Ever since composer Jeff Grace (Stake Land, The Last Winter, The House of the Devil) and director Ti West took their first impressive steps with The Roost in 2005, MovieScore Media has been among their most devoted fans and supporters. This is the fourth Grace/West score that we release and we are proud to witness the rise and growing success of these two great talents. Jeff Grace’s music for The Innkeepers is ingeniously atmospheric and somewhat old-school in its orchestral approach, eerie, yet quite melodic – there is something about it that reminds us of Jerry Goldsmith in the 70s and 80s. The quality of the score has already been confirmed at Screamfest where Jeff Grace won the festival trophy for ‘Best Musical Score’. As with many films Grace has scored, a lot of reviews of The Innkeepers single out the score as one of its strongest elements and one the fits Ti West’s directing style extremely well. As music on its own it stands out as original, fresh and inventive. And… scary as hell!

#6 best film score of 2011 according to Ain’t It Cool News!

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WHAT THE CRITICS SAY

“Composer Jeff Grace’s shrewdly moody music – which greatly enhances the sense of mounting dread in the pic’s second half – has strong hints of Bernard Herrmann’s classic scores for Alfred Hitchcock…” - Variety

“Not since Alejandro Amenábar’s score for The Others (2001) or Fernando Velázquez’s score for The Orphanage (2007) have I been as captivated, moved and bedazzled by a spectral score composed with such artisanal skill.” – Ain’t It Cool News

“A creepy score…” - The Breathing Dead

“In terms of deriving terrifying musical horror from a chamber orchestra, Grace may be the best around due to his has a knack for isolating and intermeshing sharp colours with clear end-results.” - KQEK

AN INTERVIEW WITH COMPOSER JEFF GRACE

What special challenges did The Innkeepers offer you in terms of finding the right musical colours, themes and the overall shape of the score?
The first big challenge was addressing the comedic tone in the beginning of the film, and then transitioning into the horror. The film isn’t a horror comedy in the normal sense. It’s more a film that starts out with elements of comedy as we meet the main characters and then descends into a darker scenario. The film is really dealing with the characters first, drawing the audience in to care about them, so that when the horror finally comes, you actually care what happens. With all of this character development came a lot more dialogue than in (director) Ti West’s and my previous films together. We spent a good amount of time on scenes like ‘The Pendulum’ where a lot of information was being revealed, but scenes that are still very moody. I think a huge part of film scoring is drawing the audience into the world of the film and not attracting too much attention to the score in the process – otherwise, you can end up taking the audience out of the film. This applies even more so with dialogue.

Were there any sequences that were specifically tricky to score?
‘The Pendulum’ and ‘Opening Titles’ definitely got more attention than other cues. We went at the first few cues out of sequence. We more went for a few important scenes that would help establish the sound – I think ‘The Garage’ was one of the first cues, but ‘The Pendulum’ really helped us figure out how to approach a lot of it. I originally wrote what became ‘The Story of Madeline’ and ‘Epilogue’ for ‘The Pendulum’, but it was fighting with the dialogue too much there. So, I scaled that framework back and got more atmospheric with it. I then started at the first scene and went pretty much chronologically, all the while working on the ‘Opening Titles’ here and there and looking for places to use the main themes. At the end I went back and polished up the ‘Opening Titles’ connecting things a little better.

Please outline your main ideas in the score and what they relate to in the story.
The ‘Opening Titles’ has the four main recurring ideas – the opening woodwind line, which later changes to the glissando violin line, Madeline’s theme appears in the strings, then the pace comes in and we get that major 7th glissando string line – the previously mentioned woodwind line, which also appears in the piano at points throughout the score – which leads into the full-on Innkeepers theme. That material comes back a lot. The harmonic progression of the Innkeepers theme, as well as the three note phrase, serve as the basis for many cues in the score – the obvious stuff, but even ‘Claire’s Room’, ‘The Pendulum’, and ‘What Does She Want?’. It ended up being pretty closely related.

Is it important for you to always write as much as possible for live instruments?
I would rather record with a violin, trumpet and a tin can live if I could get what I needed, than be stuck in front of the computer all day.  It’s just so much more expressive and organic live. I always seem to learn more when I work with other musicians. I do like technology quite a bit, but unless I’m using it for an electronic sound, the computer is always a compromise approximating the real deal. It’s also usually much faster for me to write for real players and record rather than wrestle with technology, and schedules are a real consideration in the film world. Probably every composer hates hearing something and wanting to go a certain direction, but then not being able to do it because the technology available isn’t there yet. Ti also likes doing things differently than whatever we did last. Live musicians offer much more flexibility in getting weird sounds or a more personalized sound. Interestingly enough, on this one I used a lot more guitars and synths. Combining the electronics with the orchestral elements in this way was new for us – it gave us a different pallet than our previous work together.  This film has the biggest scope of Ti’s films, so we needed a bigger sound.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Innkeepers
2. Claire’s Room 1.31
3. Right Behind You! 4.13
4. The Garage 2.03
5. The Story of Madeline 1.30
6. The Pendulum 3.52
7. What Does She Want? 2.30
8. The Pendulum Breaks 3.50
9. Special Memories 1.35
10. I Gotta Get Outta Here! 1.28
11. Last Bit of Nostalgia 3.40
12. Claire Falls 5.08
13. Epilogue 2.34
14. End Titles (Suite from The Innkeepers) 4.17

ALBUM INFO

• Title: The Innkeepers (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• Composer: Jeff Grace
• Catalogue no: Screamworks SWR12001
• Release date: January 31, 2012 (online) / February 7, 2012 (CD)
• 1st CD edition limited to 500 copies

Starring Rebecca Hall and Dominic West and opening in UK theatres on November 11, Nick Murphy’s supernatural thriller The Awakening created a lot of buzz during the Toronto Film Festival where Studiocanal sold the US distribution rights to Cohen Media Group for “a seven-figure sum” according to Variety. The film takes place in 1921 England and is a ghost story where the storytelling and visuals is beautifully underlined by a large, gothic orchestral score composed by Daniel Pemberton, who won the 2010 Ivor Novello Award for Best Television Soundtrack (Desperate Romantics). Dark orchestral sonorities, haunting vocals and elements of almost operatic choir writing form the backbone of the this thorouoghly elegant and engaging score. Particularly memorable is “The Awakening Theme” which is used throughout the score, an instantly memorable arpeggio motif that has the same effective ‘hook’ as many of the most famous horror scores in the history of film music. First edition of the CD is limited to 1000 copies.

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WHAT THE CRITICS SAY

“Murphy hooks the audience from the get-go with Edward Grau’s lush cinematography and Daniel Pemberton’s beautifully melancholy score.” - Collider.com

A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR

“You’ll need a really good score. Music is so important in this genre”. This was the helpful and revelatory advice offered during the writing and shooting of The Awakening. I filed this advice alongside “Don’t throw yourself in front of moving traffic” and “Don’t believe anything anyone tells you in Hollywood” – well meaning but pretty obvious. But they were right, although not for the reasons they might expect.

Of course score in a film like this is vital in the creation of atmosphere, mood, tension and,
yes, fear but it is also crucial, in this genre as much as any other, that it never cheats. From the outset Daniel and I wanted to make sure his music for The Awakening didn’t cheat. It mustn’t manipulate the audience but rather enhance and enrich the tension and emotion that was already there. This may seem like semantics but that clarity of purpose and direction is essential if one is to create a great anything: film, novel, painting and indeed score. And this is a great score. An honest, moving, beautiful and truly original score.

I love its symphonic shape. When so many scores just bang out whatever tune fits the sequence at hand, Daniel prefers to take us on a shaped journey. I love that is uses school recorders and even hyper distorted flutes and whistles. I love the signals it gives during the unfolding musical narrative that are delivered in full during the stunning, climactic “Chorus de Susticatio”. And I love the way it is infused throughout with the silent pain of grief – which in post Great War Britain, afflicts all the characters and drives their ability, even their need, to see ghosts. This score is evocative, disturbing and truly beautiful. Everything I wanted the film itself to be. But don’t tell him I said so. He’ll be unbearable.

Nick Murphy (writer & director, The Awakening)

TRACK LISTING

1. Seeing Through Ghosts (Theme from The Awakening) 1:46
2. The Séance 2:07
3. ‘Oh, Coccinelle’/Deep Breaths 2:22
4. High Over Cumbria 0:56
5. Empty Classrooms 2:15
6. Florence Cathcart 1:55
7. Arrival at Rookford 1:18
8. Semper Veritas 1:32
9. Preparations 1:49
10. Chasing Footprints 3:22
11. Lock the House 1:26
12. The Hallway 1:04
13. Scars 1:07
14. There Is Nothing 0:58
15. Don’t Go Away 1:00
16. The Dollshouse 2:31
17. No Walls or Floors 1:43
18. Damaged People 1:08
19. Patience 3:08
20. Florence Vanishing 1:29
21. The East Bedroom 3:33
22. Don’t Tell Tom 2:39
23. Chorus de Susticatio (Chorus from The Awakening) 1:57
24. A Death Remembered 1:18
25. Be Still My Soul 4:16
26. Florence Is Free 2:57
27. The Awakening (Credits) 3:20
28. Reprise (Theme from The Awakening) 2:31

ALBUM INFO

• Title: The Awakening (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• Composer: Daniel Pemberton
• Catalogue no: Screamworks SWR11008
• Release date: November 15, 2011 (CD only)

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ABOUT THE SCORE

Swedish horror film Psalm 21, directed by Fredrik Hiller and starring Jonas Malmsjö, Julia Dufvenius and Per Ragnar (Let the Right One In), tells the story of beloved young priest Henrik Horneus who learns that his father, also a priest, has been found drowned in a lake in Hammerdal. He drives alone, in the middle of the night, to his father’s hometown. On his way there mysterious events occur and a frightening story where the young priest encounters both his own and other demons unfold.

The colourful orchestral score for the Psalm 21 was written by film music newcomer Christer Christensson. Swedish films are usually sparsely scored, but Psalm 21 is different. There is a lot of room for the music to contribute to the storytelling and pacing. ”As I’ve been working with Fredrik a lot before I knew that there was going to be a lot of music in the film. I noticed as I came in, very early in the process, that he had a clear vision of what the music should bring to the movie. Then, even before it was shot, we went through the script and had a lot of talking about the scenes and his vision. We discussed different ways of how the music should be approached in ways of instrumentation, live orchestra or not and talking about different composers etc. We arrived at the conclusion that we should try to have Hollywood approach but in a Swedish way and I don’t know if that is what came out of it, but it has a more international appeal than the typical Swedish film.

Christer previously worked with the director in theatre. “For me it was a very natural transition because I think that I’ve always approached my scoring for the theatre in a very cinematic way,” Christer says. “The main difference is that theatre is live. Even if it’s really well rehearsed, it’s always different from the night before. For me it means that the tempo, for example, is slightly different from night to night. Also, dialogue in a play is usually with acoustic voices which has its consequences for the music in terms of getting the desired dramatic effect without drenching the actors’ voices.”

Christer says that he is influenced by a lot of different musicians and composers “from almost any genre.” “To name a few there is Steve Reich, Keith Jarrett, Arvo Pärt, Björk, Henryk Gorecki, Peter Gabriel, igor Stravinsky, Samuel Barber, Bernard Herrmann… and a lot of others.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Introitus 1:33
2. O Father, Why Have You Left? 1:17
3. Out in the Forest and Into the Mind 4:23
4. Cantus Confessione 1:36
5. The Little Girl 1:19
6. Requiem for a Victim 1:40
7. Nightmare Elegy 2:16
8. A Call from the World Outside 2:09
9. What Is Truth? 2:00
10. What Do You Want From Me? 2:05
11. Romance for a Wounded Soul 3:07
12. Psalmus Unico 1:57
13. Miserere Patris, Miserere 7:02
14. Why, Henrik, Why? 3:35
15. In Pace 1:56
16. Reconciliation 4:13
17. Adagio: Words of Love 6:27
18. Hymnus 0:57

ALBUM INFO

• Title: Psalm 21 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• Composer: Christer Christensson
• Catalogue no: Screamworks SWR11007
• Release date: November 1, 2011 (online) / November 8 (CD)

The album will be available on all digital platforms, including iTunes, Amazon and Spotify.

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TRACK LISTING

1. Tears at the Mirror 1.08
2. Making a Change 2.27
3. The Arrival 4.47
4. Love at First Touch 2.35
5. Day Out with Peg 1.33
6. Just Leave Me Alone 4.34
7. Nathan and the Tattoo 2.10
8. Girl Talk 1.59
9. I Love You & Bar Scene 2.33
10. Nathan Investigates 3.27
11. Old Photographs, Vacuums and Pop Rocks 4.21
12. Last Talk with Peg & Christmas Haze 2.26
13. Come Back to Bed 3.11
14. Coming Undone 1.16
15. Leave Us Alone 6.55
16. Tears and Razor Blades 2.03

ALBUM INFO

• Title: Comforting Skin (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• Composer: Alain Mayrand
• Catalogue no: Screamworks SWD0001
• Release date: October 18, 2011 (digital only)

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A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR

Anyone who knows me knows I am a soundtrack fanatic. Walk into my house, ride in my car, chances are film music is what you’ll hear playing. Scoring a film is an opportunity for a composer not only to help guide the journey of an audience, but also to add additional layers to what is occurring on screen. Yet film music often seems perfunctory and superficial.

Even in the script stage, it was apparent The Presence would be a challenging movie to score. With so little dialogue present in the movie, including a first act almost entirely without words, I knew the score would be more important than usual. This was exciting… and also a bit frightening. With so much ‘open space’ for music, the movie was in many ways a blank canvas. This provided wonderful opportunities to soar but also a lot of room for failure. There was a lot that could go wrong. We needed a gifted composer who would not be afraid to take some risks. As has become obvious to anyone who was seen The Presence, we were lucky enough to have such a composer in Conrad Pope.

Often in movies the soundtrack simply mimics what is occurring on screen, adding little to the images, action and dialogue. We did not want to take that approach. I also wanted a score that would help create a world the viewer would enter when watching the movie. But while I did not want music similar to a typical ‘scary movie’ score, I never imagined music as dreamy and lush as much of the music Conrad composed. The first track he turned in, “Mr. Browman Arrives”, actually threw me at first listen because it was so different than anything I heard in my head while writing and filming the movie. Yet that track was so beautiful and haunting, with wonderful subtle undertones of darkness, I could not stop listening.

When next I heard Conrad’s theme for the ghost – the lonely, melancholy theme on bassoon first heard in the opening title – I began to fall in love with Conrad’s approach: to focus on and support the emotional underpinnings of the story, rather than the superficial ghost story elements. He also wanted to deepen the dark romantic beauty of the film created by our remarkable DP, Collin Brink, and our production design team, led by the equally gifted Darcy Scanlin.

Conrad’s score is very much in line with the twisted fairy tale aspect of the film. His music is beautifully crafted, very original and often surprising. The music not only supports and adds to the movie, but like the cabin in which the movie takes place, becomes a character all its own. It is a remarkable achievement. I can’t wait to work with him again.

Tom Provost (writer/director)

TRACK LISTING

1. Main Title 1.47
2. First Night 3.00
3. The Outhouse 2.18
4. Mr. Browman Arrives 2.35
5. News Clipping 0.34
6. Dawn 2.51
7. Outhouse at Night 2.27
8. A Proposal 3.55
9. Whispers 1.12
10. Estrangement 1.07
11. Up the Stairs 4.35
12. Trapped 1.26
13. The Offer 1.29
14. Alienation 1.50
15. Epiphany 1.33
16. Let’s Have a Little Fun 1.44
17. Time to Act 0.58
18. Talking to the Dead 2.13
19. Confrontation 1.46
20. Revelation 3.26
21. Journey Back / End Credits 4.12

ALBUM INFO

• Title: The Presence (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• Composer: Conrad Pope
• Catalogue no: Screamworks SWR-11006
• Release date: October 4, 2011 (CD/online)

Ryan Shore and Screamworks Records are proud to announce that our album featuring the original score from The Shrine has been nominated for a Grammy by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in the category “Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media”.

MovieScore Media has released seven albums by Ryan Shore, including the acclaimed Rex Steele: Nazi Smasher, Headspace and Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. Our first CD together on the Screamworks label features Shore’s second score for Jack Brooks director Jon Knautz,The Shrine. For this story about a group of young journalists who investigate a cult said to practice human sacrifice, the composer goes into ominous “under-your-skin” territory in a way akin to his effective music for The Girl Next Door. The eerie score also features some gothic pipe organ music and, as a special treat for our album, the composer has made a special variation arrangement of this thematic material! Our soundtrack release co-incides with the VOD and theatrical release of the film, distributed in the US by IFC Midnight.

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ABOUT THE SCORE

Ryan Shore’s second feature film score for director Jon Knautz, following the acclaimed “old-school” orchestral score for Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer (available on CD from MovieScore Media), the music for The Shrine explores even darker sides of the composer. Closer stylistically to his acclaimed music for The Girl Next Door and Headspace, the score for The Shrine is an atmospheric, hauntingly eerie listening experience.

“The Shrine is a serious thriller/dramatic narrative with dark, cult-like, solemn undercurrents. This film is a slow burn that gets underneath you in a subconscious way. Musical ideas in The Shrine are able to take their time in developing. This mirrors the way the characters are slowly deepening and irreversibly intertwining themselves into the small town they are exploring.”

The musical backbone of the score is centered around a very specific interval. Ryan Shore explains: “Ultimately The Shrine is about the awesome responsibility and power that comes with evil. In music, there is an interval known as a “tritone”.  Specifically, it is the exact middle between the two ends of the octave (six semitones from the bottom, and six semitones from the top), and it has a very peculiar, unsettling, and unresolved sound. For the past many centuries this interval has had the description of “diabolus in music” or “the devil in music”, and composers strongly avoided using it in their compositions. Knowing of this historical connection to the devil, I decided to build an entire score around it for The Shrine.”

Already heard in the first piece, “The Shrine,” the tritone is stated very simply in three notes heard in the lowest registers – first as the tonic, then to the fifth, and then to the tritone – all in a crescendoing downward motion. “I wanted it to mirror the downward motion of the eye spikes in the mask that the are used for human sacrifice within the film – almost as though this musical phrase was the deep plunging of the mask’s spikes themselves. This three note figure reoccurs throughout the score.”

Ryan Shore conceived the score to function, figuratively, as one large crescendo. He says: “Much in the same way when you sense something is wrong – it first comes to you as a whisper, and then gradually grows in intensity until it can no longer be denied.”

In terms of colors, the composer also employed the use of a mixed choir “to underpin the religious tone of the townspeople’s rituals” and there is also original music for pipe organ. “When we first are introduced to the cult leaders, they are attending a religious service in an old Eastern church on the countryside. I composed an original prelude for pipe organ which can be heard off in the distance coming from the hallows of the cathedral. For this album, I revisited this music, further developing it, building upon it’s themes, and writing a resolved denouement as heard in the final piece, ‘Polish Variations’.”

TRACK LISTING

1. The Shrine 3.28
2. Polish Prelude 1.25
3. Eric Taylor 1.15
4. The Chase 2.14
5. A Dense Fog 1.54
6. Henryk 1.41
7. Hunted in the Lodge 1.59
8. The Torture Ceremony 4.36
9. Henryk Chases Marcus 1.40
10. Carmen’s Spiral 7.09
11. Crucifixion 6.18
12. The Curse 3.49
13. Polish Variations 2.42

ALBUM INFO

• Title: The Shrine (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• Composer: Ryan Shore
• Catalogue no: Screamworks SWR-11005
• Release date: July 5, 2011 (online) / July 12 (CD)

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ABOUT THE SCORE

Resulting in one of the most unusual and refreshing approaches to horror film scoring in recent time, composer Daniel Alcheh and director Matthew Roth decided to give The Man Who Collected Food a twofold score: one part neo-baroque, the other traditional horror underscore. A quirky horror comedy, the multiple award-winning film tells the story of a man who is an obsessive food collector, and resorts to the atrocious act of cannibalism. Daniel Alcheh responded enthusiastically to the director’s idea of having several scenes scored with newly written baroque-style music. “The main cue of that group, ‘The Dagger,’ was a long, bloody, multi-person murder scene, all with a wink, of course. It was completely shot in slow motion, with no sound or dialogue. It was all to be carried by this very fast, vicious baroque cue juxtaposed against the visuals,” Daniel Alcheh explains. “We took it to the next level by scoring the scene to picture so that every musical twist and turn goes perfectly together with the action. The string players were working really hard – it was not an easy piece to play in a short recording session. But when these things work, they really work! You have to give a big kudos to the director for coming up with the initial brilliant idea.”

While the score may come across as disparate in terms of stylistic idioms, it actually holds together strongly on a thematic and harmonic level. “Once we knew we would have these disparate musical styles, I wanted to use every tool a composer has, to give the score cohesiveness, to help it all gel together for the listener’s ear, even if it is almost subliminal,” Alcheh said. “I came up with a short motif, namely a falling interval of a fifth followed by a rising three-note scale that makes up the opening credits theme. Then I infused practically every cue with this motif. Sometimes it is out in the open – you can hear it as the clarinet melody in ‘Kelvin’s Confession,’ the motif in ‘La Caccia,’ the Oboe d’Amore in ‘Visitation Rights,’ the piano in ‘Miguel’s Lucky Day,’ the violin solo in ‘Last Food Convention’… And then sometimes, it hides in counter melodies and inner voices where it is hard to notice it unless you’re really listening for it. I think together with a few other themes that are repeating, this helps hold everything together much more cohesively than if each cue would be a totally distinct, separate piece melodically and harmonically.”

Scoring dark comedy can be a tricky task for a composer. How much of the comedy can be signaled without ruining the darkness of the scene, and the other way around: how much of the darkness can be addressed without killing the comedy effect? Daniel Alcheh: “The film is definitely a dark comedy – if you’re a fan of blood and guts, this is a horror film for you! – so even the comedic elements have some underlying edge to them, but in many scenes, while the visual and dialogue had the humorous twist, the music kept the serious tone underneath, and exactly that contrast added to the absurdist, gory, horror-comedy impact. Some cues are totally on the comedic side, like ‘Kelvin’s Story’ and ‘First Food Convention,’ which is a light and happy romp through a supermarket.”

Winning the Best Feature Film and Best Actor awards at the Chicago Horror Film Festival and Eerie Horror Film Festival as well as the Best Director award at the Indy Horror Film Festival, “The Man Who Collected Food” stars Mike Kelly and is written and directed by Matthew Roth.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Dagger: Theme from “The Man Who Collected Food” 2.49
2. Opening Credits 1.49
3. First Food Convention 1.11
4. Dinner Home Alone 3.24
5. Kelvin’s Story 1.39
6. Group Therapy 1.14
7. Alien’s Escape 1.10
8. La Caccia 2.15
9. The Chair 2.32
10. Kelvin’s Confession 1.41
11. Sneaking In & Anamnesis 3.48
12. Miguel’s Lucky Day 2.34
13. Indecision 1.34
14. Visitation Rights 1.14
15. Finishing Off Mother 2.14
16. Last Food Convention 1.12
17. You Can’t Eat Us 1.11
18. Miguel’s Worst Nightmare 1.56
19. The Breakout 3.35
20. The Dagger: Reprise 2.25
21. New Food Fridays 0.07

ALBUM INFO

• Title: The Man Who Collected Food (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• Composer: Daniel Alcheh
• Catalogue no: Screamworks SWR-11004
• Release date: June 28, 2011 (CD/online)

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WHAT THE CRITICS SAY

“David Julyan’s chilling score is appropriately haunting and tentative without intruding or telegraphing the horrors to come.” - Independent Film Analysis

“David Julyan’s affecting score hovers under some moments and soars during others.” - NY Daily News

ABOUT THE SCORE

The winner of the prestigious Silver Menier Prize as well as three major awards at the 2010 Fantasporto Festival (best film, director and actor), Philip Ridley’s Heartless is an unusual genre movie starring Jim Sturgess as Jamie Morgan, an isolated and sensitive young man with a large heart-shaped birthmark on his face. One day Jamie learns that there is no randomness about the chaotic gang violence that dominates the urban world he lives in. There is a reason for everything. This is where Jamie’s nightmare begins – and where David Julyan’s subtle score for the film really starts to get under your skin.

The British composer is completely in his element in Heartless. His dark and mesmerizing scores have deepened the emotional impact of many thrillers and horror films, including the two Descent movies and three films by acclaimed director Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige). For Heartless, Julyan wrote a beautiful and haunting score that made an emotional connection to the main character. “The director wanted to avoid the flashbacks to the dad being creepy, none of the tension from the rest of the score was appropriate there – these were about Jamie’s loss and love for his father, his recalling of happier times,” David Julyan says. “I wanted the score to take us on Jamie’s personal journey, his search for happiness.” The score features his signature mix of acoustic elements and densely organic electronic textures. In terms of themes, Heartless doesn’t feature any big horror motifs. “I wanted the sparseness to the theme for Demons In The Dark, the sense of isolation of a city at night. We wanted an intimate score so decided to use only an ensemble of eight strings.”

Another function of the score was to provide pulse to the storytelling and pacing. David explained: “One of the main elements is what I call a ticking clock, lots of electronic percussion with long delays on it. We wanted to subtly drive the movie forward and also give a sense of time running out.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Heartless: Main Titles 3.02
2. Demons in the Dark 3.09
3. Journey to Cendrillon 3.04
4. Papa B 4.53
5. New Skin 1.37
6. Weapons Man 1.35
7. Magical Tree 2.39
8. It’s Ten O’Clock 3.26
9. You’re Beautiful 1.31
10. Papa B Returns 4.35
11. Run, Jamie, Run! 3.00
12. I’m Not Afraid 4.50
13. So Many Stars 3.07
14. Into the Dark 1.12

ALBUM INFO

• Title: Heartless (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• Composer: David Julyan
• Catalogue no: Screamworks SWR-11003
• Release date: June 21, 2011 (online) / June 28, 2011 (CD)

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WHAT THE CRITICS SAY

“Nathaniel Levisay’s score is a fresh horror assault that will make you squirm. It has great precision in certain moments even if  the grand arc ends with a thump.” - Film Music Media

“We think Nathaniel Levisay is going to be a big composer. His style is unique, his music is full of professionalism. So, mind you head and get lost in the thrilling new score Dawning.” - Soundtrack Magazine

“From reverberating banging, to thundering pounding, to the echo of a piano key, Levisay has created a unique blend of music and an atmospheric sound-scape.” – Kitley’s Krypt

ABOUT THE SCORE

Taking place at a Northern Minnesota lake cabin, Gregg Holtgrewe’s Dawning is a terrifying psychological horror drama where the dynamics of a complicated relationship between a brother, sister, their father and step-mom is explored as a mysterious stranger appears and tells the family that he has come to save them…not telling them from what.

“There are things in this film that are traditional devices, but they are only a springboard into a much deeper pool of psychological tension,” says composer Nathaniel Levisay. “One of the many unique things in the script that scintillates on screen is a sense of wonderment. There is something noble, something to be revered or respected in this primordial ‘evil’ that plagues this family out in the woods.”

Prior to Nathaniel Levisay’s scoring of the film, the director had temp-tracked the film with music by minimalist composer Arvo Pärt and avant garde icon Krzysztof Penderecki. “It was not filled with scores from other films. His decision somehow put me in a different place psychologically.”

Certainly, Levisay’s music for Dawning has more in common with modernist concert music than traditional film scores. “I began from my first impressions of the film, how it affected me. The overall impact upon me was that this film does need a mostly aleatoric support line, but something that is cinematic as well. Some of the music was written traditionally and other parts were created in a way reflective of musique concrète.”

There are no musical themes as such in the Dawning score, but there is, for instance, a piano chord arpeggiated which is used here and there throughout “as a sort of lamenting reflection of the corporeal innocence of life that is being decimated as the film plays on. The other motif is a very low bass drone that creeps in when this eclipsing ‘evil’ is near, or rampant, or receding…this is a subtle, almost subconscious musical element that really raises the tension level several notches as soon as your ears and your brain get a hint of it.”

Levisay recorded the score with live piano and smaller groups “made to sound as a larger whole, or made to sound like they are from another planet” in combination with some samples. The result is one of the creepiest and most challenging film scores in recent time.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dawning & Main Title 3.01
2. I Love You 2.17
3. Can’t Trust Chris With a Gun 2.04
4. The Man 3.00
5. Are You God Now? 1.58
6. Was It Beautiful? 3.57
7. She’s Dead… 2.48
8. You’re Tearing Us Apart! 4.51
9. Aurora 2.17
10. We’re All Going to Die & End Titles 4.07

ALBUM INFO

• Title: Dawning (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• Composer: Nathaniel Levisay
• Catalogue no: Screamworks SWR-11002
• Release date: May 31, 2011 (CD/online)

Screamworks Records’ first release is a very strong soundtrack: the postapocalyptic-vampire-roadmovie (!) Stake Land, composed by the brilliant Jeff Grace (The House of the Devil, I Sell the Dead, The Last Winter). This is an intriguing work that combines elements of folk Americana, intimate piano music and aggressive orchestral action music. The album is available on CD and online following the US release of the film in April 2011 and coming out just before the UK theatrical release on June 17.

PURCHASE THIS ALBUM!

PURCHASE CD at Screen Archives • DOWNLOAD at iTunes

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY

“Jeff Grace’s score pick up the slack, smoothly maintaining an unstable atmosphere of lurking horror.” - New York Times

“Standing out among the strong craft credits is Jeff Grace’s evocative score.” - Variety

“Jeff Grace’s score provides rich and flavorful accompaniment.” - Fangoria

ABOUT THE SCORE

Conceiving his ninth feature film score for independent horror producer Larry Fessenden, and his first for director Jim Mickle, New York-based composer Jeff Grace (The House of the Devil, The Last Winter, I Sell the Dead) wrote his most eclectic and multi-faceted score so far. Known for his inventive avant garde work on genre movies such as The Roost and Joshua, Grace ventured into other stylistic areas in his work for Stake Land. “For lack of a better term, we’ve been calling it a post-apocalyptic-vampire-road movie,” Jeff Grace says. “But, there’s a lot more to it than that. There are a lot of other influences on the filmmaking. The film feels like some westerns and is much more character driven than most horror films. The vampires are also more reptilian or zombie-like.”

In Stake Land, America is a lost nation where humans find themselves on the run from vicious, feral beasts. Teen-aged Martin, whose parents have recently been killed, is taken in by a grizzled, wayward hunter through the locked-down towns of America’s heartland. “The characters are heading north to an area in Canada rumored to be free of vampires. Jim Mickle brought up the idea of the characters essentially traveling to more primitive times as they head farther north into more remote areas. And as they travel, the characters also become more of a family and more intimate. With those main points in mind, the score becomes sparser and more intimate as they move along, overall,” Jeff Grace explains.

The composer and director discussed the mood of the score and wanted to combine an Americana feel “to speak to the small towns and countryside they travel through,” more intimate material which “speaks to the characters’ isolation and the sadness of what they’ve lost,” and darker elements “to reflect the vampires, the idea of night, and especially the darker side of man.”

Director Jim Mickle says that he “wanted the score to have an Americana feel that could invoke a dustbowl, depression era rather than pushing for a futuristic apocalypse. It should feel homegrown almost like the music was created by whatever instruments were left over. I temped the film with a lot of different flavors and styles, and it sometimes felt like the movie could wind up feeling like it had an identity crisis, but Jeff found a way to combine all of these elements organically and worked themes and styles off of each other so well, it blew away my expectations.”

Among the many unique ideas realized in the score is a cello effect used in “The Brotherhood”. “Dave Eggar and I are always looking for new sounds,” Jeff Grace says. “He told me about this weird technique he was trying by pulling on the strings, it sounded fantastically freaky, so I wrote a melody right there and threw some delay on it.”

Other key elements of the score is the piano material for the intimate moments, and the Americana music for fiddle and guitars. But perhaps the funniest aspect of the score is the following. Anyone who watched the World Cup in 2010 knows the piercing sound of the South Afrcian vuvuzela, and Stake Land might very well be the first film score to feature this sound. “The vampire attacks get that held brass note – I was watching the World Cup when I wrote that and actually layered in some vuvuzela!” Jeff Grace says.

TRACK LISTING

1. Main Title 1.32
2. Lockdown Town 2.37
3. Orphans 1.33
4. Barn Attack 1.22
5. Sister Agatha 2.10
6. The Brotherhood 4.57
7. Nothing Out There 1.57
8. Belle and the New Family 1.45
9. Scamp 1.21
10. Willie 1.29
11. Jebediah Done In 2.42
12. Leaving Strivington 2.40
13. Moving North 2.09
14. Alarm Trigger 2.15
15. Sister Is Gone 1.51
16. Thinking Vamp 1.20
17. Not Your Daddy 1.29
18. Taken 1.56
19. Showdown 1.30
20. Goodbye Belle 1.39
21. A World With No Vamps 0.57
22. Martin and Peggy 1.26
23. A New Life 1.05
24. New Eden 1.29
25. Strivington Band 2.17
26. Training 0.46

ALBUM INFO

• Title: Stake Land (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• Composer: Jeff Grace
• Catalogue no: Screamworks SWR-11001
• Release date: May 24, 2011 (CD/online)