Soundtrax: Episode 2023-04
Special Edition
June, 2023
Feature Interview:
- EXTRACTION 2: The Action Film Music of Alex Belcher
Interview by Randall D. Larson
News Features:
• Film & TV Music News
• New Soundtrack News
• Documentary Film & Soundtrack News
• Vinyl Soundtracks
• Game Music News & Soundtracks
Reviews and additional Film Music News will resume in my July-August column
A Kentucky native, Alex Belcher spent years working under famed composer Henry Jackman after studying at Belmont University and Berklee College of Music. Together they’ve co-composed on feature films such as the recent Netflix action-thriller EXTRACTION, starring Chris Hemsworth, and 21 BRIDGES which were both produced by Joe and Anthony Russo, as well as the Netflix sci-fi film IO. His first solo venture was in composing the score to director James D’Arcy’s British-Italian comedy, MADE IN ITALY. Recently Alex partnered up again with Joe and Anthony Russo as the composer for the action-packed Amazon series CITADEL starring Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jones.
With an action-packed pedigree, Belcher’s other credits include writing additional music for CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, KINGSMEN: THE SECRET SERVICE and THE GOLDEN CIRCLE, KONG: SKULL ISLAND, THE PREDATOR (2018), and JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE. He has also written music for the UNCHARTED video game series and produced Henry’s score for the war drama feature MOSUL, also produced by the Russo Brothers.
As a young man growing up in Kentucky,?Alex pursued music as well as theatrical acting, eventually realizing that he could combine his love of music and passion for storytelling to become a film score composer and studied at Belmont University and Berklee College of Music.
“What I loved about?theatre was the storytelling,” Belcher said. “Film scoring was such a great discovery for me because, in its purest form, it’s musical storytelling… so it didn’t take long for me to realize that that’s what I wanted to do.”
His latest score is for EXTRACTION 2, a film which demanded a score of immense depth and complexity. Belcher’s music effortlessly traverses through heart-stopping action sequences, delicate character moments and spine-chilling suspense, enhancing the emotional impact in the gripping narrative. His score captures the personal stakes that Tyler Rake’s mission will thrust upon him while also peeling back the layers of the character.
Watch the EXTRACTION 2trailer:
IO (2019): In a post-apocalyptic time, the Earth has been rendered toxic, and most of humanity has abandoned the planet and colonized one of Jupiter's moons, IO. But young scientist Sam Walden has stayed behind and dedicated herself to finding a way for human beings to survive on Earth.
Q: How did your association with Henry Jackman begin, from your experience and technique in scoring films on your own – and how was it moving up from additional music into co-composer on the science fiction film IO in 2019?
Alex Belcher: Yeah, obviously that was a big deal for me, getting my own name on a film. I’d worked closely with Henry for years before that, like you said, doing additional music as well as sound design and programming before that, but it meant a lot. Collaborating with him in that way was a lot of fun, and then over the years that sort of collaboration continued on other projects and still continues to this day.
IO was sci-fi, but at the same time it was a lot more intimate than most giant blockbuster sci-fi films that were being made at that time. There were just two characters in the story, so it was very intimate, and it almost felt like a play. We treated it a little bit more like an indie theatrical Broadway play as opposed to this giant, epic sci-fi thing – even though the story surrounding that world was gigantic and it was a worldwide event, it was really just the point of view of two people. It was a lot of fun in that we got to be really intimate in a giant landscape of a story.
Q: How did you share the workload on this feature film and how did the two of you create the musical palette for its dramatic science fictionesque story and environment?
Alex Belcher: That seems to vary on every project. We’ve both worked together for thirteen years now, on and off, so we know each other’s strengths, we know each other’s weaknesses, we know what somebody might prefer doing as opposed to maybe not the type of scene that the other one likes to do. I don’t remember exactly how that played out on IO but I do remember a lot of back and forth, like “Hey, what about this idea?” and going into Henry’s studio and then coming back into mine, and then going back into Henry’s… a lot of ideas passing around in a super laid back casual way, and that’s still kind of how we work to this day. I think we learned to do that on IO.
As far as the musical palette goes on that one, we wrote a lot for three cellos, which we found worked really well in being a motive and being intimate. At the same time, we were able to work in some synths and some more production elements to give it a little bit of a coat of sci-fi, but underneath it all was still this more soloistic type writing that we were relying on. We did use a bit of an orchestra – I flew to Budapest and recorded in there, so as the movie opened up and got bigger we were able to use larger sections and a bigger orchestra which helped the narrative in that way.
21 BRIDGES (2019): An embattled NYPD detective is thrust into a citywide manhunt for a pair of cop killers after uncovering a massive and unexpected conspiracy.
Q: Subsequently to IO, you and Henry worked together on 2019’s 21 BRIDGES. You’ve obviously worked with Henry on action films in the past – how would you describe your technique in scoring this picture and how you applied music to that film?
Alex Belcher: Any time you do a film that’s based in New York or where New York City is a character in an of itself, you have to treat it with a little bit of respect, and there’s a certain instrumentation and a stylistic approach that’s synonymous with New York. From the get-go, we wanted the score to reflect New York’s musical background, so we used a lot of drums, guitar, trumpet, and things that pull a little bit from the jazz genre and a little bit from the blues genre – but at the same time, knowing that we’re making this action/heist/thriller film, we peppered in orchestra to fill the gaps where we needed it. That’s where we talked, early on, with Joe and Anthony Russo, who produced it, and later with Brian Kirk, the director, about how we could make New York a part of this film musically. We didn’t want to make a complete jazz score, while that would have been fun to do, it wouldn’t have been quite right because of the thriller aspect the show had. So a lot of the early suites that Henry and I wrote were really going back and forth on trying to toe that line and see how far in one direction can we go – how far can we go thriller before pulling back, how far can we get a little bit of jazz influence or a little bit of New York nightlife influence before we have to pull back.
Same thing for all the action sequences. Those were probably the toughest, because when you think of cinematic action music, you have your bread-and-butter big drums, big orchestra, big brass section, and string ostinatos. While we did use a lot of that stuff, we still had to, again, put that New York flavor on it. So that was a lot of experimentation on what worked and what didn’t. I think the end result is a score that I am very proud of. For me, that was one of the most fun scores to write that I’ve had in my career.
Listen to “Grand Central” from 21 BRIDGES, via YouTube:
EXTRACTION (2020): Tyler Rake, a fearless black-market mercenary, embarks on the deadliest extraction of his career when he’s enlisted to rescue the kidnapped son of an imprisoned international crime lord.
Q: How was it working with Henry on EXTRACTION in 2020? How did you work together with director Sam Hargrave on applying the kind of music he wanted for this film?
Alex Belcher: That happened right around the time we were finishing up 21 BRIDGES, so that was this really, really fun departure. It was night and day in terms of the style of music. I think it was Sam, it could have been Joe [Russo, co-writer/co-producer], early on, I think before they even started shooting, it was talking about the character of Rake, that he’s resourceful, he could kill you with anything laying around the room. That idea, I remember, really stuck with me, and I wanted to somehow represent that musically, so the idea of misappropriating instruments was something Henry and I came up with. I grabbed a cello – I’ve never played a cello in my entire life – and we pressed record and spent a couple of weeks just making weird sounds on the cello, again, not knowing what I was doing! Then we started producing those sounds and turning them into different overly-produced, tape-saturated sounds, and what we ended up with, which I think is cool, was this big, massive sort of production sounding score, but at the same time it all started with organic elements, with me on a cello in the studio, which then became processed. And the result, I think, was something that really helped tell that story of Rake as this resourceful sort of guy… he meanders around, he takes a gig, he goes and does that job, it’s all another job for him and he does whatever he can with whatever he has, and at the end of day he still gets the job done.
Listen to the “Prelude” from EXTRACTION, via YouTube:
For Sam, that was a big part of the story that he wanted to tell. Yes, it’s Chris Hemsworth looking very, very handsome and beating up a bunch of people. Sam shot it and he conceived of the action in a way where he didn’t want it to feel like any other blockbuster where you have a hunk on screen doing very masculine things. He wanted the action to be more intimate, and that was something he reiterated from day one. That’s hard to do, and somehow to stick the landing on doing that with the cinematography and with the stunt coordination and with Chris’s acting. So, when it came time to do the music, we tried to do that same thing, to add a little emotion on there amongst all the chaotic action scenes. We had a lot of fun, again, experimenting, trying to find new ways to do things or new techniques to get to the same end that we might have in any other action films.
Q: There’s an interesting mix of bendable, driving percussion elements shifting into more persuasive mixes of drums, metallic elements, and looming synth lines, as in “Rake Cleans House.” Would you describe that a little bit?
Alex Belcher: Yeah, “Rake Cleans House,” that was a fun track to write! In the scene where that music is played under in EXTRACTION 1, that’s the introduction to what he can do – his introduction to the audience. A lot of that percussion was actually, again, starting with the misappropriation, we went to a junk yard and sampled us breaking glass, flipping over giant semi-truck tires and beating on sheet metal. We processed those metallic sounds – bounced them to tape, oversaturated that tape, distorted them, ran them through guitar amps. We did a lot of production things to give them a little bit of a synth element, but again it all started with an organic recording, not something that was just created by a plug-in. I think – or I hoped – that worked really well in giving this very organic flavor to Rake. The biggest thing for that track in that scene, was tempo. We talked about Rake being a freight train – he’s simply unstoppable. Once he starts going there’s no stopping him! That was the idea of the tempo of that track, we set it really fast and let it blast through the entire scene without ever changing. In film music, if you look at our tempo maps, they’ll go up or down a couple BPM to make it sound realistic, and then there’ll be a chapter shift and you’ll have to slow it down. But for that cue, it was just one steady, really fast tempo.
Listen to “Rake Cleans House” from EXTRACTION, via YouTube:
Q: The music for Mumbai Prison is especially evocative with its menacing, very low string lines. How did that music come about?
Alex Belcher: It was a line that I wrote on piano, so I had the tune, and I put that on solo cello. When I started programming it sounded, too, not classical, but it sounded too nice. And then Henry and I were questioning, ok, does that tune not work? And I said, ‘hang on a second, let me just grab the cello and let me figure out how to play it, again.’ I cannot reiterate enough; I do not know how to play the cello! But somehow it ended up being really haunting and sort of working. Again, it was this misappropriated use of a traditional instrument, so when you do that, what we found was the sound and the tone and the rosin is familiar enough where it’s not distracting from the scene, but at the same time, with me doing it, not knowing what I’m doing, added something that just made it a little bit fresh and a little more interesting than it may have been, otherwise.
MADE IN ITALY (2020): A bohemian artist travels from London to Italy with his estranged son to sell the house they inherited from their late wife/mother.
Q: Was MADE IN ITALY a pleasant change for you, as a dramatic comedy/romance, and how was it working with director James D’Arcy?
Alex Belcher: James is just a delight to work with; he’s a famously talented actor. I was in the middle of EXTRACTION 1 and Joe Russo called me – he and James had worked together in the past – and he said ‘Hey, I’ve got this friend of mine, he’s directing his first film and he’s looking for a composer, and I just thought of you and that the two of you should meet.’ I think we were recording EXTRACTION in London at the time, where James lives, and so we met up for a coffee and hit it off right off the bat. That’s how our friendship and collaborative relationship began. As far as music, MAID IN ITALY was a lot of different things. It was a comedy, it was a drama, it was quirky, it was a romance, and we had to tick all of those boxes, musically. It’s another one of towing the line – when you’ve got one that’s all over the place with genres like that, it makes for a great story but as a composer it can make it hard to know what to do. So, what we spent a lot of time on was, again, testing the waters. How quirky can we make Liam Neeson feel in this before it starts to get silly? Or how seriously can we take this performance before we need the music to help pull us back a little bit?
For me, I am a film composer, but a lot of what I do and what I think I enjoy the most is storytelling and using music to that end. For all of these projects, it’s working with the director and their creative vision on how they want the audience to feel, what they want to take away from the film, how they want the performances of the actors to come across to the audience, and how music can help tell that story of what they’re seeing on screen, help tell a different story, mislead the audience – so that’s what James and I really spent a lot of time doing, realizing “Okay, all of this that’s happening on screen. This is a morose sort of background music – the story at heart there is pretty tragic, but we still need to have fun – so how to we do that and let the audience know that its okay to laugh in some of these moments, and it’s okay to cry in some of the other funnier moments – even though they’re funny and happening in a serious sort of context. It was great working on that movie and testing my boundaries, not having done a lot of romantic comedies or dramedies.
THE CONTRACTOR (2022): A discharged U.S. Special Forces sergeant, James Harper, risks everything for his family when he joins a private contracting organization.
Q: With THE CONTRACTOR you were on your own, with director Tarik Saleh. How did you approach scoring this film, which starts with a somewhat gloomy and unsettling beginning, gradually opening up as the story moves along?
Alex Belcher: When I was pitching for that, they sent me the opening of the movie and they were like – ‘Would you want to take a stab of writing this opening?’ They had temp music in there and it was starting very dark and ominous and going in a way that, when I watched it, I decided, ‘I’m going to try something else.’ And so, I came up with this little piano motif which starts the movie and then becomes one of the main emotional riffs throughout the film. Apparently, they responded really well to that, as a kind of fresh take on not quite a synth-driven and very ominous intro to a film, but something that is a little more like telling the audience, “Hey, this is a very serious story, you need to pay attention to this!” The fun fact about THE CONTRACTOR is that we didn’t have a lot of time. I think that was the shortest time in which I’ve ever done a film. I did it in four weeks! And it was the four weeks before my wedding! Tarik and Jason Markey, he was the head of music at STX at the time, called me, I remember Jason calling, saying ‘We’d love to hire you on this and have you do it, but it’s a four-week turnaround.’ And I was, like, ‘Jason you know I’m getting married in four weeks!’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ I said ‘And I know you know that because you’re coming to the wedding! You’re having the chicken!’ So it was a chaotic time writing that, but it was so freeing, in a way too, because everyone knew it was an all hands on deck with the filmmakers, the editors, the studio, knowing that we had to get there in the end and knowing I had a hard out because I was getting married and going on my honeymoon! But it worked out, and Jason got to do a little toast afterwards, on the night of my wedding, “Here’s to getting married and finishing a film in record time!”
Q: What was your musical palette here? Your mix of percussive-like tonalities with those wiry synth lines in “Salim Moshin” give it a great portent of danger.
Alex Belcher: Yeah. We didn’t have a massive budget for that one and, again, we didn’t have the time to go out and spend two weeks in London recording. I knew right off the bat that we couldn’t get away with a lot of virtuosic orchestra because a lot of it was going to be sampled, though we did sprinkle in some stuff here and there. Again, percussion’s got to play a big role in this, so it was a lot of me recording stuff around the studio. We had a lot of very close-miked ticky-tocky things, and it was like pencils on a desk or on a Coke can or something like that. Doing something that’s not groundbreaking, like playing 16th notes to push us through a thriller scene, but at the same time I tried to do it in a way that was more interesting than just pulling up a sample library and going about it that way. And, again, I love working under restraints so, to go back to 21 BRIDGES, the entire idea for THE CONTRACTOR is we were going to use a six-note scale, so it’s a harmonic minor-scale, which is usually seven notes but without the second scale degree, so its six notes. You can listen to the entire score and you’ll never hear that 9th (or if you’re in the key of C, harmonic-minor, you won’t ever hear that D). And putting those limits on myself forces me to make really creative discoveries and soft solutions in a way that you might not otherwise. That was true on 21 BRIDGES until the very last cue – Henry and I were looking at it and going, ‘Ok, we can’t get the emotion that we need,’ and then it was like ‘OK, now is when we break our rule. Now we introduce this 9th that we’ve waited the entire film to use’ – and all of a sudden using that one note is just a big relief. It’s like aaahhh, now we’re at the end! And so, with THE CONTRACTOR, time was really the big boundary that was put on me, and again, it forces you to make creative decisions and resourcefully solve problems. I think this score’s a product of that.
Listen to the prelude from THE CONTRACTOR, via YouTube:
CITADEL (2023 series): Global spy agency Citadel has fallen, and its agents’ memories were wiped clean. Now the powerful syndicate, Manticore, is rising in the void. Can the Citadel agents recollect their past and summon the strength to fight back?
Q: CITADEL was a very interesting series, both a spy espionage actioner and a mystery as Nadia and Mason’s pasts are gradually revealed. How did you accommodate the way the timelines change to gradually tell its current and background stories?
Alex Belcher: A lot of that was through misdirecting the audience a little bit at the very beginning. We have to set up this world during the opening fifteen minutes of the show, and introduce the audience to the world of CITADEL, a world they know nothing about. It’s the first fifteen minutes of a brand new franchise, and so we leaned a little more heavily into the romantic sort of classic espionage, and then as more is revealed, we got to musically slip into something that’s a little more mysterious, a little more thriller aspect, to go, oh wait, I thought I knew what this world was, but now I’m realizing that this show is something else. That was a way to keep it interesting, and that was something we spent a lot of time on, with David Weil, the creator and showrunner, and Joe & Anthony Russo and I talking. A lot of it was… the first fifteen minutes are the most important, otherwise the rest of the series won’t work. We’ve got to do a bit of misdirection and it’s got to be its own thing. It’s the introduction to the idea of Citadel, and then what we have to do is take them on a musical journey to what Citadel actually is and what this relationship between Nadia and Mason actually is.
Listen to the Main Theme from CITADEL, via YouTube:
Q: What are the main themes and motifs of the CITADEL series, and how have you developed them across the first season?
Alex Belcher: There’s the main title theme, which we really use as Citadel’s theme, and that developed and changed a little bit as far as the instrumentation goes – sometimes it’s giant and orchestral, it’s a very lyrical tune, a very single tune, which is what I wanted from the beginning. Sometimes it’s on just a piano, sometimes it’s a full orchestra, and I remember early on when I read the script, Joe Russo said ‘we’ve got to have orchestra for every scene in every episode!’ That’s a big budget; it’s a series and we don’t usually get that, but I got everything that I asked for! We recorded full strings, winds, brass, and percussion on every episode, in London at Air Studios! So we had that palette to work with, and we knew that I could use themes in different ways and with different instrumentations – I had that ability to change as we needed to.
One of the other things was Nadia’s theme, which is the very first thing you hear in the show. It’s this big waltz, a little jazzy sort of influenced waltz, and it’s got her tune in it. That was the one that probably morphed the most because it’s really only a couple note figure; it’s similar to the main Citadel theme but we wanted her to have a theme of her own because she’s such a strong character – and by the way, Priyanka’s performance is legendary and will go down in history, in my opinion, as just one of the best in the spy genre. So that changed, and then the big one, the main Manticore theme that we used for the “bad guys,” was able to morph as we learned more about them. So, I had this octatonic theme, which exists in this very dense harmonic language, and I morphed it. Once we find out who is and isn’t the bad guy, we were able to morph that into other themes and do this delicate weaving of that tune. So that was one I’m very proud of – but there’ll probably be just three film music majors at Berkeley, nerds like me, who’ll catch it!
Listen to the track “They Meet” from CITADEL, via YouTube:
EXTRACTION 2 (2023): After barely surviving his grievous wounds from his mission in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Tyler Rake is back, and his team is ready to take on their next mission.
Q: Where did you begin in scoring EXTRACTION 2, and how did you reconfigure the sequel’s themes and new musical material and sonic palette?
Alex Belcher: That’s a great question. We started early on with first footage and getting a rough cut – we did this on the first movie, as well, when Sam’s shooting. It’s basically dailies with a little bit of work done to get things in order and he started sending me stuff. We started by throwing the EXTRACTION 1 soundtrack over everything, just to see what works from the first one, because the first EXTRACTION was a hit, the score seemed to work reasonably well – I hope! – so what from that can we use, because we didn’t want to do a complete about face and go a different direction. It’s the same characters and it’s the same world and the same genre. We wanted to preserve what worked before but then put our own take on the second film. That’s where it started – taking the old score and treating it like temp music to see, okay, what’s working, what’s not working in this sequel, and where are the holes? What other themes do we need, and it became evident pretty quickly what we could use and what we couldn’t use. The emotional theme from the first one – we didn’t assign it to any specific character, we called it the families in loss theme, because it seemed to work really well for any time any of the characters were dealing with loss or with family drama. We knew that that one could work with this one, because we’re finding out more in EXTRACTION 2 about Rake’s past and about his family and about the losses he’s experienced.
A lot of what was different in this one was, obviously, the setting. EXTRACTION 1 was really embedded in Dhaka [Bangladesh], so there were a lot of the percussive rhythms. We didn’t go too far into doing locale music, but it was influenced by what you were seeing on screen, so we knew we had to rethink that. We talked about E-1, when we were finding junkyard percussion, we did the same thing here, we just did it with different pieces. We liked that idea of repurposing the cello stuff that I did on E-1, so we did some more of that for E-2 but we used different instruments. We used some brass instruments, we used some random horns – like plastic horns, not a vuvuzela [stadium horn] but something similar – and doing that sort of thing. And then when it came to the brothers, who are the antagonists in EXTRACTION 2, we knew they needed a new treatment, and that was one we spent a lot of time going, ‘Okay, this is the big new element, because these are new players on this stage and they’ve got a completely different background than our adversaries on the first one, so how would we treat them in an EXTRACTION way? How did they exist in this world but yet still are different and new?’ A lot of that was still the main theme – like I did in the Mumbai Prison in EXTRACTION 1 where I played the cello, this one was on viola, and I played the main theme for Zorub on viola – and, again, it didn’t work when I played it normally, because, having done all of that, I’ve gotten a little bit better at string playing – but still terrible! But I just flipped it and I played it with the wrong hand, and then you get this varied, sort of jagged, terribly performed, yet haunted sound that’s coming out of the viola, and used that for them.
The adversaries in E-1 were scary bad guys and you knew it and you knew what they were capable of, and they were in your face about it. With the adversaries in E-2, one of the things that I love about these bad guys is, they’re quiet! They’re very still. If you’re in a room with them you might shoot them a glance, but they’re calm and they’re not overtly menacing. So, early on, I tried a couple different things where the music did the opposite and it clearly didn’t work, so I started doing more intimate things: solo viola, and we recorded some wine glasses, because Zorub has a hearing disability, so we thought, what might he be hearing? It might be a tinnitus sort of thing so wine glasses were cool. We used Georgian wine, I forget from which part of Georgia, but we actually got Georgian wine, where the characters are from, and did a lot of that. And, again, because it worked so well on the first one, we started with organic things, the viola, the wine glasses, the percussion – and then went into producer mode. Henry and I grew up making records and that sort of thing, so it’s in our nature to want to bring a piece of audio into a computer and fiddle with it and do production things, but we really wanted to start with organic elements so that what we were opening with had this natural, intimate beginning, and then go from there.
Q: What orchestra did you use to record the score?
Alex Belcher: We used Isobel Griffiths, she’s the contractor we almost always use in London, and recorded at Air. I think I’ve done 95% of my films, the same thing with Henry, at Air Studios in London. Nick Wollage has recorded a lot of our projects, and he recorded both CITADEL and EXTRACTION, which had a little bit of overlap, so we were finishing one while starting the other. He mixed EXTRACTION 2 as well. The idea of the mix was, as I told Nick, to treat this like a 1969, early 1970, rock album. I want it to be super aggressive, I want it to be piercing. We mixed it at Studio 3 at Air Studios, and when I showed up there are these Fairchild 660s [single-channel audio compressors], these Lexicon reverbs, all this old equipment that only God knows how many celebrity musicians’ voices and instruments have gone through them. The mixing process, to be honest, was one of the funnest parts, because Nick did such an amazing job, and we don’t always get to hang out at the legendary Air Studios and mix the score there.
Q: What was most interesting or rewarding for you about scoring EXTRACTION 2?
Alex Belcher: I felt like, once we finished EXTRACTION 1, I really wanted to tell more of that story. The writing was so great by Joe, I wanted to be a part of telling more of that story, because he’s such a multi-layered character. You’ve got all the action and you’ve got that fun stuff; he’s tormented but not in the normal ways you might think a leading man or an action man is on screen in Hollywood, so I was super excited when I got the phone call, ‘Hey, we’re making another one! Do you want to do it?’ ‘Yes!!’ So, to be able to continue telling that story, reveal more about Rake, and dive into his character more, just as an artist, was really great. Any time you’ve got multi-layered and multi-dimensional characters, from a composer’s standpoint, that’s really exciting, because that allows a lot of different avenues for storytelling musically. A lot of instrumentation can be used, a lot of different thematic ideas can be used, so that was really what I was most excited about. And, again, working with Joe and Anthony, who I’ve worked with for over a decade, working with Sam again, he’s got such a long, incredible career in front of him, to work with him on some of these earlier films of his is just truly honoring.
Q: What’s coming up next for you that you’d be able to talk about?
Alex Belcher: Right now, with the writers’ strike going on, the only thing I’ve really been in conversations about is Season 2 of CITADEL. A couple of other things are floating in there – knock on wood they’ll come through. Right now, I’m renovating a bathroom in my house, so that’s my big project [laughs].
Q: What kind of instrument did you use for that?
Alex Belcher: That was a sixteen-gauge framing nailer! [both laugh]
Special thanks to Chandler Poling and Christian Endicio of White Bear PR for facilitating this interview. This interview is lightly edited for length and clarity
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Film & TV Music News
Hollywood Records has released its newest episode of their music docuseries & podcast – THE BIG SCORE. In this extra spicy episode, composer Marcelo Zarvos talks about creating the music for Searchlight’s FLAMIN’ HOT and collaborating with director Eva Longoria to honor Mexican American tradition by making the score culturally specific. Zarvos even re-scored the iconic 20th Century Fox Fanfare in a Mexican music style, which perfectly sets the tone for this heartwarming film, which Longoria has described as a love letter to the Latino community. THE BIG SCORE is an original series offering first-person audio and video vignettes that delve deep into the creation of film and television music for influential and award-winning movies. Whether watching and/or listening, audiences will gain personal perspectives, stories, and insights from some of today’s most innovative composers and artists, plus exclusive behind the scenes access into the recording process and creation of their scores. Fans can catch THE BIG SCORE wherever they listen to podcasts, while the accompanying docuseries premieres on YouTube.
Video episodes will run 5-7 minutes, intercutting the main interviews with direct scene commentary and behind-the-scenes footage. Meanwhile, the podcast will span 20-30 minutes, providing in-depth perspective from the composer. Other interview subjects will include directors, music supervisors, and artists who contributed to writing, recording, performing, or music production. Watch this and all previous episodes here. Watch the episode here.
Listen to the podcast here.
Ryan Shore reports that he has scored the music for the film R. L. Stine’s ZOMBIE TOWN, which will be in US theaters on Sept 1 and in Canadian theaters on Aug 18. “It’s impossible to overstate how much it means to me to be scoring this amazing film starring two of my very favorite actors, Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase. The films they’ve created individually and together literally defined my earliest memories of absolutely loving movies. Bravo and huge thanks to Peter, John, and Mark for your trust, to my incredible music team, and to Entertainment Tonight for this awesome first look!”
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New Soundtrack News
Swing ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE with Daniel Pemberton’s epic, web-slinging, record-scratching, dimension-hopping original score, available from Sony Classical, a label of Sony Music Entertainment. After the composer’s zeitgeist-conquering blockbuster, 2018’s SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, Pemberton returns to expand upon Miles Morales’ eclectic, multiversal soundscape, incorporating everything from tenor vocals and a 100-piece orchestra to DJ scratching, acid-house inspired Indian percussion, punk rock, techno drums, and even... a prominently sampled goose! The film and its intricately woven, action-packed score is sure to transport you into some wildly unexpected parallel dimensions. Not to mention a brand-new set of character themes for all the new members of the elite Spider Society. After reuniting with Gwen Stacy, Brooklyn’s full-time, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is catapulted across the Multiverse, where he encounters a team of Spider-People charged with protecting its very existence. But when the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles finds himself pitted against the other Spiders and must redefine what it means to be a hero so he can save the people he loves most. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Pemberton described his approach to this second SPIDER-VERSE movie: “Everyone’s got something very special about them in this movie. I like each Spider-Person for different reasons. There are, musically, ones I like more than others, like I love using 2099’s theme. He's got a really nice, aggressive sort of siren. Gwen’s got this very nimble, balletic, floaty synthesizer style, which is quite nice to drop on top. I think what’s interesting is taking each of these characters and having themes that are universal. The film talks about universality of being Spider-Man, and how bits that may have connected with Miles may now connect with Gwen or other characters, but in their own sonic world.” The soundtrack is available here.
La-La Land Records and Universal Studios proudly present the sixteenth title within the acclaimed Universal Pictures Film Music Classics Collection, THE MUNSTERS – Television Music of Jack Marshall including Jack’s music from the other TV series, THE DEPUTY, WAGON TRAIN, and THE VIRGINIAN, limited edition 2-CD set). After scoring the 1958 feature film THUNDER ROAD, legendary guitarist Jack Marshall would begin composing television series music for Revue (aka Universal Television). This 2000-unit presentation marks the world premiere debut of this notable music in any format! The label also announced EMILY BRONTË’S WUTHERING HEIGHTS with music from the late Ryuichi Sakamoto in a limited-edition of 1000 Units. The remastered CD re-issue presents the original score to the 1992 period feature film drama, based upon the classic novel, and starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, and directed by Peter Kosminsky. Now officially available for the first time outside of its original 1992 Japanese soundtrack release, the late and acclaimed Maestro’s score returns, remastered and ripe for rediscovery. Highly dramatic and by turns deeply romantic, tragically haunting, and beautifully innocent, Sakamoto’s wonderous work is an orchestral marvel to savor. For more details see LaLaLandRecords.
WaterTower Music has released the soundtrack to Warner Bros. Pictures’ film THE FLASH. Directed by Andy Muschietti (the IT films, MAMA), THE FLASH serves as the DC super hero’s first-ever standalone feature film, and sees Director Muschietti reunite with noted collaborator, two-time GRAMMY- and BAFTA-nominated composer Benjamin Wallfisch, who created all of the music found on THE FLASH 43-track soundtrack, which is currently available for digital purchase and streaming, and available as a preorder for Triple LP, Two-Color Vinyl and Double CD. Benjamin Wallfisch reflected on the film and the music of THE FLASH: “The movie is of course a love letter to the legacy of DC, right back to its earliest origins, and one of the most exciting challenges for me was to celebrate that history, whilst still looking to the future with completely new material. I’d also like to highlight the incredible musicians who performed this music with such unbelievable virtuosity, fire and commitment. The movie challenged us to attempt the near-impossible, and at every turn our orchestra not only met but exceeded what we might have imagined.” The digital/streaming album is now available from these links.
Quartet Records offers listeners an Armando Trovajoli a go-go! Three new limited CD editions including four of the most beloved scores of Maestro Trovajoli, each of them in restored and expanded releases. Enjoy the great music of one of the most elegant and essential composers in the history of Italian film music. The three CDs are available for order and shipping at www.quartetrecords.com
Silva Screen have announced two CD releases: John Barry’s HAMMETT which will be released on CD and on digital platforms on July28th but is now available to pre-order. Barry had great fondness for his HAMMETT score telling Ford Thaxton in 2001, “I loved doing Hammett. That was a terrific movie. If the director’s got it correctly onto the screen and that intimacy is present, it’s just great to be able to write that simply and orchestrate that sparsely.” This release is newly remastered and edited with additional and alternate cues and includes extensive sleeve notes from Geoff Leonard and Pete Walker, authors of John Barry Plays 007: The Music and Art of James Bond. Also coming up is George Delerue’s engaging score for THE ESCAPE ARTIST. Revered for his melodic skill and an innate emotional compass, the French composer could bring to bear music that was sweetly sentimental and drenched with pathos. This long unavailable soundtrack features extensive liner notes from film and music journalist Michael Beek. See SilvaScreenUK and silvascreenusa.com
Horror score specialist Howlin’ Wolf Records has released KILLING FLOOR 2. “I have remixed and at times replayed and added parts to all of the tracks that appear on Music From Killing Floor 2. Beautifully remastered by Troy Glessner, I believe this is the best these songs have ever sounded,” said composer Rocky Gray, an award-winning composer of over 30 features, shorts, and video games. An accomplished musician, he was the original drummer for the multi-platinum goth rock band Evanescence, and later drummer and lead guitarist for We Are The Fallen and Living Sacrifice. He most recently earned rave reviews and the Best Score prize for THE BARN II at the 2022 GenreBlast Film Festival. Gray’s score for 10/31 PART III is also available on the Howlin' Wolf Records website – see here.
Another horror soundtrack specialist, Klaatu Records, announces DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW cassette soundtrack; includes a download of Glenn Paxton’s score as well. Starring Charles Durning, Robert F. Lyons, and Claude Earl Jones, the 1981 film takes place in a small Southern town, where four vigilantes wrongfully execute a mentally challenged man. After the court sets them free, mysterious “accidents” begin to kill them off one by one. Pre-order your copy of DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW, available for the first time on cassette. This release is limited to 50 units. expected release date: August 2023. The label previously released a digital and CD version of the film – see Klaatu Records for both versions, and other horror film soundtrack releases.
Klaatu Records has also announced two new limited edition world premiere releases coming out this October: Christopher Thomas’ score to 1991’s THERE’S NOTHING OUT THERE!, about a huge mutant frog that starts to gobble down, one by one, a bunch of friends spending spring break in a house in the woods; and 2003’s THE HAZING (aka BUTCHERED, aka BLUDGEON) from Christopher Farrell, about teenage girls desperate to spend the night in the most popular sorority on campus, unaware that there is a psychotic killer squatting in the building… More details and pre-orders will be announced in July, then see Klaatu Records.
Sherri Chung (KUNG FU, RIVERDALE, BATWOMAN, BLINDSPOT, NANCY DREW AND THE HIDDEN STAIRCASE) has composed the original score for the upcoming Netflix original film HAPPINESS FOR BEGINNERS. The romantic dramedy follows a schoolteacher who ventures toward a fresh start in life after her divorce by signing up for a grueling group hiking trip. Chung has previously scored director Vicky Wight’s last feature, THE LOST HUSBAND. The film premiere on July 27, 2023 on Netflix. – via filmusicreporter
Lakeshore Records has released FUBAR – Soundtrack from the Netflix Series featuring music by Emmy-Nominated composer Tony Morales (REACHER). Morales’ expansive, orchestral score lends a grand cinematic backdrop to the action comedy. The Skydance Television production starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Monica Barbaro is now streaming on Netflix: A CIA Operative on the verge of retirement discovers a family secret. Forced to go back into the field for one last job, the series tackles universal family dynamics set against a global backdrop of spies, action, and humor. Says Morales: “I knew as soon as I read the script that creating the score for FUBAR was going to be a blast (yes, pun intended). This series is a super fun thrill ride with tonal variety. Our show runner, Nick Santora, wanted a score that could deliver on the classic action movie sound in addition to threading the comedy and heart that are at the core of the story. From epic larger-than-life action orchestral music to light emotional moments to funky rhythm section grooves, creating the music for FUBAR provided the opportunity to experiment and have fun with the action-comedy score genre.”
The album is available here: https://lnk.to/FUBAR
Filmed in Barcelona, Spain, the dramedy film SMILEY has been released digitally with a score by Arnau Bataller.
Alex has just suffered a love disappointment and sends a voice message to his boyfriend in anger but the voice is received by Bruno. This mistake ends up making them meet and what begins as a date ends up having greater significance. Available via Spotify and other digital sources.
The official CD with the music by Marco Werba from the 2022 Tunisian film THE ISLAND OF FORGIVENESS (L'Ile du Pardon) will be soon available. The film score was recorded in London at Angel Studios (Abbey Road) and performed by the English Session Orchestra. “Rosa’s song” is performed by famous Welsh singer Ellen Williams. The music won the “Colosseo d’Oro” and the European “Euro Comunicazione” awards. Read details on the film here. – via Marco Werba
Milan Records has released TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by composer Jongnic Bontemps. The album features music written by Bontemps for the seventh live-action installment in the blockbuster film franchise. TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS is the latest collaboration between director Steven Caple Jr. and composer Bontemps, the duo having previously worked together on Caple Jr.’s directorial debut THE LAND and 2018’s hit film CREED II. Of the soundtrack, Bontemps says, “I wish I could tell my pre-adolescent self that one day the toys that you're having endless hours of fun with, will one day be a movie series, and that you'll write the music for TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS. That might have kept me out of a lot of trouble! Scoring the movie and working with my longtime collaborator Steven Caple Jr. has exceeded my wildest dreams and I’m deeply honored to be a part of the Transformers legacy. We worked tirelessly to honor the musical language of the previous films, and reimagine it through the lens of our current world.” The film arrived in theaters June 9 from Paramount Pictures. Check the soundtrack here.
Dubois Records released on June 9th the soundtrack album for the biographical drama DALILAND. The album features the film’s original music composed by Edmund Butt (LIFE ON MARS, FINDING ALICE, ASHES TO ASHES, INTERGALACTIC). The movie is set in New York and Spain in 1974 and tells the story of the later years of the strange marriage between artist Salvador Dalí and his wife, Gala, as their seemingly unshakable bond begins to stress and fracture. The drama premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and is being released in select U.S. theaters and on VOD by Magnolia Pictures. Available now via Amazon and other sources. -via filmmusic reporter
Music Box Records of France offers Serge Franklin’s scores to HUNTER OF THE NIGHT (aka Night Hunter) and WOMAN PRISON (The Imposter) – both score have their first time on CD. Recorded in Prague, under the baton of conductor Mario Klemens, the films’ music, edited for the first time on disc, testify to the many facets of the composer. This album was fully remastered from the recording sessions, and the CD includes an 8-page booklet, with French-English liner notes by Sylvain Pfeffer. The album is remastered and limited edition to 300 copies
Pre-order the CD here.
In the new movie from Pixar Animation Studios, ELEMENTAL, a city where fire, water, land, and air residents live together, a fiery young woman and a go-with-the-flow guy discover something elemental: how much they actually have in common. For the ELEMENTAL score, filmmakers called on a tried-and-true member of their musical family: Thomas Newman. Newman’s edict was to create music that spans the film’s emotional spectrum. “You have the utterly ludicrous all the way to deeply profound,” he says. “As a composer, you always want to help tell the story: ‘Elemental’ is full of puns that are there for laughs; at the same time, there are some really deep issues.”
The music also conveys the unique cultural undertones of the story – without leaning on any existing cultural hallmarks. When it came time to find the perfect song for a key sequence in the film, Pixar filmmakers teamed up with multi-Platinum chart-topping singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Lauv, who worked with Newman and songwriter Michael Matosic on the film’s original single, “Steal the Show.” According to Newman, that was the best part. “The most fun is discovering the vocabulary and different musical colors,” he says.
The soundtrack was released digitally on June 16 by Walt Disney Records and is available to stream/download on all major digital music services. Watch the trailer for ELEMENTS:
Lakeshore Records has released KANDAHAR Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, featuring music by Emmy-nominated composer David Buckley (THE SANDMAN, JASON BOURNE, PAPILLON [2017]). Buckley’s electronic score incorporates guitar, percussion, Middle Eastern vocalizations, and rhythmic structures to create a thrillingly dark and haunting backdrop to the tension filled film starring Gerard Butler. The Open Road Films release is in theaters now. In KANDAHAR, Tom Harris (Butler), an undercover CIA operative, is stuck deep in hostile territory in Afghanistan. After his mission is exposed, he must fight his way out, alongside his Afghan translator, to an extraction point in Kandahar, all while avoiding elite enemy forces and foreign spies tasked with hunting them down. Says Buckley: “KANDAHAR is my third collaboration with director, Ric Roman Waugh, and like the earlier two movies [GREENLAND, ANGEL HAS FALLEN], Ric tasked me with highlighting the emotional aspects of the story. He wants the audience to really understand his characters, and not just the heroes, but everyone, regardless of their flaws. Yes, it’s an action film, but it’s also a story about real people who feel and experience real things. My goal was to provide a visceral and gritty underscoring of people trying to survive in this dusty, damaged, and dangerous environment.”
Purchase/Stream the album: https://lnk.to/Kandahar
Composer Steven Price (GRAVITY, LAST NIGHT IN SOHO, OUR PLANET, SUICIDE SQUAD) is reteaming with director Tom Harper (WILD ROSE, THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2: ANGEL OF DEATH) on the upcoming Netflix original film HEART OF STONE. The action thriller starring Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Sophie Okonedo, Alia Bhatt revolves around an intelligence operative for a shadowy global peacekeeping agency who races to stop a hacker from stealing its most valuable and dangerous weapon. HEART OF STONE will premiere on August 11, 2023, exclusively on Netflix. – via filmmusic reporter
Milan Records has released the first single from the hugely anticipated third season of Netflix’s epic fantasy series, THE WITCHER. Available everywhere now is The Ride of The Witcher, a collaborative track from series’ composer Joseph Trapanese, actor Joey Batey, and Polish folk metal band Percival Schuttenbach. A fan-favorite since his performance of season one’s viral smash hit “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher,” series actor Joey Batey reunites with Trapanese on the new track after co-writing and singing last season’s “Burn Butcher Burn.” The onscreen bard once again contributes an inspiring vocal performance on The Ride of the Witcher and is assisted by folk rockers Percival Schuttenbach, whose chorus of Slavic voices intertwine with Batey’s to create an anthemic crescendo. This track is the first of an eventual two volumes of music to be released from the third season, with the Vol. 1 soundtrack arriving on Thursday, June 29 alongside the series’ Vol. 1 debut on Netflix. About THE WITCHER Season 3: As monarchs, mages, and beasts of the Continent compete to capture her, Geralt takes Ciri of Cintra into hiding, determined to protect his newly reunited family against those who threaten to destroy it. Entrusted with Ciri’s magical training, Yennefer leads them to the protected fortress of Aretuza, where she hopes to discover more about the girl’s untapped powers; instead, they discover they’ve landed in a battlefield of political corruption, dark magic, and treachery. They must fight back, put everything on the line — or risk losing each other forever. The single is now available to play or download at these links. Watch the trailer for THE WITCHER Season 3:
Soon to be broadcast on Arte with the French film LE HORLA by Marion Desseigne Ravel, Alexandre Lessertisseur has also recently composed the music for the series SPELLBOUND and THEODOSIA, as well as the film UNE AFFAIRE FRANÇAISE by Christophe Lamotte, for which Alexandre is nominated for the U2C 2023 Award. In LE HORLA, Damien (Bastien Bouillon), a young teleworking father, moves with his family into a new apartment and starts to feel a strange presence around him... Is he mad or is there really something? Based on the Guy Maupassant tale, Marion Desseigne Ravel (LES MEILLEURES) transposes Maupassant’s short story to the present day, exploring mental confinement induced by the COVID years. The soundtrack was released to all platforms on June 2, 2023, via Plaza Mayor Company Ltd.; Check out the soundtrack here.
Listen to Lessertisseur’s track “Generique” here:
WaterTower Music announces the release of the 21-track soundtrack to MANIFEST, the character-driven supernatural mystery/drama television series from executive producers Jeff Rake, Robert Zemeckis and Jack Rapke, in which a commercial plane inexplicably disappears on a trans-oceanic flight and, more mysteriously, returns five years later after being presumed lost at sea. While no time has passed for those on the flight, years have gone by for their loved ones at home who have learned to live with their loss. The MANIFEST soundtrack features the music of Emmy®-nominated composer Danny Lux (GREYS ANATOMY, BOSTON PUBLIC, MY NAME IS EARL). Lux described his work on the series: “MANIFEST has been an epic storytelling adventure which allowed me to write a soundtrack that followed the mythology. Rarely do I get an opportunity to create themes that track so specifically to the characters and their actions. This soundtrack is a chronological listening experience that tracks the entire series. It starts with the very first musical score heard in episode one and ends with the very last score heard in the finale.” The series debuted in 2018 on NBC, but after its third season on 2021 the network cancelled the series; but the series was added to Netflix shortly where it immediately topped the viewing charts, persuading Netflix to renew MANIFEST for a fourth and final season consisting of twenty episodes, with part one premiering back on November 4, 2022, and part two premiering on June 2, 2023. The 21-track soundtrack with music by Danny Lux is now available through the usual streaming and digital sources.
Listen to Danny Lux’s end title music from MANIFEST:
In Marvel Studios’ new mini-series SECRET INVASION, set in the present day MCU, Nick Fury learns of a clandestine invasion of Earth by a faction of shapeshifting Skrulls. Fury joins his allies, including Everett Ross, Maria Hill, and the Skrull Talos, who has made a life for himself on Earth. Together they race against time to thwart an imminent Skrull invasion and save humanity. Samuel L. Jackson reprises his role as Nick Fury from the film series, along with Ben Mendelsohn as Talos, with Cobie Smulders, Martin Freeman, Kingsley Ben-Adir, and Don Cheadle also starring. The series was created by Kyle Bradstreet (MR. ROBOT), and is scored by Kristopher Bowers, known for scoring GREEN BOOK, KING RICHARD, and the television series BRIDGERTON, MRS. AMERICA, DEAR WHITE PEOPLE, and WHEN THEY SEE US. SECRET INVASION is scheduled to be released on June 21, 2023, and will consist of six episodes. It will be the first series of Phase Five of the MCU.
Watch SECRET INVASION’s trailer:
HAPPY NIGHT is a film by Mustafa Ozgun: the arrival of the young Xin in a Chinese store in France will upset the daily life of the owner, employees and customers. But also cause strange and disturbing events, especially at night when the young woman dances in the deserted store. Scored by Maximilien Mathevon, the music is divided into three elements: suspense music, comedy elements, and the music for dance sequences. “For the suspense, I used a dark and ambient style, combining piano, sounds of 80s synthesizers and contemporary sound design,” said the composer. “The comedy music, by contrast, is light and mischievous, using tones of double bass, string pizzicato and clarinet. As for the dance sequences, they are dynamic and EDM (Electronic Dance Music) style. They also reflect Xin's state of mind, her sensuality and sadness.” The album is available from Qobuz here and via the composer’s website, beginning on June 23rd, here.
Michael McCuistion, Lolita Ritmanis & Kristopher Carter (aka Dynamic Music Partners) have composed the original music for the upcoming animated movie BABYLON 5: THE ROAD HOME. This film is intended to be a treat for original BABYLON 5 fans who see things only hinted at in the original series while introducing new viewers to the characters, history, and structure of the B5 universe. The story travels across the galaxy, as John Sheridan is whipsawed through multiple timelines and alternate realities in a quest to find his way back home. The film is directed by Matt Peters (INJUSTICE) and headlines the voices of Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Peter Jurasik, Tracy Scoggins, Bill Mumy, and Patricia Tallman. The Warner Bros. Animation production is based on the 90s live-action BABYLON 5 sci-fi TV series (scored by Christopher Franke). The Dynamic composing team has previously scored the Peters-directed DC Universe animated movie BATMAN AND SUPERMAN: BATTLE OF THE SUPER SONS and many more superhero/sci-fi animated films. BABYLON 5: THE ROAD HOME will be released on August 15, 2023, on Digital, 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray by Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment.
- Via filmmusicreporter and other sources.
Composer Stephanie Economou (RUBY GILLMAN TEENAGE KRAKEN, MORE THAN ROBOTS, JUPITER'S LEGACY, MANHUNT) has written a wonderfully entertaining soundtrack for the comedy, ABOUT MY FATHER. It has to it an infectious air that makes it impossible not to like and not to listen to on loop. Summary: When Sebastian tells his old-school Italian immigrant father Salvo that he is going to propose to his all-American girlfriend, Salvo insists on crashing a weekend with her tony parents. Directed by Laura Terruso (WORK IT, GOOD GIRLS GET HIGH, FIRE AND STARTS).
THE BLACKENING is a 2022 comedy horror film directed by Tim Story (RIDE ALONG, THINK LIKE A MAN, BARBERSHOP) and based on the 2018 short film of the same name by the comedy troupe 3Peat. It centers around a group of black friends who reunite for a Juneteenth weekend getaway only to find themselves trapped in a remote cabin with a twisted killer. Forced to play by his rules, the friends soon realize this ain’t no game... THE BLACKENING skewers genre tropes and poses the sardonic question: if the entire cast of a horror movie is black, who dies first? The music is provided by Dexter Story, a multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, and producer based in Los Angeles. He has worked in multiple facets of the music industry, including film scores for 5 MINUTES, I DO... UNTIL I DON'T, EYES OF AMHARA, and 10 DAYS IN WATTS.
Nearly 20 years after the release of the film PRÊTE-MOI TA MAIN (also known as I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single), the soundtrack composed by Erwann Kermorvant is finally available. “For this 3rd collaboration with [director] Eric Lartigau, I must say that I was spoiled. A dream cast, a magnificent story, and a production that took great care. Romantic comedies are a perilous exercise, where each intention must be calibrated to not overshadow the comedy and not overemphasize the romance. I remember the numerous exchanges with Eric, his editor Juliette Welfling, and Alain Chabat. We were determined to keep the music as understated as possible in the comedy and to be as light and tender as possible in the emotional moments. I am thrilled to finally be able to share this music with you!" - Erwann Kermorvant. The soundtrack is now available from these links.
Lakeshore Records has released BLOOD HIVE 2 Original Score from the TV series YELLOWJACKETS digitally. The album again features music by Craig Wedren, frontman for D.C.-based seminal post-hardcore band Shudder to Think, and Anna Waronker of indie pop icons that dog., who have returned with another highly acclaimed sinister score that enhances the horror and epitomizes the sound of the show’s time period. An Emmy®-nominated SHOWTIME® original series, YELLOWJACKETS season two is currently available on streaming and on demand for all SHOWTIME subscribers. “In preparation for season 2 of YELLOWJACKETS we wrote a fistful of new themes – and reimagined a few from season 1 – that we thought were fittingly haunting and harrowing, given where the story seemed to be headed, note Waronker and Wedren. “Little did we know that the show’s creators were going to double (and triple, and quadruple) down on the darkness in ways we couldn’t have imagined, and those themes became the germs of what you hear on BLOOD HIVE 2. We hope the melodies, voices, scrapes, grinds and howling sounds sneak into your dreams and never let go!” Created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson (Narcos), YELLOWJACKETS is the saga of a team of wildly talented high school girls soccer players who become the (un)lucky survivors of a plane crash deep in the remote northern wilderness. The series chronicles their descent from a complicated but thriving team to savage clans, while also tracking the lives they’ve attempted to piece back together nearly 25 years later, proving that the past is never really past and what began out in the wilderness is far from over.
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Documentary Soundtrack News
A brand-new original documentary celebrating and charting the life of prolific comics creator STAN LEE is now available on Disney+. Told via a plethora of interviews and audio recordings from Lee himself, the documentary dives back to his beginnings, to joining the world of comics and eventually going on to create characters readers (and audiences around the world) know and love. Director and producer David Gelb, along with the creative team, were looking to honor what would have been Lee’s 100th birthday last December with a tribute to the legend. After diving into an “overwhelming volume of interviews, of university speeches, of television appearances,” the team set out to tell a multilayered story. “Something that reveals the origin story of Stan Lee, as we know him…his kind of more vulnerable, kind of sensitive alter ego who is very much a real person who grew up in the Depression and was just trying to make a living while also kind of following his gut and wanting to tell sophisticated stories,” Gelb explained. Using Lee’s own personal recordings and footage, the end product is “a memoir of Stan telling his own story, his own journey of creativity and his collaboration and his work with Marvel Comics.” Music for the documentary was composed by Michael Dean Parsons (OBI-WAN KENOBI: A JEDI’S RETURN, TEXAS: SPIRIT & SOUL, SKETCHBOOK docus) and Scott Michael Smith (OBI-WAN KENOBI: A JEDI’S RETURN, SKETCHBOOK, MARVEL 616).
William Goodchild has composed the score for CHIMP EMPIRE, a Netflix doc exploring a vast community of chimpanzees that thrives in a forest in Uganda, navigating complex social politics, family dynamics and dangerous territory disputes. When director James Reed (MY OCTOPUS TEACHER) embedded a camera crew to capture a uniquely intimate look at the chimps of Ngogo, there was no way to know that the year ahead would bring some of the most tumultuous battles and dramatic changes in the tribe’s history. Over the course of four unforgettable episodes – narrated by Academy Award® winner Mahershala Ali – babies will grow, relationships will blossom, and leaders will rise and fall. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get up close and personal with our closest living animal relatives, and an equally rare opportunity to learn about our own human society through the mirror of these chimps and their fascinating lives. Goodchild was assisted by composer’s Assistant Dan Pollard, Music Editor Darryl O'Donovan, Orchestrator Ed Watkins, and the performance by the Budapest Art Orchestra.
Listen to Goodchild’s track “Cristine and Baby” from CHIMP EMPIRE, and below that, the docu’s trailer:
OUR PLANET II (Soundtrack from the Netflix Documentary Series) with music by Jasha Klebe and Thomas Farnon is available now. The second season of OUR PLANET is available now, only on Netflix. The score was composed over six months, and features over 200 musicians, 300+ different instruments, and 45 singers from across the world. “It was clear from the very first images that OUR PLANET II would be a fresh and bold new perspective for a nature documentary series,” say the composers. “With a show focused on extraordinary migrations and animal movement, we set out to create a propulsive score that felt emotionally electrifying and portrayed the epic grandeur of a world on the move. Inspired to capture the visceral feeling of movement, we crafted colorful soundscapes influenced by the animals’ motions. Deep synth and percussive rhythms captured the thundering vibrations of herds of Pronghorn; airy overblown woodwinds and fluttering palm fronds were synced with the flapping of migrating cranes; sliding strings and ricocheting jawharps mimicked billions of locusts; and a five note, rippling motif was threaded across the series, to provide a constant moving, breathing, tapestry. Uniquely, OUR PLANET II never shies away from the impact of humans on the natural world through the imagery of cities, highways, and plastic waste. To encapsulate this, we used solo vocals and choir prominently throughout the score. This ranged from the lyrical melody of the opening titles (featuring the artist Empara Mi) to low booming grunting vocals for Buffalos, and to breathy, undulating textures for Grey Whales. All of which, is woven amongst the leading voice that is Sir David Attenborough.” The 36-track album is available to stream on digital platforms here.
Listen to the Planet Earth II Suite, via YouTube:
Nainita Desai has two new brilliant documentaries that recently screened at UK’s Sheffield DocFest. THE PHANTOM PARROT (dir. Kate Stonehill) is about how the revelation of a top-secret British surveillance program brings down the dominoes in a dark and analytical film about technology, rights, and structural racism – and about a man with the courage to speak out; and DEEPEST BREATH (dir. Laura McGann) follows record-setting Italian freediver Alessia Zecchini and her close friend, revered Irish safety diver Stephen Keenan – and the thrilling rewards and inescapable risks of chasing dreams through the depths of the ocean.
Gil Talmi’s original music for Liz Garbus’ 2022 six-episode Netflix docu, HARRY & MEGHAN is currently up for EMMY consideration in two categories: Outstanding Music Composition for a Documentary Series or Special (Original Dramatic Score) and Outstanding Main Title Theme Music. Talmi reports that he created approximately 260 minutes of music for the series: “It was a huge undertaking, and I couldn’t have done it without my amazing Konsonant Music team: Music Editors: Andrew Ryan Gross, Maddy Rose Weisman and Composer’s Assistant: Simón Wilson.” – via Gil Talmi/Facebook post.
Christian Heschl is an award-winning Film & TV composer based between Vienna and London. A brand-new documentary from Terra Mater Studios has been released, WIENER WASSER - SCHATZ DER ZUKUNFT (Vienna Water - Treasure of The Future), focusing on the city of Vienna’s unique and important water supply system, providing a city of millions with pristine spring water for over 150 years. The Vienna mountain spring water pipeline is the focus of a documentary that was broadcast on Austria’s Servus TV on June 16. Check-out Heschl’s website for more details on his scores: https://heschl-music.com/
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Vinyl Soundtrack News
It’s time to deploy to Klendathu. Varese Sarabande announces the first-ever vinyl release of Basil Poledouris’ thrilling score for the 1997 cult classic, STARSHIP TROOPERS. This 2-LP Deluxe Edition includes 29 cues from the film, and comes housed in a gatefold jacket, featuring new artwork by illustrator and graphic novelist, Malachi Ward. Rounding out the packaging is a fold-out poster of Ward’s design, plus new liner notes by the film’s director, Paul Verhoeven, and musician Zoë Poledouris, who reflects on her late father’s work. The album is set for release on August 4 and available for pre-order now. You can also find a Varèse Sarabande Vinyl Club edition of the album (pressed on Blood & Bug Juice Marble vinyl and strictly limited to 500 copies) exclusively at the label’s website. See: https://varesesarabande.com/collections/starship-troopers
For the first time ever on vinyl, GODZILLA: TOKYO SOS attacks your stereo via this 2XLP. Housed inside a gloss laminate gatefold sleeve featuring a double LP with a screenprinted side D. Music by Michiru Oshima. Artwork by Francesco Francavilla. Pressed on Mondo Exclusive 2 x 140 Gram Shobijin Vinyl. Featuring a Screenprinted D Side. Also Available on 140 Gram Eco Vinyl. Estimated Shipping August 2023. Ships Worldwide (except Japan).
See Mondo for details.
Rob Zombie and Waxwork Records have partnered to release an exclusive, curated line of classic Horror movie soundtracks. “Rob Zombie Presents” will feature several never-before-released film soundtracks that were personally selected by the singer, songwriter, and filmmaker. Their second vinyl release is “Rob Zombie Presents SPIDER BABY” Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Ronald Stein. Directed by Jack Hill and starring Lon Chaney Jr., Jill Banner, Beverly Washburn, and Sid Haig, SPIDER BABY is a 1967 American horror film. The film was originally released to near obscurity but has achieved a cult following for its originality, dark humor, and twisted storyline of a dysfunctional family of mentally regressive orphaned siblings with homicidal tendencies, one of which has a disturbing predilection for spiders. This deluxe album includes Stein’s complete soundtrack for the first time on vinyl, an exclusive interview by Rob Zombie with director Jack Hill and SPIDER BABY actress Beverly Washburn, 180 gram Blue & Green Marbled colored vinyl, new artwork by Graham Humphreys, deluxe old style tip-on gatefold packaging, a 12x12 booklet featuring photos from director Jack Hill's personal archive, a 12x12 art insert, and more! This deluxe album includes the complete soundtrack by Ronald Stein for the first time... featuring an exclusive interview by Rob Zombie with Director Jack Hill & Actress Beverly Washburn. See details at Waxwork.
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Video Game Music News
The Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® II Season 03 Original Soundtrack with music by Nainita Desai is now available. Inspired by the Mexican location, Nainita wanted to bring in sounds reflecting the region but not use traditional instruments from Mexico which would be too light in tone for this score. Much of the score theme uses the Halldorophone, a hybrid electro-acoustic bowed string instrument that works with sympathetic drone strings and feedback. Each string has a dedicated pickup, and it produces a unique cello type of sound. It’s a far from traditional orchestral score, so to make it distinctive, she pulled back on some of the very treated organic sounds, so you hear the rawness of the instruments with a bit more clarity. Nainita wanted to get more emotion into the music and therefore hear more of the acoustic melodic elements in a purer way as opposed to making it sound so very electronic. In addition, she created action and tension suites with lots of gravitas to portray the high stakes of the game, leaning heavily on the contrast between distressed sounds and clear organic elements. “I also brought in the LCO (London Contemporary Orchestra). Their aesthetic of experimentation is something that really suited the process of this project. We had 8 string players with an emphasis on the mid-lower end of the sonic spectrum to create a really dark sound. Though all the ideas were pre-written before the sessions, we also allowed for some magic to happen where we recorded the main takes and then improvised in the studio utilizing extended string techniques, where we achieved a very gritty dry edgy sound.” The 7-track album is available now to stream on Spotify, here
Listen to Nainita Desai’s track “Tus Hermanus” via YouTube:
Rediscover the Aspirations, unleash your inner Harmony! The soundtrack of Harmony: The Fall of Reverie by Lena Raine is now available. The album of music from the narrative-driven video game by award-winning composer Lena Raine; from widely acclaimed, cult classic titles like Celeste and Chicory: A Colorful Tale to bestsellers like Minecraft and Guild Wars 2, Raine is best known for her synth-infused scores that capture the intricacies of gameplay and the player’s experience. For Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, she has crafted an analog-meets-digital soundscape to reflect the player's multifaceted journey through the alternate realm of Reverie. Of the release, the composer says, “The soundtrack to Harmony: The Fall of Reverie represents the past 3 years of my work with the talented team at DON'T NOD, developing themes & helping to shape the super detailed world of the game. Many of the tracks as they play in-game are fully dynamic progressions that follow your choices, so I have done my best to try and represent a tasteful arrangement of that music in this soundtrack release!” Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is available to play now on Steam and Switch and will be available on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S beginning Thursday, June 22. – via Sony Masterworks / Soundtrack.Net.
The soundtrack is available at these links now.
Listen to the track “Harmony” from YouTube:
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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
