eggs). The number three – there’s this three-note motif, and the number three invades all of its rhythms for the Dragon and the melody, and it becomes a subsession. Even when it’s terrifying, it’s rooted in this tragedy.
Listen to the track “Three Eggs” via YouTube:
Q: You mentioned using The London Voices and solo voices; how did you determine or map out when these elements would be called for?
David Fleming: That’s a good question. A lot of that, I guess, is instinctual, and a lot of it is conversations with the director. We didn’t always see eye-to-eye about when things should be used, which is always kind of a fun thing! You go into something with very – at least when you’re afforded the time to suites and come up with melodies beforehand, you have powerful connections and feelings with each one, and the director is the first person who sometimes maybe has completely different feelings, and says, “Oh, maybe this theme can be used for this other character.” Nothing so drastic as that happened on this, but certainly, when we would use specific themes sometimes, I would see it one way, and he would explain to me why he saw it in a completely different way, and both are valid. It’s always exciting to see your work from somebody else’s perspective. I think we were able to find some reasonable compromises.
Q: There’s a theme I liked early on; I guess you’d call it the “dressing theme” as Elodie prepares herself for the wedding. What can you tell me about that piece?
David Fleming: I think of that as the theme for the Kingdom of Aurea. It’s the same music you hear when the carriage comes into the city for the first time. The dress is one of the first scenes I did. What I like about that is that it has this feeling almost of a current; she’s being swept into this thing, which is beautiful but has the ominous undercurrent that you’re getting swept away whether you want to or not. You want to at this point; you’re too far along. That’s when you first start to hear the voices – which we tried, first, with the big choir doing a sort of repeated thing, and it worked so much better with the nine women, and we leaned into the raspiness of it. I love the scene in general, the dressing scene, because of the way it’s filmed. Everything they’re filming is technically lovely, but there is a feeling of dread throughout the whole thing. It was fun to play with both sides of that musically.
Listen to the track “Run” via YouTube:
Q: Another intriguing cue I felt was “Run!” with its growing tension. Here’s where you hear something like, “Oh, oh! Something’s wrong here!”
David Fleming: That’s the first time Elodie encounters the Dragon. It starts with hearing that three-note motif on a Marxophone [a fretless zither played via a system of metal hammers; it’s essentially like a hammered dulcimer. You hear the three notes, the first hint of what will come. And then, of course, when the Dragon finally rears back, it goes full blast. Interestingly, the first draft I did was pretty electronic and sound design-laden because that’s typically been how I’ve done that kind of scene in the past, and this was a tall order for me; how do we do this with the orchestra? It’s easy to do these dramatic moments with an orchestra; it’s just great, let’s do it! It’s something that I’ve tended so often to rely on sound design and production to come up with something that would be terrifying and action-packed. But can we do that with the brass section? So that became the challenge there, which is to have something just as impactful that maybe we could do on THE LAST OF US or something, but have the orchestra stay the centerpiece, even when it’s the Dragon. Yes, we have a couple of tricks in there, but mainly, it’s our players in London, so that became a fun challenge!
Q: Without spoilers, what can you tell me about the pivot at the end of the story?
David Fleming: Yeah. My hope was at that point in the story that you’ve got enough of the back story to start empathizing a bit with the Dragon and that you see Elodie and the Dragon as linked in; they’re both victims of this kingdom and that the queen is ultimately actually the main antagonist. Whether this is getting too conceptual or not, I always saw the story as an allegory of growing up, that the Dragon is essentially part of Elodie, and that she has to confront, embrace, and take that power. So, very early on, as I presented all these themes, I told Juan Carlos that “they’re all going to work together at the end!” without knowing if that was possible with that last scene, which on the soundtrack is called “End of Your Story,” is trying to get all their themes together, both sides of Elodie and the Dragon as well, because it is the moment where I think she entirely comes into her power. She’s the protagonist throughout the story, but she’s not the hero until that moment, so her theme doesn’t fully coalesce until then.
Listen to the track “Facing the Dragon” via YouTube:
Q: Who created the poignant cover of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” for the closing song, sung by Lykke Li, which is also on the soundtrack? That was a lovely way to end the story, I thought.
David Fleming: Yeah, I thought it was nice, too. I don’t know exactly whose idea it was, but I think it was Rudy Chung, one of the Netflix music execs, who got that together. I would have loved to have taken credit for that, but I had nothing to do with it. I do think it was fantastic, and it was an excellent way to end the film. It was essential to Juan Carlos that they didn’t just shoehorn any song but that it felt like it somehow told our story and wasn’t too far from our score. To bridge that gap, he even put a few pieces of Elodie’s theme vocal between the last cue I wrote and the Lykke Li song. I thought it was nice that they could all work together on that in the end.
Q: What’s coming up next that you’d be able to talk about?
David Fleming: I don’t know if I can talk about it, but I’ve talked about it already, so I’ll keep going! I just recorded a score this past weekend for Barry Levinson’s ALTO NIGHTS, a true story of the nationwide mafia with Robert DeNiro in dual roles, and that was fun [Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, a pair of Italian Americans who run two separate crime families in the mid-20th century. Genovese attempted to assassinate Costello in 1957, although Costello retired from the mob]; I also just finished a documentary about Jim Hensen for Ron Howard, which is fantastic. I got to do an authentically colorful and a quirky score for that. It’s been fun to have all these things back-to-back and go on many musical adventures.
The soundtrack album for DAMSEL is available on these streaming services.
Special thanks to Kyrie Hood of White Bear PR for facilitating this interview. Portions of the interview have been edited for length and clarity.
BLESSED/Alan Williams/Quinate Publ (BMI) also Bandcamp – digital
Directed by Bryce Clark, starring Sydelle Noel, Jacque Gray, Tracy Pfau, and Shelby Cobb, and scored by Alan Williams, BLESSED explores a young woman who, grieving the loss of her mother, inherits a mansion in Salt Lake City and visits during the 2020 Covid lockdown. Guided by an older female caretaker, dark aspects of the young woman’s previously unknown family are revealed through phenomena that terrify and force her to confront her views of reality and things unseen. “Dark and haunting, the music of BLESSED combines classic horror orchestral techniques with contemporary electronics as well as delicate piano and string melodies,” described Williams. “The score is woven together by a haunting theme and provides the emotional support for this supernatural thriller.” Alan Williams’ score here is a very fragrant mix of melodies that are both compelling and mysterious, particularly in his use of melodic low-string phrasings mixed in with percussive electronic measures and frightful, very suitable sonic treatments, which contrast in their growing ferocity with the more pleasant tonalities. It’s thus a compelling amalgamation of morose gestures, pretty piano, and string spookiness that opens into eerie haunting gatherings, which is as much driving in tonality as it is growing into something that channels a bit of the exquisite and the quietly discomfiting. It is a compelling musical treatment; dappled, mysterious, intense, fragrant, and evocative. It’s tonally pure and graceful, except when more stringent motives are called for. Still, it’s such a jewel in its melodic beauty, and even in Williams’ more aggressive sonic substances, it retains an absorbing mix of constantly shifting and very compelling discordances. A slight female vocalise grows from eerie measures, adding a few brief moments of sonority in the musical variety.
The pure, gentle measures of the 8-minute “Spirits or Whatever” that are then interrupted by some effectively harsh violin strokes; these then open into the very haunting mix of low bass chords and spiny, somewhat corrupted measures of odd bowing, low bass rhythms, a little mix of pretty violin strokes which hold for a few moments and then allow the more dreadful sounds of “Tent Poltergeist” to occupying a full 8:50 minutes, pounding as if heavy feet approach, opening into the rhythmic electronic pattern opens up again, softly, but distinctly amid the riotous jumble of sounds. Mixed with dangerous sinewy strings and rustling sonic, flighty violin strides, strong, heaving patterns in the low strings, the cue culminates in a row of strings and piano notes, and finally, down low string measures ends the cue. These two tracks are the score’s elements of the most suspenseful grandeur. Still, the album is a likable mix of discomforting ghosts and unlikely inhabitants seeking to oust the unwanted new guests. Despite its intriguing mix of musical substances, Williams maintains an impressive rhythm tonality. The splendid soundtrack album is available from Apple Music, Spotify, and the composer’s Bandcamp page (see below).
Listen to the cue “Mirror Room from BLESSED.
Listen to the opening credits theme:
MONKEY MAN/Jed Kurzel/Back Lot Music – digital
Oscar® nominee Dev Patel (LION, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) achieves a tour-de-force feature directing debut with an action thriller about one man’s quest for vengeance against the corrupt leaders who murdered his mother and continue to victimize the poor and powerless systemically. Aided by the soundtrack by Jed Kurzel, the film is inspired by the legend of Hanuman, an icon embodying strength and courage. MONKEY MAN stars Patel as Kid, an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. Kurzel’s score is an absorbing and compelling mix of original music that accentuates battle scenes and a variety of eerie atmospheric elements. The score begins with the title cue, which sets up a growing tonality around the people in the fighting arena, shouting for their favorite fighters; the music grows, eventually overcoming the roar of the crowds, until it ceases into a quiet resolve. The MONKEY MAN soundtrack is extensive and varied, offering an attractive array of sonic intrigue as sounds or vocal elements from other artists and members of the cast serve to identify ethnic musical elements, mixtures of dialogue along with tribal instruments and indigenous ragas and other cultural songs and music that give the score an integrated texture and a fascinating sonic quintessence of sounds. Kurzell’s themes and cues often mount fast-paced tracks as they accompany epic battle scenes and eerie tunes that set the tone of this dark thriller. The score consists of 32 tracks, 27 of which are attributed to Kurzell (assisted in quite a few by vocalists, singers, or musicians), along with five cues ascribed to Sneha Khanwalkar, a noted music director and Indian composer of film scores, aided by other singers or musicians, and a final cue “Training” (feat. Dev Patel) accredited to Indian tabla player and composer Zakir Hussain. This combination of artists treating and being treated by Kurzel’s original musical cues supports the film with an unusual sonic technique. It creates an enthralling musical environment with a captivating amalgam of textures and sounds. I found the score entirely fascinating and mesmerizing.
The soundtrack album is available from Back Lot Music.
Listen to the cue “Dreams” from MONKEY MAN:
NIGHTBREED/Danny Elfman/Intrada - CD
Intrada has crafted an expanded edition of Danny Elfman’s 1990 score to Clive Barker’s NIGHTBREED, which provided Elfman an opportunity to indulge in his first outright, gore-filled horror feature. “Although NIGHTBREED is bigger than HELLRAISER,” Clive Barker told Fangoria magazine, it has a kind of intimacy which I think is a hallmark of what I do on the page and will remain the hallmark of what I do on celluloid. It’s a character piece, a real actor’s film.” The NIGHTBREED score contained complicated interworkings between orchestra, electronics, and children’s choir, creating an eerie and ominous underscore for Barker’s bizarre story of a hidden race of mutations. Coming between June 1898’s Batman and June 1990’s Dick Tracy, NIGHTBREED was a different type of horror story, if no less a company of distorted and bizarre monsters, among which a troubled young man is drawn into a mythical place called Midian, where a variety of friendly monsters are hiding from humanity.
Meanwhile, a sadistic serial killer is looking for a patsy. Elfman’s score contains several different styles and different music, and Elfman’s music provides much of the humanity within the strange creatures who call Midian their abode. Not only did NIGHTBREED mark Elfman’s fever dream first film score, but it was also his first significant use of world music in a film score, incorporating Balinese gamelan, South American pan flute, and heated drumming, all of which featured strongly within what is otherwise a large orchestral work. That unusual sonic semblance allowed him to examine the film’s strange characters uniquely, diving into their personalities and warning them of a dangerous killer. Initially released by MCA in a 22-track 1990 CD, Intrada has expanded the score into a 2-CD set, with the complete 75-minute score featured on disc 1, with the 46-minute original MCA program and several alternate tracks. Daniel Schweiger’s 23 pages of liner notes are impressively detailed and offer a well-spring of the film’s origins, mild presentation, and subsequent praise.
Watch the film’s original trailer:
THE PRIMEVALS/Richard Band/Silva Screen – Digital + CD
Fifty years ago, filmmaker David Allen registered the story for the film that would become THE PRIMEVALS. He aimed to elevate the art of stop-motion animation into more serious, thoughtful storytelling. In the mid-1960s, the film started as an homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs, reminiscent of the fantasy films by Ray Harryhausen that impressed David as a child. Sadly, Allen died in 1999, and the film was completed by his visual effects colleague Chris Endicott. Silva Screen Records Presents a Journey Back in Time with THE PRIMEVALS, which belongs to a different time, a different place, an imagined world of monsters, myth, and magic that has only ever existed within the confines of classic fantasy cinema. Even if its chief architect, David Allen, had lived and the film had been released in the 1990s, it would have still been out of sync with the zeitgeist. Seen today, it’s a truly singular experience, floating in a bubble outside and above anything else being made. With THE PRIMEVALS, Richard Band provided a splendid fantasy/adventure story with a score perhaps in the classical manner “of a Steiner, Herrmann or Rozsa, or perhaps even a Goldsmith, Williams, Jarre or Shore,” Band told me in a recent interview. “It was movies from my childhood like LOST HORIZON and JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS as well as epics like DR. ZHIVAGO and BEN-HUR that had the import I was searching for. This film was a true joy to score and well worth the roughly 20-odd years I waited to do it.” Band’s score is splendidly aromatic in its melodic structure and eerie in views of the giant Yeti, which seems to threaten the explorers until a band of alien creatures proves to be a more dangerous threat. A moving theme for “Matt and Dr. Collier” resonates poetically early in the film. (review continues below)
Listen to the main theme and main title “The Primevals - The Gale and Mountain Shack/Battling the Yeti/Main Title” (Official Audio) courtesy of Silva Screen & YouTube:
Finances were scarce for this project, but Band was able to pull off some sessions in Bratislava, Slovakia, where he put together a large string section placed on a big stage. “I figured to get that sonic quality and that big feel, you couldn’t do it with ten strings in a small studio and overdub it ten times,” Band said. “That’s not the way it would work. I had to have that air of a big stage. So, Bratislava worked out. I cut every corner possible to make it happen.” With the aid of a couple of extra orchestrators in Greece and the Band’s technical ability to craft effective sonics from digital electronics, that sound gives the music a powerful stance throughout the score. The result in THE PRIMEVALS is a powerfully resonant score mixing a large string orchestra with the horns, winds, and percussion of a carefully coordinated digital ensemble that builds the music beautifully into a tremendously melodic and convincing orchestral-sounding ensemble.
“I was an orchestral composer for the first fifteen years, as you know, and I didn’t do any electronics. It just wasn’t what I did. Electronics became a necessity for survival years ago,” Band remarked. “Right here I’m sitting with six computers… (waves around his studio)!”
Please read my full interview with Richard Band about scoring THE PRIMEVALS in the previous Soundtrax column.
The soundtrack album is now available from Silva Screen USA, and Silva Screen UK.
Watch the film’s trailer:
TOP GUN – Harold Faltermeyer – La-La Land Records - CD
La-La Land Records, Paramount Pictures, and Columbia Records present the world premiere official release of renowned composer Harold Faltermeyer’s (FLETCH, BEVERLY HILLS COP, THE RUNNING MAN) original motion picture score to the iconic 1986 aerial blockbuster action/drama TOP GUN, starring Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis, and directed by Tony Scott. Composer Faltermeyer activated TOP GUN’s propulsive and imaginative musical juggernaut with a heavy rock-and-roll sonic environment that fit the story of United States Navy’s elite fighter weapons school students learning to compete to become best in the class. Still, few score cues made it into the 1986 “soundtrack” album, which focuses on pop and rock tunes and songs. Aside from two previously released tracks, this remastered and expanded deluxe 2-CD presentation marks the first time Faltermeyer’s TOP GUN score has been made officially available in any format. Disc One highlights the brilliant film score, along with bonus demo cues. At the same time, Disc Two presents songs from the film, the hit songs created by Faltermeyer, Giorgio Moroder, Kenny Loggins, and many others, giving listeners far more adequate and authoritative examples of TOP GUN’s complete musical treasure. Six bonus tracks, from demos, unused, revised, and extended mixes are also included in the album’s total time of 2:27:43. The result – especially with such tracks as the haunting cues for Goose’s death, the love scenes between Maverick and Kelly McGillis’ Charlie, and the 11-minute “Mav Reflects in Goose’s Room / Board of Inquiry / Charlie and Mav in Airport Bar” – reminds us there’s a lot more score to absorb and reflect upon here than just the main themes, and much in the way of alternate mixes and treatments. The film’s anthem “remained an anchor throughout,” describes Tim Greiving in his thoroughly detailed liner notes, “exploding in triumph whenever Maverick and his comrades make good. The score is synth-based, with the exception of the electric guitar… In the aftermath of Goose’s death, as Viper (Tom Skerritt) coaxes Maverick back toward the skies, a synthy woodwind voice played a more interior, contemplative statement of the anthem melody. There’s also a long vamp intro to the anthem that opens the film and comes back in the lead-up to the climactic air battle – a cool groove of aspirational, upward-modulating chords and the sound of a tolling bell.”
Disc 1 presents the tracks presented for the first time, many of which are new treatments. Produced for La-La Land Records by Dan Goldwasser, mastered by Doug Schwartz, and approved by the composer, this limited edition of 5000 units includes writer Tim Greiving’s notes, new interview quotes from Faltermeyer, and high-flyin’ art design by Goldwasser. La-La Land’s team affords TOP GUN’s musicality a masterful reboot, allowing Faltermeyer’s efforts to be given a genuinely high-octane presentation.
STING/Anna Drubich/MovieScore Media - digital
Sweden’s MovieScore Media offers, among several captivating new scores this month, a fascinating original score from Anna Drubich (BARBARIAN, SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK, WEREWOLVES WITHIN, ANNA KARANINA) from the 2024 horror feature film directed by Kiah Roache-Turner. THE STORY: After raising an unnervingly talented spider in secret, 12-year-old Charlotte must face the facts about her pet and fight for her family’s survival when the once-charming creature rapidly transforms into a giant, flesh-eating monster. This unusual tale suggestive of a brooding and character swapping “Charlottes’s Web” offers a variety of stinging and plucking instrumentation bound around dark, lowing synthetics, calming plucks distributed from metal and wooden mallets, plenty of both eerie and delicate sonic treatments among delicate woodwind treatments. This unique musical treatment offers an enjoyable and fascinating examination of the storyline as Charlotte befriends her small, web-born companion. From “Creepy Dust” to the jarringly disturbing “There Is a Noise,” the inviting “Spider Friendship,” the percussive, shrilling, and descending stinger of “Sting Attacks” and “Take Care, Grandma,” the furtive spookery of “Who’s Next?,” the clanging and wavering “Family Fight,” and the gently concluding sonority of “Love You, Dad!” STING is an enjoyable fright show with an attractive sonic semblance, which, while offering some spooky turns, is a fun and engaging mild horror show. Drubich’s stylistic measures and creeping terrors are enjoyable. Said the composer: “STING is not a straightforward horror, but a very playful dark fairytale. Director Kiah Roache-Turner decided that the movie needs a proper theme for the friendship between Charlotte and the spider; I think the soundtrack is a nice mix of childish fun and creepy horror elements. For STING, I created some interesting “spider-like” sounds and loops from an old typewriter. Besides all the weird synth instruments, I decided to stick with three live instruments: flute, harp, and bass marimba. To record those, I had to travel to Sydney – which was my first time visiting Australia. What a great city! Thank you, STING, for this great opportunity.” – Anna Drubich
Listen to “Charlottes Theme” from STING:
Jon Ekstrand’s original score to Gustav Möller’s psychological thriller SONS balances between the physical outer world of the film – set in prison – and the inner psyche of the main characters. The story follows idealistic prison officer Eva, who is faced with the dilemma of her life when a young man from her past gets transferred to the prison where she works. “When I began testing the music to picture,” Ekstrand said, “we started to understand that we needed something in addition to this very physical ‘outer world’ music – something that lifts the human dynamics and illustrates the inner struggle of the main characters; a score that is at times more pensive, nuanced and longing. We therefore had to rely on a small string ensemble, bringing us closer to the inner dynamics of the main characters and to the grey area of feelings where it is really hard to say what is right and wrong. In the end, we managed to walk the line in a nice way, allowing the thematic elements of the film to be brought forward in a subtle manner, as to color them without wanting to guide the audience too much.”
BOY KILLS WORLD, directed by Moritz Mohr and featuring a score by Ludvig Forssell (BELLE [Ryu to Sobakasu no Hime], DEATH STRANDING [video game]). The film is a 2023 American action thriller film, the feature-length version of the short film of the same name by Moritz Mohr, ands promises a very wild ride! The film renders a dystopian fever dream action film that follows Boy, a deaf person with a vibrant imagination. When his family is murdered, a mysterious shaman trains him to repress his childish imagination and become an instrument of death. Written by Tyler Burton Smith, Arend Remmers and starring Bill Skarsgård, Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery, Famke Janssen, Sharlto Copley, Brett Gelman, Isaiah Mustafa, Andrew Koji. Spotify offers an album of rock songs from and inspired by the movie, but as of yet we’re not seeing an album of Forssell’s score.
Fabrizio Mancinelli , a composer and conductor based in Los Angeles, has scored and produced compelling music for the short film, GO FOR GRANDMA, directed by Sabrina Doyle. Inspired by the iconic ‘80s fantasy films we all grew up on, GO FOR GRANDMA is a journey into the mind of a young boy who escapes a neglectful home life through his grandmother’s love and the power of his imagination. “For GO FOR GRANDMA, we needed a score as big as a child’s imagination,” said director Doyle. “A score that conjures up images of fantastical creatures and faraway lands. Fabrizio came up with a sweeping, romantic orchestral score that feels classic in many ways, but also has striking notes of dissonance and anxious energy for the moments when our boy character, Lucian, is processing trauma.” Said composer Mancinelli: “GO FOR GRANDMA was an unparalleled chance to delve into my passion for 1980s orchestral fantasy music, which has always resonated deeply with me. Taking cues primarily from the script, I crafted a musical journey that perfectly mirrored the film’s fantastical elements – unicorns, dragons, ladybugs, and a dream sequence amidst the ocean.” Mancinelli has left his mark on numerous projects, including compositions for Disney’s GROWING UP WITH NINE OLD MEN, Universal’s THE SNOW QUEEN 4: MIRRORLANDS, and the gripping thriller COYOTE LAKE, released on HBO Max in the US and 101 Films in the UK. MovieScore Media has released Mancinelli’s GO FOR GRANDMA soundtrack in its ShortCuts series. See MSM here.
WaterTower Music has released the TRUE DETECTIVE: NIGHT COUNTRY (Soundtrack from the HBO® Original Series) with music by Vince Pope, released last February. Of his visualization for the film’s soundtrack, Vincent said, “My vision is to present a musical journey that takes us through the dark endless night to that first day of new Alaskan light. The score is at times dark and forbidding yet at other times spiritual and angelic. I worked with the phenomenal Tanya Tadaq, bringing her unique throat singing and vocals to work with the soundtrack and compliment the musical themes. Also featuring in the score is the Fujara, which at over 2 meters long produces a deep, meditative sound. Premise: When the long winter night falls in Ennis, Alaska, the eight men who operate the Tsalal Arctic Research Station vanish without a trace. To solve the case, Detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) will have to confront the darkness they carry in themselves and dig into the haunted truths that lie buried under the eternal ice.
Robin Schlochtermeier has composed the original score for CALL ME KATE, the feature docu-drama directed by Lorna Tucker telling the story of Katherine Hepburn. The documentary explores Hepburn’s character traits that lent her career the breathtaking longevity it had – grit, humor, confidence but also an underlying anxiety about being liked and appreciated. The score is an attempt to evoke these facets of her personality, at times breathless and excited, at times languid and romantic. “I was fortunate for this to be my second film working with director Lorna Tucker (VIVIENNE WESTWOOD, AMA),” said the composer. “It was a wonderful chance to dig into the treasure trove of past Hollywood glories and mine it for a sweet, melodic orchestral palette to suit the portrayal of Katharine Hepburn.” Robin Schlochtermeier is an award-winning composer for film, television, and commercials. His debut solo album, Spectral, is out now on Denovali Records. He won the award for Best Music for his original score for the psychological thriller RETREAT at the British Independent Film Festival.
The soundtrack is available via Silva Screen Records.
Intrada has announced the premiere release of James Horner's first film score, the 1979 gangster drama THE LADY IN RED. The producers and directors had a very specific vision for what the music should sound like: they wanted it to reflect the 1930s setting with a score that adapted songs from the period. This is most prominent in Horner's adaptation of 42nd Street, composed by Harry Warren. James Horner was quite adept at scoring for jazz and big band ensembles throughout his prolific career. His adaptations and original jazz numbers are crisp and skillfully written. The dramatic music is scored for a modest orchestra of trumpets, trombones, acoustic guitars, woodwinds and percussion. There are no ensemble strings and there are no French horns or tuba. It makes Horner's first film score one of his more unique. The film follows the life of young Polly Franklin (Pamela Sue Martin) from her childhood with an abusive father, through prostitution, to her run-in with John Dillinger (Robert Conrad), a notorious American gangster of the Great Depression.The Lady In Red’s originality lies in its feminist interpretation of the gangster film. See Intrada Records for more details. https://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.12980/.f
Quartet Records, in collaboration with MGM, presents a remastered, slightly expanded CD reissue of SCORPIO (1973), one of the most celebrated collaborations between composer Jerry Fielding and director Michael Winner. This CIA thriller starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Paul Scofield, gave Fielding, a key composer in American ‘70s cinema, the opportunity to create a haunting Parisian melody, which he surrounds with his trademark complex motifs, aggressive rhythms, and electrifying action cues, all done in his unique voice and avant-garde style. Fielding prepared an LP for United Artists Records in 1973, but it was ultimately aborted; it was finally released in 1978 within the Elmer Bernstein Film Music Collection in a limited print run. It subsequently made its CD debut on one of the promotional volumes devoted to Jerry Fielding on the Bay Cities label. Intrada released the first official CD edition in 2008 that quickly sold out; for this edition, Chris Malone has rebuilt all the elements and remastered the music in pristine sound. The package includes in-depth liner notes by film music writer Jeff Bond.
THE FIRST OMEN is a 2024 American supernatural horror film directed by Arkasha Stevenson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Tim Smith and Keith Thomas from a story by Ben Jacoby. It is a prequel to THE OMEN (1976), being the sixth film in THE OMEN franchise. The film stars Nell Tiger Free, Tawfeek Barhom, Sônia Braga, Ralph Ineson, and Bill Nighy. A young American woman is sent to Rome to begin a life of service to the church, but encounters a darkness that causes her to question her faith and uncovers a terrifying conspiracy that hopes to bring about the birth of evil incarnate. Mark Korven known for NIGHT SWIM (2024), THE BLACK PHONE (2021), RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY (2021), THE LIGHTHOUSE (2019), THE WITCH (2015), has scored the film. First reviews from Rotten Tomatoes reveal 85% of 61 critics’ reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website’s consensus reads: “Frequently frightening even as it plays within the confines of a nearly 50-year-old film series, this prequel is THE FIRST OMEN of a bright future for the franchise in quite some time.” THE FIRST OMEN was released in the United States by 20th Century Studios on April 5, 2024.
Watch the film’s trailer:
Lakeshore Records has released FALLOUT – Amazon Original Series Soundtrack digitally April 8, with an original score by two-time Emmy award-winning and three-time Grammy-nominated composer Ramin Djawadi (GAME OF THRONES, WESTWORLD). Echoing soundscapes and ominous orchestral flourishes create a dark, industrial backdrop to the post-apocalyptic series. Based on one of the greatest video game series of all time, FALLOUT is the story of haves and have-nots in a world in which there’s almost nothing left to have. Two-hundred years after the apocalypse, the gentle denizens of luxury fallout shelters are forced to return to the irradiated hellscape their ancestors left behind—and are shocked to discover an incredibly complex, gleefully weird, and highly violent universe waiting for them. Notes Djawadi: “As a result of Jonah Nolan’s vision for the musical landscape for ‘Fallout,’ I have created a score that broke down in the twentieth century only to be re-assembled in the 2200s. At times held together with duct-tape and rusty screws, it’s made of hardware scraps, electronics, and orchestra. My hope is that upon arriving in the world of Fallout, you will be greeted by a score that helps you feel welcome, if a bit uneasy, in a place that is full of character, heart, and humor….and radiation.” Purchase / Stream.
Emmy Award-winning co-composers Robert Lydecker and Kevin Lax recently scored DreamWorks Animation’s ORION AND THE DARK, directed by Sean Charmatz. The film follows Orion, whose fears more than anything are the dark. When the embodiment of his worst fear pays a visit, Dark whisks Orion away on a roller-coaster ride around the world to prove there is nothing to be afraid of at night.
Watch the trailer HERE
Sony Music Masterworks will be releasing the soundtrack to IN THE LAND OF SAINTS AND SINNERS (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) on April 26 on digital platforms. Composers Diego Baldenweg with Nora Baldenweg and Lionel Baldenweg perfectly blend soaring, beautiful piano and string melodies with traditional inspiration in this track. The film is currently showing in US theaters, with the score nominated twice at the Movie Music UK Awards for “Score of the Year” and “Best Original Score in a Thriller/Horror Film.” The Baldenwegs speak on the track, “‘Over the Ocean’ is about saying goodbye. It comprises beauty and sadness and is a bit like a lullaby. The harmonies are deeply rooted in the Celtic scales while the interpretation is played very classically.” About the film: Ireland, 1970s. Eager to leave his dark past behind, Finbar Murphy (Liam Neeson) leads a quiet life in the remote coastal town of Glencolmcille, far from the political violence that grips the rest of the country. But when a menacing crew of terrorists arrive, led by a ruthless woman named Doirean (Kerry Condon), Finbar is drawn into an increasingly vicious game of cat and mouse.
LAKESHORE RECORDS has released NO WAY UP with music by Andy Gray. The film is a high-concept combination of disaster movie and survival thriller, as characters from very different backgrounds are thrown together when the plane they’re travelling on crashes into the Pacific Ocean. The stricken airliner comes to rest perilously close to the edge of a deep ravine with the surviving passengers and crew trapped in an air pocket. With their air supply rapidly running out, a nightmare fight for survival ensues as dangers from all sides hone-in on them. The film stars Colm Meaney, Will Attenborough, Jeremias Amoore, and others. Watch NO WAY UP - The Making of the Score here:
Brian Tyler has rejoined his directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, his directors on (SCREAM VI, SCREAM 2022, READY OR NOT), to score ABIGAIL, their latest horror movie. Premise: After a group of criminals kidnap the ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, they retreat to an isolated mansion, unaware that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl. Based on and a reimagining of the 1936 Universal Classic Monsters film DRACULA’S DAUGHTER, the film stars Alisha Weir as the eponymous daughter of Count Dracula, alongside Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton. Photo via Bloody Disgusting – read their review.
MovieScore Media and Quartet Records present the premiere CD release of Robert Folk’s exciting, classic symphonic adventure score and T.J. Kuenster original songs for Don Bluth’s animated classic ROCK-A-DOODLE (1991). The film is about Chanticleer, the rooster in charge of announcing the sunrise on a farm; in order to defeat the wicked Grand Duke of Owls, a young boy, transformed into a cat, teams up with a group of barnyard animals to find the rooster who can raise the sun. Robert Folk’s orchestral tour de force includes a memorable main theme, but also encompasses a fresh, dynamic score of wondrous melodic tunes, motifs, adventure, tension, mystery, and action music, all colorfully performed by the Irish Film Orchestra under the baton of the composer. T.J. Kuenster provides a handful of original songs mainly performed by the cast of the film. Although the songs were released on CD in 1992, Folk’s score has remained unreleased until today. Liner notes by Daniel Schweiger. Also coming up from MSM: GOOD PEOPLE Eloi Ragot March 29 and THE HOPEFUL with Blake Robinson and Jonas Myrin, April 15, 2024, Lord of Misrule Brett Detar Apr 19.
– see MSM here.
THE TIGER’S APPRENTICE is a 2024 American animated fantasy film based on the 2003 novel The Tiger’s Apprentice by Laurence Yep, about Tom Lee, a Chinese American boy who, after the death of his grandmother, has to be apprenticed to the talking tiger Mr. Hu and learn ancient magic to become the new guardian of an ancient phoenix. Steve Jablonsky composed the score, capturing the spirit of the thrilling animated adventure with a soaring full orchestra, pulsing synths, vocalizations, and a variety of Chinese instruments. Notes Jablonsky: “My main goal with this film was to find the right balance between the deep cultural history represented by the characters and the modern approach the film takes to telling their story. I hope the resulting mix of orchestra, synthesizers, percussion, Chinese instruments, and vocals matches what the film is trying to say.” He adds, “I played most of the synth parts on this score, but I was fortunate to record LA’s finest musicians; full orchestra, percussion, vocals, plus a variety of Chinese instruments including Dizi and Erhu. This tremendously talented group really brought the score to life.” The film stars the voices of Brandon Soo Hoo, Henry Golding, Lucy Liu, Sandra Oh, and Michelle Yeoh.
Dominik Scherrer has scored BBC’s thriller, BOAT STORY. The Emmy-nominated composer is known for his fresh and innovative approach to film scoring. Operating from his studio in Spitalfields, London, Dominik is a British-Swiss composer with a remarkable career in both television and film. BOAT STORY follows two hard-up strangers who stumble across a haul of cocaine on a shipwrecked boat. After agreeing to sell it and split the cash, they become entangled with police, masked hitmen and a sharp-suited gangster known as ‘The Tailor.’
Listen to/purchase the soundtrack here and
check out the Boat Story trailer:
La-La Land Records and Universal Studios present the nineteenth title within the acclaimed Universal Pictures Film Music Classics Collection – DEATH OF A GUNFIGHTER, with music by the distinguished jazz player and arranger Oliver Nelson (IRONSIDE, THE NAME OF THE GAME, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN). Available for the first time in any format, Nelson’s brilliant original motion picture score for 1969’s big-screen western, paired on this release with his jungle-adventure score, 1970’s SKULLDUGGERY, marks the world-premiere release of this music in this limited-edition CD presentation. From his lean, elegiac, and blues-tinged work on DEATH OF A GUNFIGHTER to his rousing and rhythmically charged score for SKULLDUGGERY, this release vividly demonstrates Nelson’s incredible talents and versatility. Also featured here is the song from DEATH OF A GUNFIGHTER, “Sweet Apple Wine,” performed by one of the film’s stars, Lena Horne. Also offered is acclaimed composer Sylvester Levay’s (COBRA, HOT SHOTS!, STONE COLD) original motion picture score for the 1990 big-screen ensemble actioner NAVY SEALS, starring Charlie Sheen, Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton, and directed by Lewis Teague. Produced, mixed, edited and mastered by Mike Matessino from stereo vault elements, this special limited-edition of 1500 units features exclusive liner notes written by author Jeff Bond and sharp art direction by Dan Goldwasser.
Lakeshore Records has released REINA ROJA (RED QUEEN), the Prime Video Original Series Soundtrack featuring an original score by Emmy winning composer Victor Reyes (THE NIGHT MANAGER). The thriller series debuted on Prime Video on February 29, about a gifted woman’s intellect leads her to become the “Reina Roja” of a secret and experimental police project, until what seemed like a gift turned into a curse, and she ended up losing everything. REINA ROJA is a disturbing and different thriller in which the city of Madrid is also a protagonist, combining the urgency and action of the investigation with the juicy and playful chemistry of its two protagonists. Reyes’ eerie score reflects the dismal scenarios that confront the brilliant and troubled protagonist of the thriller based on the first book in author Juan Gómez-Jurado’s popular trilogy. Notes Reyes: “Juan’s voice sounded on my phone like a dare: “I want you to compose the music for REINA ROJA. It was his idea to conceive a ‘motif ‘of five notes, sharp and mysterious,’ much like writing a set of themes that would define both the emotional characteristics of Antonia and Jon to help the viewer understand the plot without revealing crucial information. This was the key to differentiating a mysterious – yet tonal – musical filter referring to what happens from the ground up to accompany the actions of our radiant couple, from another palette full of gloomy atonality to illustrate what happens from the ground down, in those complicated hallways and rooms of that dark, cold, and eerie cellar...” Purchase / Stream.
Composer Jay Wadley brings Apple TV’s latest miniseries to life in the upcoming release of FRANKLIN. Starring and executive produced by Academy and Emmy Award winner Michael Douglas, the show explores the thrilling story of the greatest gamble of Benjamin Franklin’s career. With a classical background rooted in his studies at Yale, Wadley seamlessly blends traditional orchestral techniques with modern composition, capturing the essence of Benjamin Franklin’s journey. His experience in large orchestral writing shines through, as he intricately entwines thematic motifs and Americana influences into the score, paying homage to Franklin’s identity. Franklin premiered on April 12th, only on Apple TV – watch the trailer:
Edwin Wendler’s soundtrack to ROCK INN was released March 30th. “Working with director Fon Davis was an immense joy because he brings a childlike sense of wonder – and sometimes a healthy dose of mischief – to his projects,” said Wendler in a Facebook post. “On this one, we decided to take a retro synth approach which seemed to work with the subject matter and the visuals. It’s a horror comedy creature short that’s a lot of fun, and I am so thankful to have been part of the crew!” The film, an 11-minute short, stars James Hong, Cynthia Zitter, and Malcolm Madera. The soundtrack is available here.
From Dreamworks Animation and created by Eli Roth and James Frey, the animation comedy adventure FRIGHT KREWE, in it’s second season and streaming on Hulu and Peacock, has released a soundtrack album featuring composer Zach Robinson’s (COBRA KAI series, TWISTED METAL, FLORIDA MAN) music from the series. The animated show is about a group of misfit kids who discover an ancient prophecy and confront a Voodoo Queen who is put in charge of saving New Orleans from the biggest demonic threat it’s faced in almost two centuries. The soundtrack is available from Amazon and other digital music services.
Lakeshore Records announces the release today of BELGRAVIA: THE NEXT CHAPTER—Original Series Soundtrack with music by two-time Emmy-winning composer John Lunn (DOWNTON ABBEY, GRANTCHESTER). Lunn’s trademark soaring orchestral compositions underscore romance and drama in the continuation of the lauded historical drama originally written by close compatriot Julian Fellowes. The limited series is a Carnival Films production, distributed by NBCUniversal Global Distribution and is streaming now on MGM+.
Streaming/Purchase Link.
Composer Max Lombardo scores THE WINDIGO… From Gylden Entertainment Production in Association with 8 Ball Entertainment comes THE WINDIGO, an ancient demon, whose bloodlust threatens a family. A Gabe Torres Film, written by Brent Jordan, directed by Gabe Torres (BRAKE, LAST STAND, DECEMBER, FIGHT TO SURVIVE, UNSOLVED MYSTERIES tv), cast includes Marco Fuller, Fivel Stewart, Tonantzin Carmelo, Casey Camp-Horinek, Troy James. The music is produced by Bryan Tyler, with the music score by Max Lombardo, an Italian-born composer and orchestrator, based in Los Angeles, California. He has worked on award winning movies and video games such as CYBERPUNK 2077, FAST9, STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT II, THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD, CRAZY RICH ASIANS and more. Watch The WINDIGO trailer:
Varèse Sarabande has released a new soundtrack album for the 2008 superhero movie HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY. Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro and starring Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Jeffrey Tambor, Doug Jones and John Hurt, the soundtrack features the expanded original score from the film composed by Danny Elfman, including previously unreleased music. This second 2008 HELLBOY feature film stars Ron Perlman (after the first, 2004, and prior to the remake by Neil Marshall with David Harbour) pitted a prince of the mythical world who starts a rebellion against humanity in order to rule the Earth; Hellboy and his team must fight to stop him from locating the all-powerful Golden Army. See more details at Varèse Sarabande.
The SHOGUN Original Soundtrack Score was released digitally on February 23 from Hollywood Records. The film features all new original music from composers Atticus Ross, Leopold Ross, and Nick Chuba. Atticus Ross commented, “The goal was to create music that cannot be identified as ancient or modern nor specifically Eastern or Western – we wanted it to exist between the lines, playing primarily to the psychology of character and story.”
A fascinating science fiction series, 3 BODY PROBLEM, was created by David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo, based on the Chinese novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. It is the second live action adaptation after the 2023 Chinese television series. A fateful decision made in 1960s China reverberates in the present. Ye Wenjie is an astrophysicist who saw her father brutally murdered during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Later, she was conscripted by the military because of her scientific background and sent to a secret radar base in a remote region, where a group of scientists partner with a detective to confront an existential planetary threat. Ramin Djawadi has scored the series, which premiered March 21, 2024, on Netflix.
Listen to Djawadi’s main theme from 3 BODY PROBLEM.
Darren Lim (THE PRETEND ONE, THE OTHER GUY, THE LAND) will release a soundtrack album for the Australian horror thriller YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME (via FilmMusic Reporter). The film is a 2023 Australian horror-thriller film directed by Indianna Bell and Josiah Allen in their directorial debut from a screenplay by Bell, starring Jordan Cowan and Brendan Rock. Patrick, a strange and lonely resident, lives in a mobile home at the back of an isolated trailer park. After a violent storm, a mysterious young woman appears at his door seeking shelter from the elements… Bloody Disgusting gave it a score of 3.5/5 skulls, writing, “YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME... is a somber tale set on a dark and stormy night. But the filmmakers instead reclaim the quintessential setup to blend grim, contemporary horror with a classic haunted house aesthetic, resulting in a claustrophobic, oft-unsettling chamber piece.”
PALM ROYALE is a true underdog story that follows Maxine Simmons (Kristen Wiig) as she endeavors to break into Palm Beach high society. Set during the powder keg year of 1969, PALM ROYALE is a testament to every outsider fighting for their chance to truly belong. The soundtrack for the limited series is composed by Jeff Toyne.
PALM ROYALE’s musical journey mirrors the series itself, shifting from distinctive to more melodramatic inspired tones. The series’ musical style, a unique fusion of Henry Mancini and Bernard Herrmann with a Latin twist, comes to life, presenting a thematic richness that evolves throughout the show. “Creating the score for PALM ROYALE was the most exciting and rewarding musical assignment I’ve ever been given,” said the composer. “The fusion of jazz, Latin, and orchestral elements not only captured the essence of the 1960s narrative but also reflected the depth of our creative connection over the years.” The 29-track album is available on digital platforms here.
Lakeshore Records has released LITTLE WING, with the original score by composer Anne Nikitin (HIJACK, AMERICAN ANIMALS, I.S.S., OUR UNIVERSE). Nikitin’s use of electronics, strings, percussion, and vocalizations results in a hauntingly modern backdrop to the film inspired by the New Yorker article by Susan Orlean. Notes Nikitin: “Creating the sonic palette for Little Wing was pure joy. Director Dean Israelite encouraged invention, so the score is an eclectic mix of contemporary strings, kooky percussion, processed piano, electric guitars, wailing vocals, fluttering violins, and vocal/synth-generated pigeon sounds! The sound world for our heroine Kaitlyn, a dejected teenager who experiences an awakening, crosses the line between avant-garde classical score and 90s Riot Grrrl punk.” Purchase / Stream the Album.
Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Abels (GET OUT, NOPE, US, THE BURIAL, LANDSCAPE WITH INVISIBLE HAND) has composed the score for Focus Features’ upcoming satirical comedy THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MAGICAL NEGROES. The film follows a young man, Aren, who is recruited into a secret society of magical Black people who dedicate their lives to a cause of utmost importance: making white people more comfortable. Although initially enamored with his new powers, Aren begins to question the value of using supernatural means to do the very thing he’s felt obligated to do his whole life.
STAR WARS: THE BAD BATCH - THE FINAL SEASON: Vol. 1 (Episodes 1-8) is available from Walt Disney Records. The final (3rd) season of the series 3 debuted on February 21, with new episodes releasing each week, streaming exclusively on Disney+. The music, by award-winning composer Kevin Kiner, is now available on Spotify , Apple Music, and other digital platforms. STAR WARS: THE BAD BATCH - THE FINAL SEASON: Vol. 2 (Episodes 9-15) is set for release on May 3. Commenting on the music, composers Kevin, Sean, and Deana Kiner said, “We are very excited that the soundtrack for BAD BATCH season 3 has been released. Season 3 takes some big turns, and the music went along for the ride! We can’t believe how far these characters have come, and it’s been such a joy to develop their themes and music alongside them. We hope you enjoy listening to these cues as much as we enjoyed composing and performing them. May the Force be with all of you!” In the epic final season of STAR WARS: THE BAD BATCH, the Batch will have their limits tested in the fight to reunite with Omega as she faces challenges of her own inside a remote Imperial science lab. With the group fractured and facing threats from all directions, they will have to seek out unexpected allies, embark on dangerous missions, and muster everything they have learned to free themselves from the Empire.
BABY REINDEER is a dark but painfully funny story about an aspiring comedian dealing with a stalker, starring Richard Gadd, who adapted his award-winning autobiographical one-man play into a seven-episode limited series with the help from the makers of The End of the F***king World. As the series is based on actual events in showrunner and actor Richard Gadd’s life, composers Evgueni and Sacha Galperine were tasked with the complex assignment of scoring memories. They had a unique and close collaboration with Gadd, who was not only sensitive to how the music would fit the scenes but was also mindful of the feelings he had while he experienced these events. The result is a score that is truthful to both: sinister staccato strings are playfully infused with a mysterious lightness in line with the tone of the series and the drama-comedy that is life. Listen here to the BABY REINDEER Soundtrack from the Netflix series’ album.
Lakeshore Records & Fifth Season have released TOKYO VICE SEASON 2 Original Series Soundtrack Digitally March 1, with music by Danny Bensi & Saunder Jurriaans. The second season of the series is airing now on MAX. Season 2 of the Series Airing Now on MAX. Loosely inspired by American journalist Jake Adelstein’s first-hand account of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat, season two of the series, filmed on location in Tokyo, takes us deeper into the city’s criminal underworld as Adelstein (Ansel Elgort) comes to realize that his life, and the lives of those close to him, are in terrible danger. Purchase/Stream.
Papa Legba Recordings & Tokyo Records are releasing the first-ever soundtrack album for the 2010 Israeli horror movie RABIES (Kalevet) written and directed by Aharon Keshales & Navot Papushado and starring Lior Ashkenazi, Ania Bukstein, Danny Geva and Yael Grobglas. The album features the film’s original music composed by Frank Ilfman. The soundtrack will be released digitally and now available on Amazon. RABIES follows a psychotic serial killer on the loose in the woods crosses paths with a group of unsuspecting teenagers. The movie, which was first released theatrically in Israel in 2010 and made its U.S. premiere at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, is now available on VOD and DVD. The soundtrack is available digitally on the composer’s bandcamp page, here
Jérôme Leroy announces his score to AN AMERICAN IN AUSTEN, which premiered on the Hallmark Channel recently, is now available to download on my website and stream on YouTube and SoundCloud. From Erik Heine’s liner notes, “AN AMERICAN IN AUSTEN is a highly thematic score that emphasizes both romance and comedy, while adhering to the types of instruments that would have been used in early nineteenth-century England. The music, which introduces multiple themes for the various characters in the film, also features waltz music for the dance scenes and comedic pieces to underscore the main character’s proverbial fish-out-of-water story, momentarily pausing the drama for a laugh.” The score was recorded by the Budapest Strings Orchestra and features Kristin Naigus on orchestral woodwinds and Avery Bright on solo violin. To listen to the album, see Leroy’s website, here.
Caldera Records announced THREE FOR THE ROAD, composed by David Shire. The 1975 film was an ambitious idea, a road trip as a family show, mostly shot on location throughout the US. While the show allowed for levity throughout, at its heart it dealt with loss and the desire to re-connect. After his wife’s death, a freelance photographer/writer and his two sons assuage their grief with an adventurous new lifestyle: they sell their house, buy a large recreational vehicle, and embark on a long road trip through the U.S.A. While Bruce Broughton provided the music for the individual episodes, David Shire was contracted to score the pilot, which is presented on the album. His score is built around his main theme, a memorable, uplifting piece that makes its appearance throughout the pilot, and with its use of guitar featuring subtle folk elements. It’s a varied score also incorporating lounge jazz pieces, and for the more intimate moments, elaborate string writing. Two additional David Shire TV movies that also deal with trauma are included on the album: THE GREATEST THING THAT ALMOST HAPPENED and DADDY, I DON’T LIKE IT LIKE THIS, For the former, Shire provided a rousing, energetic sports score with gentler, tender moments to illustrate the illness of the main character. The Shire’s score for the latter film is built around a lullaby-like main theme, often performed on a solo instrument such as a clarinet or piano. This music perfectly captures both the main protagonist Peter’s child-like wonder and also the longing of his parents. The 54th CD-release of Caldera Records, the album features a detailed booklet text by Stephan Eicke and elegant artwork by Luis Miguel Rojas. The CD soundtrack is available here.
Under orders from a ruthless crime boss, a getaway driver must battle his conscience and drive an unsuspecting crew member to an ambush execution. There is a long drive ahead… Frederick Wiedmann scores BRING HIM TO ME, an Australian crime thriller directed by Luke Sparke and starring Luke Sparke, Barry Pepper, Jamie Costa, Sam Neill, and Rachel Griffiths. The film was released in Australia on November 2, 2023, and was also released in limited theatres in the U.S. and digital on January 19, 2024. Wiedmann’s soundtrack is now available from Amazon and elsewhere.
Dynamic Music Partner Composer Kristopher Carter has scored the short film HOWL AT THE DEAD, which screened earlier this month at the Mammoth Film Fest. The soundtrack is a delicious delight; and the composer invites you to “celebrate this metaphysical convergence by taking a listen!” The entire 12-track album is available from Spotify and other streaming services.
Listen to the track “Paws Goes to the Other Side,” from HOWL AT THE DEAD, via YouTube:
Lakeshore Records has released MOTHERS’ INSTINCT Original Motion Picture Soundtrack with an original score by composer Anne Nikitin (LITTLE WING, AMERICAN ANIMALS). The rich neoclassical score incorporates strings, echoing piano, and horns to gorgeously ominous effect. The Studio Canal UK film stars Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway, as best friend housewives Alice and Celine seem to have it all. However, when a tragic accident shatters the harmony of their lives, guilt, suspicion, and paranoia begin to unravel their sisterly bond.
Notes Nikitin: “Director Benoit Delhomme and I clicked from the minute we first spoke about his vision for Mothers’ Instinct. He wanted a thriller score that was present but not too heavy-handed, and with a nod to film noir.
I chose to write for a chamber section made up of strings, woodwind, piano, harp and horn, and a leant on an unsettling 4-chord progression that becomes familiar when things are not OK. The music follows the suspicious mind of Alice as she walks the tightrope between clarity and insanity.” Purchase/ Stream.
Maximilien Mathevon has composed the music from the original documentary soundtrack album ROBERT ET LE DIABLE, released March 27 on streaming and digital download by Plaza Mayor Company. The legend of Robert the Devil has spanned the centuries: the story of this son of the Devil, initially violent and merciless before embarking on the path to redemption upon learning of his origins, has inspired writers, poets, playwrights, and musicians. For the music of ROBERT AND THE DEVIL, I created a disturbing main theme for Robert, declined in different variations and orchestrations: viola da gamba, dulcimer, alto flute, violins, cello, brass… I also composed several other recurring themes, notably that of redemption and that of the Vatican. I gave part of the music a medieval color corresponding to the origin of the myth of Robert. Above all, I took great pleasure in using the techniques and codes of horror film music, a genre that I particularly like. The documentary has been broadcasted on French TV channel France 3 Normandie.
Robert Ouyang Rusli has created an eclectic score to match the strange, fairytale-like world of writer/director Julio Torres’ PROBLEMISTA, a surrealist-comedy about an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador, struggling to bring his unusual ideas to life in New York City. Moving between bubbling, whimsical melodies to propulsive classical minimalism, the score features orchestral arrangements that combine synthesizers with a live choir. Sounds from the surreal world of the film bleed into the music: ominous clocks ticking, 56k dial-up modems shrieking, filing cabinets, and keyboards creating rhythmic backdrops for the bureaucratic nightmares of the American immigration system. Everything in PROBLEMISTA’s surreal world can be personified, and the score is no different. It’s a colorful living creature in the film. Acting like a Greek chorus that urges on the film’s characters, the score’s choir sings and chants in an invented language formed from deconstructed words that describe their deepest desires and fears.
An animated adaptation of the hit video game ARK: SURVIVAL EVOLVED, which is an original creation of game developer Studio Wildcard, ARK: THE ANIMATED SERIES is a sweeping saga spanning eons of human history. When 21st century paleontologist Helena Walker (Madeleine Madden) finds herself resurrected on a mysterious primeval island populated by prehistoric beasts, she must learn to survive with new allies from throughout time, while trying to uncover the true nature of their strange new world. Score by Gareth Coker, who notes: “ARK The Animated Series has been a labor of love ever since the idea was first introduced to me by the game’s creators, Jeremy Steiglitz and Jesse Rapczak. I’ve immensely enjoyed building ARK’s musical landscape across the game and its several expansions. The chance to add further to it through a different lens was an unbelievable opportunity, and a privilege to be the composer bringing their transmedia vision to life, scoring both the show and the game. The most striking feature of the show is that it is character driven. This allowed me a huge canvas for thematic development, which was encouraged further by the direction of wanting the show to have a score that wears its heart on its sleeve. ARK has never been shy with its music, and the Animated Series is no different. The show has themes and melodies abound, with the power that our fanbase has come to expect, but within this show, also a more intimate side they have rarely heard before.” Purchase/Stream.
Nicholas Pike (CRITTERS 2, GRAVEYARD SHIFT, THE SHINING [1997], TALES FROM THE CRYPT, FEAR DOT COM) has released a soundtrack album for the thriller MODEL HOUSE. The album features the composer’s original score from the film and is now available to stream/download on Amazon and any other major digital music services. Also listen to Pike’s first track (Walking/Reading) below. Model House is written and directed by Derek Pike and stars Scout Taylor-Compton, Corey Anne Roberts, Kyra Santoro, Chris Zylka, Hailee Lautenbach, Priscilla Huggins Ortiz, Natalie Nootenboom and Phillip Andre Botello. The movie follows five swimsuit models shooting a lucrative swimwear campaign at a waterfall 100 miles north of Los Angeles, when two intruders interrupt the shoot, and the girls are forced to post a fake donation link to their social media pages until $1 million is stolen from their followers. – via FilmMusic Reporter.
Listen to the cue “Walking/Reading” via YouTube:
Matthew Bellamy and Ilan Eshkeri’s soundtrack, to the Audible Original adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984, is now available for preorder. Out May 15th, the limited-edition autographed boxset edition includes a bespoke box with clear and red splatter vinyl housed in a top-loaded die-cut jacket, a lithograph signed by both Matthew Bellamy and Ilan Eshkeri, a vinyl slipmat, a 16-page art booklet, and a blue cassette. All orders are also accompanied by an exclusive full-color double-sided T-shirt. Recorded with the London Metropolitan Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, this album features over 45 minutes of original score. Bellamy and Eshkeri say of the album: “This album is more than just a soundtrack; it’s a haunting echo of a future that Orwell warned us about and a reflection of our current societal trajectories. It stands as a poignant, musical testament to the enduring power of art to mirror, and challenge, the world we live in.”
ABOUT GEORGE ORWELL’S 1984, AN AUDIBLE ORIGINAL ADAPTATION: Starring Andrew Garfield as Winston, Cynthia Erivo as Julia, Andrew Scott as the alluring, mysterious O’Brien, and featuring Tom Hardy as Big Brother. An immersive listening experience like none you’ve heard before, at a time when it has all never felt more chillingly relevant. Featuring a haunting original score composed by Muse’s lead singer and songwriter Matthew Bellamy and Ilan Eshkeri, recorded by the London Metropolitan Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, the production is directed by BAFTA Award winner Destiny Ekaragha, produced in Dolby Atmos by Granny Eats Wolf, and dramatized by Olivier Award nominated writer Joe White. Available now exclusively on Audible; at Audible membership may be required.
Pre-orders of the soundtrack are available here.
Hollywood Records and Searchlight Pictures announce the release of THE GREATEST HITS (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) 2-LP color vinyl album as well as the Original Score Soundtrack digital album with music and score by Academy Award® nominated composer, musician and Son Lux founding member Ryan Lott (EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE). About The Film: Harriet (Lucy Boynton) finds art imitating life when she discovers certain songs can transport her back in time – literally. While she relives the past through romantic memories of her former boyfriend (David Corenswet), her time traveling collides with a burgeoning new love interest in the present (Justin H. Min). As she takes her journey through the hypnotic connection between music and memory, she wonders – even if she could change the past, should she? Ryan Lott comments on the score, “While our protagonist experiences a different kind of metaphysical impact of music in her life than I do, it’s akin to the transporting inebriation that I’ve always felt from music. Scoring those experiences to capture that kind of heightened, altered state, weaving between and within great songs by other artists, was its own transporting experience for me.” The film is now streaming on Hulu.
Check out THE GREATEST HITS in Hollywood Records’ latest episode of The Big Score,
Lakeshore Records has released TATAMI Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. The film is a thrilling portrait of Iranian female judoka Leila (Mandi) and her coach Maryam (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi), who travel to the Judo World Championship, intent on bringing home Iran’s first gold medal. Midway through the competition, they receive an ultimatum from the Islamic regime instructing Leila to fake an injury and lose, lest she be labeled a traitor to the state. Leila is faced with an impossible choice: obey the Iranian regime as her coach Maryam urges her to do or fight for the gold and put herself and her family at risk. The film is scored by Dascha Dauenhauer (GOLDA, THE INTERPRETER OF SILENCE, BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, BLOOD RED SKY. Purchase/Stream.
HUMANIST VAMPIRE SEEKING CONSENTING SUICIDAL PERSON (Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant) is a 2023 Canadian French-language vampire-comedy-drama co-written and directed by Ariane Louis-Seize. It stars Sara Montpetit as Sasha, a young vampire who befriends Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), a suicidal and very depressed boy. Sasha’s parents have cut off her blood supply, so she enters a pact with Paul and their friendly agreement soon becomes a nocturnal quest to fulfill Paul’s last wishes before day breaks. The film has been scored by Pierre-Philippe Côté, better known as Pilou, a singer, songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, director and producer. “With a unique blend of classical training and contemporary influences, Pilou’s music transcends traditional boundaries, effortlessly fusing elements of orchestral arrangements with modern electronic beats and textures,” writes film music producer Mikael Carlsson, whose soundtrack label MovieScore Media family is releasing the soundtrack album March 22 (Visit this link and/or this link).
During a bachelorette party in Italy, a group of girls invite a handsome stranger into their home, not realizing he’s a vampire looking for a bride. Film stars Diana Gardner, Nathaniel Ansbach, Mary O’Neil, and Fabián Castro, directed by Dave Parker (PUPPET MASTER: DOKTOR OF DEATH, IT WATCHES, THE HILLS RUN READ). The film is scored by composer Penka Kouneva (ENCOUNTER, ZERO GRAVITY, DEVIL’S WHISPER, ICE SPIDERS), a Bulgarian-American composer, orchestrator and soundtrack producer. In 1999, she began working in film and television, and in 2009 began to score for videogames. Her music is a blend of Bulgarian influences, classical training, rock sensibility, and modern film and game soundtracks. She has also released several artist albums, including The Woman Astronaut (2015), which was recognized as a ‘21st-century masterpiece’ by NPR, and Rebirth of Id (2017), both on Varese Sarabande.
UNSINKABLE: TITANIC UNTOLD tells the riveting journey of Senator William Alden Smith and undercover journalist Alaine Ricard as they investigate the aftermath of the most impactful maritime disaster in history... the Titanic. Directed by Cody Hartman (HANDYMAN FROM HELL, 2023) and starring Cotter Smith, Fiona Dourif, Jayne Wisener, and Karen Allen, with a score by Scott Glasgow. With UNSINKABLE: TITANIC UNTOLD, a locally made new drama, the sinking of the RMS Titanic becomes the subject of a series of tense congressional hearings. This new take on the historic tragedy looks not at the minute-to-minute reality of the tragedy, as James Cameron’s blockbuster ’90s film TITANIC did, but rather at the aftermath and blame that followed.
For more details on the film and its making and staff, see.
Composer Ceiri Torjussen (DELHI CRIME 2, COLD CASE FILES, CRAWLERS, AGENT 47, BIG ASS SPIDER) has released a new album, Soul in the Machine, which s now released and available to listen to on Spotify, Apple Music, and other streamers. Additionally, some exceptionally talented filmmakers have made music videos to various tracks on my album: Sonya Goddy (LOVE LOOKS NOT), Rose Stark (BUT WHAT), Marcin Nowrotek (DARKNESS FALLING) and Zack Young (SOUL IN THE MACHINE). They came up with some highly original visual ideas based on my music… Many thanks to my fellow musical collaborators Eric Byers (cello), Luanne Homzy (violin), Sheetal Sheth and Rona Rapadas (vocals), and to my deceased dear friend Yorgos Adamis who played so beautifully on Cole’s Dream and Bells of Baltimore. Check out below, and if you like it, please “follow” me on your streamer of choice.
Film composer Ian Honeyman has created three unique songs with actor James Carrington providing vocals in three unique songs, now available on Honeyman’s Bandcamp page: “These are the first few songs in my synth pop artist project I started in addition to my film work,” said the composer. “New songs are now coming every month!” Do You Want To Walk Through The Stars?,Nights With You, and Strange Face. Honeyman described these as “An electro lullaby, a love letter to humanity. As we go to sleep, our dreams get bigger and bigger...” Listen and/or check out the lyrics here.
Premiered on April 1st, the HBO original documentary series THE SYNANON FIX, directed by Rory Kennedy, is about the rise and fall of the Synanon organization, told through the eyes of former members. The doc examines its descent into a cult, looking at communities and charismatic leaders, wondering how people come to these places, and the relevancy of the story in modern day with the false sense of community. Nathan Larson (DIRTY PRETTY THINGS, MARGIN CALL, BOYS DON’T CRY, A WALK IN THE WOODS) has composed the show’s original music. – via Wikipedia
Nainita Desai has scored EARTHSOUNDS, which debuted streaming last February on Apple TV!! “The combination of working in wildlife and sound in the natural world has always been a massive inspiration for me.
The score for this incredible series had to complement and enhance the sonic landscape of the show. We only used natural acoustic derived sounds – a green and eco score – no synths and electronics were harmed in the making of the music!”
Nainita has also teamed with Chris Watson for THE SEVEN SONIC WONDERS, a groundbreaking album that takes you on an audio journey of incredible, rare, and endangered sounds of our planet. From the majestic pop and rumble of Iceland’s Vatnajökull Glacier to the serene dawn birdsong in Finland, each track puts you at heart of the beauty and fragility of nature’s symphony in Dolby Atmos. “Huge thanks to Dolby UK for having me on this incredible project and thank you to!,” she said. This extraordinary project brings together the talent and expertise of award-winning wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson, award-winning composer Nainita Desai and Dolby Atmos mix engineer Kurt Martinez to create an unparalleled listening experience, with Javier Blanco-Lago on board for his musical help.” Available now on Apple music with all proceeds going to EarthPercent to aid the preservation of these natural wonders.
Nanita has also crafted a gripping score for Netflix’s crime documentary, WHAT JENNIFER DID. When Jennifer Pan calls 911 to report that her parents have been shot, she becomes the primary focus of a captivating criminal case. “The score for WHAT JENNIFER DID plays an integral part of the gloomy tone of the film,” noted the composer. “I wanted to bring to life the unsettling nature of the themes explored in the film, while avoiding musical cliches that unravel this dark twisted story. The essence of Jennifer’s broken personality is represented by the use of the fractured cello and twisted string playing techniques throughout the score. A pivotal moment in the film revolves around the break into the family home with the twist of the door handle. The recurring sound of this door handle features as a menacing percussive and rhythmic mnemonic across the film and score. I wrestled with cold synthetic synth textures and melded visceral edgy strings to enhance the gripping and jaw dropping storyline with its twists and turns. To contrast this darkness, Jennifer studied the piano and brought in prepared piano into the score as a minimalist, emotive but piercing element, introducing something human and terrifying to these moments with a chilling effect. We start off with what seems like a random home invasion with Jennifer and family as victims, but then morph into something ominous and I wanted to take the audience on a gripping, jaw dropping shocker of a journey.”
MADU Original Soundtrack with music by composer Jackson Greenberg (LOLLA: THE STORY OF LOLLAPALOOZA) is now available on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and other digital platforms. The film is now streaming on Disney+. MADU follows 12-year-old Anthony Madu as he leaves his family and community in Nigeria to study at one of the most prestigious ballet schools in the world in England. Having never left his home outside of Lagos, Anthony finds himself thrust into a new world where his wildest dreams are suddenly within reach. His courageous journey is a story of extraordinary obstacles as he searches for belonging and acceptance, a family far away, and unexpected challenges that could impact his future. Forming a rich and immersive tapestry told on multiple continents, MADU introduces the world to a boy chasing a dream of inspiration that will resonate with us all.
Hollywood Records has released the Original Soundtrack for QUEENS, featuring an original score from singer, songwriter, record producer Morgan Kibby, as well as the powerful “Umi” single from artist Alewya and her writing partner Dean Barratt. The original music is featured in Nat Geo’s epic seven-part natural history docuseries QUEENS, which is a groundbreaking natural history docuseries: The wildest places on the planet have always been home to powerful leaders, but this is a story of a new hero – fierce, smart, resilient and ... female. QUEENS features matriarchies and female leaders around the world to tell a story of sacrifice and resilience but also of friendship and love. These QUEENS aren’t always kind or gentle, letting nothing come between them and the success and safety of their families. Guided by award-winning actress Angela Bassett’s powerful narration, QUEENS brings the natural world into focus through the female lens for the very first time. Four years in the making and helmed by a female-led production team from around the world – groundbreaking in the natural history space – the seven-part series leverages innovative technology to reveal surprising insights into how females in the natural world rise to power, often relying on cooperation and wisdom over brute strength to get ahead. The final episode of the series celebrates the women who have gone to the ends of the Earth and dedicated their lives to documenting and protecting animal queens. We don’t call her Mother Nature for nothing. All hail ... the QUEENS. Narrated by award-winning actress Angela Bassett, QUEENS premiere March 4th on Nat Geo and also streams on Hulu and Disney+.
Pinar Toprak has scored the documentary series OUR LIVING WORLD, narrated by the wonderful Cate Blanchett. All across its thin green-blue veneer, the Earth pulses with life; building on astonishing scientific revelations and featuring stunning footage of the planet’s incredible natural networks. OUR LIVING WORLD is the definitive celebration of our living planet, revealing the astonishing web of connections that unites us all and sustains our universe’s most magical phenomenon — life. The soundtrack will be available on 4/12, and the series premieres April 17. Watch the docu’s trailer:
LUCKYME® Records has released a soundtrack album for the HBO original documentary TIME BOMB Y2K. The album features the film’s original music composed by Nathan Micay (INDUSTRY, REALITY, SEXY BEAST, THE LAST BUS). Visit Amazon or any other major digital music services to stream/download the soundtrack. Also listen to the composer’s first track (Stone Age Survival) below. TIME BOMB Y2K is directed by Brian Becker & Marley McDonald, executive produced by Penny Lane and centers on the 1999 Doomsday computer glitch that could cause machines to misinterpret the year 2000 as 1900 . The movie is crafted entirely through archival footage and looks back at this millennial milestone by examining the power and vulnerabilities of technology. – via FilmMusic Reporter
Watch the film’s trailer:
From visionary filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, CHALLENGERS stars Zendaya as Tashi Duncan, a former tennis prodigy turned coach and a force of nature who makes no apologies for her game on and off the court. Married to a champion on a losing streak (Mike Faist/WEST SIDE STORY), Tashi’s strategy for her husband’s redemption takes a surprising turn when he must face off against the washed-up Patrick (Josh O’Connor/THE CROWN) – his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend. As their pasts and presents collide, and tensions run high, Tashi must ask herself, what will it cost to win. The music is scored by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross; film hits theaters on April 26.
La-La Land Records and Universal Pictures proudly mark the 40th Anniversary of the legendary 1983 big-screen gangster drama SCARFACE, starring Al Pacino and directed by Brian De Palma, with a world premiere vinyl LP release of Academy Award-Winning composer Giorgio Moroder’s (MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, AMERICAN GIGOLO, CAT PEOPLE, FLASHDANCE) original motion picture score. The SCARFACE – 40th ANNIVERSARY ORIGINAL SCORE is a limited edition 2XLP 33 rpm pressing on 180 gram colored vinyl that will be available in two exciting variants – “Chainsaw” Red Splatter and “Yeyo” Pure White! This deluxe release is the first time Maestro Moroder’s expanded film score is available on LP – a pitch perfect way to commemorate four decades of this landmark film. For more details see La-La Land Records
The STAR WARS JEDI: SURVIVOR Original Video Game Soundtrack vinyl album is available today. The 2-LP vinyl edition offers fans an immersive musical experience from the acclaimed video game. The soundtrack, comprised of 27 tracks, will be pressed on 180-gram colored vinyl, and presented in heavyweight gatefold jackets with a matte satin coating. To enhance the collector’s experience, the vinyl will be accompanied by an 11” x 11” four-page booklet, providing a glimpse into the creative process behind the mesmerizing score. Last month, STAR WARS JEDI: SURVIVOR composers Stephen Barton and Gordy Haab received a GRAMMY® Award in the Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media category. Barton and Haab also won an SCL (Society of Composers and Lyricists) Award in the Outstanding Original Score for Interactive Media category.
STAR WARS JEDI: SURVIVOR continues the story of Cal Kestis. This narratively driven, single player title picks up five years after the events of STAR WARS JEDI: FALLEN ORDER and follows Cal’s increasingly desperate fight as the galaxy descends further into darkness.
Step back in time with this curated pick, ASSASSIN’S CREED MIRAGE (Original Soundtrack) by Brendan Angelides, echoing the journey of Basim Ibn Ishaq in Baghdad’s golden age. This double LP, on natural translucent colored vinyl, captures the essence of Basim’s transformation from street thief to master assassin against the backdrop of the anarchy at Samarra. Encased in a gatefold jacket with exclusive artwork, the packaging brings to life the game’s rich history and complex characters. The set also includes an obi-strip and 12” insert with the soundtrack credits and notes. Each disc, offers an auditory passage into the world where myth intertwines with reality, making this soundtrack not just music but a journey through the enigmatic and historic world of ASSASSIN’S CREED MIRAGE. Composer Brendan Angelides has never worked in video game music before; you might know him better as Eskmo or Welder, or as the mind behind the music of TV shows 13 REASONS WHY or BILLIONS. Check his soundtrack now – available at these links.
Lakeshore Records announces the forthcoming release of TALES OF KENZERA: ZAU Original Soundtrack featuring music by Emmy-winning composer Nainita Desai (14 PEAKS: NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE). Desai combines orchestra, electronics, African traditional instrumentation, and soaring vocalizations to convey the grief and ultimate joy unfolding in the game created by EA Originals and Surgent Studios. Notes Desai: “What attracted me to the game is that even though it covers very deep areas of human relationships and is about the transformative power of love, grief and loss, the game is not gloomy or dark. In fact, it is wrapped in the rich colorful world of African Bantu mythology and the African diaspora of art, culture, and music. We wanted a score steeped with orchestral elements fused with African traditional instrumentation with voices to bring in the feel of the ancestors and afrofuturism represented by very modern synths and beats.” TALES OF KENZARA: ZAU will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC on April 23; the album will be released digitally on April 26. An instant grat track, “Every Story Begins at the End of Another,” will be available with every Apple and Amazon album preorder and as a single on other DSPs beginning today.
Album pre-order/pre-save link:
RETRIBUTION – Alan Howarth score to re-discovered 1984 horror classic. Now released for the first time by Mystic Vault. LP has fold out cover package, colorful record jacket with liner notes and a Blue-Green vinyl pressing. Shipped with custom hand drawn music staff and Alan Howarth autograph added to the cover art. For details go here.
Randall D. Larson was for many years publisher of CinemaScore: The Film Music Journal, senior editor for Soundtrack Magazine, and a film music columnist for Cinefantastique magazine. A specialist on horror film music, he is the author of Musique Fantastique: 100+ Years of Fantasy, Science Fiction & Horror Film Music and Music from the House of Hammer. He currently writes essays on film music and sf/horror cinema, and has written liner notes more than 300 soundtrack CD or digital releases. He can be contacted via https://musiquefantastique.com/ or follow Musique Fantastique on Facebook. Follow Randall on Twitter at https://twitter.com/randalldlarson and https://twitter.com/MusiqueFantast1
