This summer sees the release of The Green Knight, David Lowery’s take on the 14th century poem ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ on A24. The film sees Lowery once again team up with Daniel Hart, the composer who scored Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon and A Ghost Story, and the resulting soundtrack is every bit as evocative and ambitious as the movie itself. The Green Knight (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is being released via Milan Records on the same day as the theatrical release.
In addition to his film work, Daniel Hart also records his own music, both solo and with bands (The Physics of Meaning and Dark Rooms), and has toured with the likes of Swans, Mount Moriah, John Vanderslice and Broken Social Scene. This versatility is apparent in his soundtracks, often pushing beyond convention to capture an intangible dimension of the mood, and The Green Knight score is no different. Because much like the film’s visuals, the music draws on medieval imagery without being held to it, pushing not only forward into more modern territory with synths and electronics, but also backward to capture something altogether more primal.
“Making this music was somehow both like running from a pack of hyenas and wading through a river of chocolate mud,” Daniel Hart explains. “It has never taken David [Lowery] and I this long to find what we were looking for musically on any of his films, so to listen back now and actually love what we made is all the more satisfying, especially when I think about how many late nights and hair pullings went into it.” Indeed, the process came to have echoes of the quest at the heart of the film, a search of intuition, fortune good and bad. As Hart continues:
Much like Gawain himself, I was stumbling through the wilderness most of the time and found little moments of good fortune here and there, often through stubborn dumb luck. I hope that when you listen to the soundtrack, you’ll think about things other than me sitting in my studio, endlessly fretting. But if you do, then your imagination is very accurate.
Lead single ‘One Year Hence’ has been unveiled to give an idea of what to expect. An ominous, haunting sound that ebbs and flows with a variety of energies, from the solemn drama of the choral melodies to the rising menace of the synths, as well as some lurking background pulse which never quite leaves. Some latent, ancient thing stirring in the shadows.
The Green Knight (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is out on the 30th July via Milan Records. The film itself is also out on the 30th in the US, though the UK date has been postponed.