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.

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Such themes are ingrained in Minari‘s soundtrack too, composed by Emile Mosseri (The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Homecoming, Kajillionaire) and released on Milan Records. According to the Los Angeles Times, Chung’s vision for the film was informed by “his own mental Polaroids,” and he asked Mosseri for a score capable of evoking the nostalgia of childhood memory. What results is a soundtrack caught between two worlds—the mundanity of daily toil expanded and deepened by something less rigid, another plane shaped by forces less physical, be they memories, dreams, or familial bonds.

Lead single ‘Rain Song’ is the perfect example of this spirit. A collaboration between Emile Mosseri and Korean translator and lyricist Stefanie Hong, the song sees Mosseri’s original lyrics translated into Korean and sung by one of the lead actors, Yeri Han. The track is performed as a lullaby in the movie, and this hushed emotive style is intrinsic to Mosseri’s sound. Those small moments before sleep where the present can be parked, a half-wake world where dreams are possible and the futures we desire can flutter into view.

Minari is set for release on the 12th February, and the soundtrack will be out via Milan Records on the same day.

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They say a fire calls you into the forest. The cold will make you desperate for fire. But no matter how long you run, you cannot catch the fire. You run and run until your mind is sick and spirits take over you. You become wild. You become Gaagiixid.

The film’s soundtrack was composed by Canadian multidisciplinary artist Kinnie Starr, who received a nomination for the Leo Award for the work, which is now being released by Aporia Records. Recording in indie rock, hip hop, art-pop, folk, EDM, spoken word and other genres, Starr defies categorisation, and the eerie, loaded ambient tone of the soundtrack shows another dimension to her work.

As highlighted by the single ‘They Found Me’, the score simmers with latent energy, utilising silence and space to underscore both the haunting and harrowing moods of the film. The result is pervasive and sinister, the subtle washes of sound haunted with things ancient and volatile, drawing the listener into the dark and never promising what they might find within.

Kinnie Starr says that working on the soundtrack not only provided the opportunity to “empower the narrative of the film,” but to also work on her own healing process. “I was managing a brain injury during composition,” she explains. “The guttural moans and dark melodies apply to the film, but, like all art-making, reflect outwards, in this case into the nuanced nature of brain injuries, and of trauma, and of trying finding balance in an imbalanced world.”

SG̲aawaay Ḵ’uuna is out on the 6th November via Aporia Records.

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[Quiet Energies] takes the suffocating, nebulous shadow of grieving and distils it into something small and hard and strangely tactile, a mysterious object that will always be there in your pocket, radiating its secret and peculiar brand of comfort.

We were lucky enough to ask Bonnetta a few questions about the record and his musical career, exploring his influences, plans for the future and listening habits. Enjoy.

Jon: Hi Jonas, thanks for chatting with us! How has life been treating you since the release of Quiet Energies?

Jonas: All is well! Been getting ready to tour the new record around Canada a little bit and have been working on a bunch of new projects.

The album saw a shift in tone, with many tracks more cathartic and upbeat (for want of a better term). Do you have a better time when playing these songs live? And do you think the changes set a trajectory for where Evening Hymns are headed in the future?

Well I haven’t toured them long enough to understand them live yet so that’s kind of nice. Our current live setup allows us to explore the songs more than in the past and so that’s been satisfying so far. I’m not a huge fan of touring a record for a long time though so talk to me in a year from now and we will see. I’ve been writing so much new stuff that I’m itching to just keep developing new material live. I don’t think the next record will sound like Quiet Energies though. I’ve been working on some piano music that’s more rooted in soul and R&B so who knows… haha…

In my review of Quiet Energies I mention how you retreated into the countryside at various points, and recorded the album in a rural home studio. Is this escape an important part of your creative process? Are we talking escape-the-city rural or cut-off-wilderness rural?

I just need to be left alone with my thoughts. It’s too easy for me to get distracted and so forcing myself into solitude is my solution to fighting writer’s block. It’s not so much as escape now as a way of life as I moved out here permanently. And it doesn’t feel so much as an escape but more of a homecoming. This is how I grew up and it’s what resonates with me.

What else do you consider as influences on your writing and sound? Are there any musicians/writers/artists you consider important in your development? I’ve seen Jaan Kaplinski’s name bandied about, although it wasn’t clear if it came from you or a reviewer.

Huge Kaplinski fan. I own everything that has been translated to English and even recently acquired some Estonian books of his from a friend. He’s been a large shadow on my work since the beginning almost.
Space and environment are crucial to my work. I always come back to trying to explain this project as less a songwriting project and more of trying to create spaces for people to exist in.
And I’ve really recently been truly inspired by art itself. Just recognizing that I’m very fortunate to make a living by conjuring up things from nothing. I feel very lucky.

Recent months have seen you take a crack at the silver screen, what with an Evening Hymns song in the latest Cameron Crowe film and your score for the documentary Strange and Familiar. How did these projects come about, and how does the experience of making a soundtrack compare to recording as Evening Hymns? Is it something you’d like to do more of?

Well the Crowe film came about cause he got into the last record Spectral Dusk and we became Twitter buddies and chatted a bit. Next thing you know I got an email from Sony requesting the song for an upcoming picture. It was a trip. Very cool and I’m super thankful for that. The doc I scored I’m equally excited about it. It’s about this charming little island off the coast of Newfoundland. The first trailer for that film was cut to my music by an editor friend and the directors really liked it and they reached out. I’m working on mixing that music to release it sometime in 2016. That kind of work really suits my lifestyle right now. I have a home studio that I’ve just added a second room on and so I can work quietly on my own out there. I’m hoping I get to do more score work.

You can buy Quiet Energies now from Outside Music (US/Can), Tin Angel Records (UK/EU) and Kütu Records (France).

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Entirely instrumental, the album plies a lo-fi brand of layered, looped guitar music, existing at the weird, internet-only intersection of ambient, bedroom pop and vaporwave. The resulting soundscapes are odd and hypnotic, the kind of music perfect for early morning walks or late evening train journeys, everything cast different and important in the weak light.

This is perhaps unsurprising considering the first track is called ‘Dawn; on the train, waiting to see Francie’. Here the guitars are mellow and separated, the space between each chord as important as the chords themselves. You get the sense the album is stirring, not fully awake, as if the residents of the titular Lemon Town are just about rising for a new day. ‘Sunrise; would you like to grab some bagels? I know a great place!’ is sprightlier, the sonic embodiment of the town’s bustle as cafes and shops see a rush of early morning commuters. This brighter theme continues on ‘Afternoon; the sun shines through the bars of the bridge and I’m happy (in your hands)’, the sound languid in the way of a tropical vacation, like the small sway of a benign blue sea. ‘Dusk; falling asleep, know that you are loved’ winds down relaxed in the aftermath of a perfect day, while ‘Midnight; goodbye Francie, I’m going to miss you!’ sees the first real suggestion of melancholy, the realisation that the day is over descending like a black sheet. ‘???; night life in the lemon town of Büshka’ feels like a drunken walk home through dark streets, or perhaps a dark walk home through drunken streets.

Now we get onto Side B of the tape and it is here where things get weird(er), as if entering a dream or else disconnecting from time in a more novel way. The wonderfully named ‘Büshka’s netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of every bruise on your body; the soft ringing that can be heard all throughout the town but can only be seen in shades of green’ sees a marked stylistic shift, teetering on the edge of that new wave alt-R&B sound without ever quite succumbing. Imagine if How To Dress Well was teleported back to the 90s and locked in a Squaresoft studio and forced to use whatever was at hand. The oddness continues with the restrained and almost eerie ‘Foreign smells, shop signs, and Büshkan sea creatures at the bazaar’, and ‘Spitting flames at the bus stop; the woman who spits flames at the bus stop’ which is more in-your-face and urgent. ‘Late afternoon; the trees in animal crossing are much smaller than the ones in real life; couldn’t we just stay here for a little while?’ sees a brief return to the Side A style while ‘Too Much Mackerel’ is subdued and almost forlorn, like the closing credits of a wistful story.

For reasons I can’t quite pin down, the 90s Japanese RPG feeling hangs over the whole release, and I find myself imagining Lemon Town like a dot on a map from a strange Final Fantasy-Dragon Quest-Animal Crossing hybrid. The opening tracks conjure that town-going-about-its-business sensation you get when entering new locales in the regular portion of the game, while the songs not marked as a specific period in the title (i.e. ‘Büshka’s netherworld…’ onwards) have that distinct end-of-game freakiness common to the titles, where the main antagonist is revealed a puppet to an even more deranged supernatural controller before your party are thrust into some dreamworld to stop him/her/it. This probably isn’t quite what Sabbatical Wilderness intended, and I’m sure reading the story would provide a lot more context, but for now imagining an eccentric town within a peculiar video game will do just fine.

Night Life in the Lemon Town of Büshka is out today (11th August) and you can buy it from Fox Food Records.

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Vio/Miré are a band from Providence, Rhode Island, led by Brendan Glasson. Their fourth album, You Will be Spending Time Outdoors, in the Mountains, Near Water, came out last September. Their music is a mixture of folk and ambience, with reed organ, cello, chorals and synths used to create lush soundscapes upon which Glasson’s poetic vocals float. Think Sea Wolf mixed with an orchestral Sufjan Stevens, folk songs written over the top of cinematic compositions.

The album is one of contradictions, somehow sounding intimate and expansive, gentle and harsh, poetically abstract and beautifully simple. In this way it manages to mirror nature in all of its guises – spellbindingly beautiful and callous and cruel and innocent in a way humans are no longer able. For example on ‘Dogs 1′:

dogs are barking in an alley way
they’re fighting over bones
I love the moment till I curse the day
breaking bottles over stones
and I have seen the grass’s easy sway
under spruces overgrown
and I have known the near to move away
how the wind was overblown

As with anything related to the natural world, mortality and death is a major theme. Much of the beauty and sorrow on the record can be traced to the transient nature of life, something that manages to be bleak and comforting and harrowing and joyous all at once. Much of this is barely explainable, much better felt through the music than explained by words, but it is something similar to the curious mixture of wonder, satisfaction and melancholy felt when looking at a range of mountains or rugged coastline. ‘Snakes’ closes with a contemplation of life:

sent to hell to stir and swelter,
I returned and sought my love

but if the way were many days,

if present passed as present does,

how would you ask someone how his journey was?

You would be forgiven for thinking this all sounds a bit New Age-y but it is anything but. You Will be Spending Time Outdoors, in the Mountains, Near Water feels less like a 45-minute album than a landscape, a world which existed long before the album was recorded. Vio/Miré offer a way into this place, and you would be a fool not to take their hand and experience it for yourself.

You can buy the album from the Vio/Miré Bandcamp page.

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The purpose of this sort of music usually falls into one of two categories: to soundtrack (and enhance the power of) a reel of images or to conjure images from thin air, allow the listener to transcend their surroundings. On Tomorrow Was the Golden Age, Bing & Ruth do both. If you are watching the world go by from a train window then the album seems to mould to your surroundings, amplifying small details into imagery, transforming your commute into a slice of cinema. If you are lying in bed with your headphones on or strapped to your ergonomic chair in an office cubicle, TWTGA does the reverse, erasing all details and starting afresh, using the ethereal instrumentation to weave delicate but intricate soundscapes. The lack of percussion adds to the beauty, the tracks taking your by the hand and leading you through worlds that are rich and wide and limited only by your imagination.

The thing is, words like ethereal and celestial and transcendental struggle to describe what makes this record so lovely. These grand words are hyperbole and their use chokes the album in a thicket of cliches, the ‘review’ falling flat in the way of a second-hand dream. If you want to know what makes this Bing and Ruth record so lovely, you are going to have to listen.

You can buy the album from the Happy Talk Recordings Bandcamp page.

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Romantic Works is, at least in part, centred around his experiences with stage fright and anxiety, with Henson using the album to explore the issues that have blighted his career as a live musician (‘Elevator Song’ is based upon an attack of pre-concert nerves while in a Glasgow lift). However, the stage fright metaphor/allegory is far from obvious or overwhelming, indeed I would have missed it had I not read the feature on Henson from The Independent. For me, on first listening to Romantic Works, the album sounds like the soundtrack to an arty film, in which even the simplest images and actions are melancholic and sad.

Irrespective of ulterior meanings, this is the album’s greatest achievement – how it seems to stand for a normal existence, its for lush and mournful instrumentation supported by field recordings, serving to highlight the beauty and sorrow of normal life. Again, ‘Elevator Song’ is a perfect example of this, with its poignant mood building up to the final recording of an automated voice warning on closing doors, rendering what at first seemed like a dramatic four minutes as something commonplace, a simple event. ‘Field’ uses bird song, ‘Josella’ the starting of a car, and each takes a familiar sound and gives it attention, supports it with traditionally ‘nice’ sounds of piano and cello, allowing it to it seem more important or meaningful. The album is at once tragic and beautiful, sombre and hopeful and lovely.

Of course, you could argue that my interpretation is not all that far from Henson’s intentions, and that fear and anxiety and the desire to run/hide is intrinsically linked with a modern ‘normal existence,’ opening up a whole new set of questions as to why this may be (and whether we have always been this way). It also refreshing and encouraging to see a young musician begin to describe and address these issues, and it nice to think that there is still a chance for artists to operate successfully under such stresses.

You can buy the album, as well as some nice t-shirts designed by the man himself, from Henson’s website, or stream it over at The Guardian.

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And I Will Rise shows off Cooper’s compositional diversity, combining classical chamber instruments with piano and synthesizers to create a cinematic sound that explores a variety of moods in its modest 22 minute run time. The standout track, ‘Contact’, starts off with a 80s horror-style synths before developing into a atmospheric and cinematic slice of ambient music. The soundtrack-like quality is more than a comparison –  ‘Contact’ was used in a short film by Jennifer Reeder entitled And I Will Rise If Only To Hold You Down.

My thoughts on ‘Contact’ also work for the wider release. The use of the piano together with the eerie synths gives the EP a mournful or reflective quality that is always undercut by a bubbling menace, an effect that works superbly well and is reminiscent of Mogwai’s recent Les Revenants soundtrack. Cooper is clearly adept in a number of instrumental areas, and this allows him to capture a number of moods and themes in a relatively short space of time.

And I Will Rise is out now, and you can buy it on a pay-what-you-can basis here.

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The film revolves around the inhabitants of Bathtub, a fictional island off Louisiana. Six year-old Hushpuppy (played by Quvenzhane Wallis, who received an Oscar nomination for the part) has to cope with an unwell and increasingly volatile father, an apocalyptic storm and an apathetic world. There are clear Katrina hints and environmental themes, but there is also a beautiful story about family here too. It is so refreshing to see something that explores our relationship with the environment that does not paint everybody as evil or weak or vain. This film is upbeat despite the undeniably bleak message, it is something that celebrates our existence rather than condemning it. For me the film says: yes, humanity is to blame for a vast amount of damage and suffering (ecological or otherwise), but there is optimism in single humans, in individuals. Humans can be resiliant and tenacious and loving, and these are the very characteristics that can save us.

Anyway, back to the soundtrack. It was co-produced by Dan Romer and director Benh Zeitlin. The music, which is for the most part minimalist, feels part of the very fabric of the visuals and the story, as if the narrative could have been woven from the music just as easily as it was created the other way around. I’m not sure whether it is a completely fair observation (as I’m sure most movie composers work closely to match their work with the film in question) but I felt that it was apparent that the director had helped score his own film. 

It’s simple, just like the lives of the people of Bathtub. There is no flashy instrumentation, no thundering of a grand orchestra, just evocative and masterfully thought out music that adds an extra dimension to Hushpuppy’s view of her world. There are tracks that feature Cajun music (such as The Lost Bayou Ramblers, Leroy “Happy Fats” LeBlanc and the Balfa Brothers) and these are surrounded by the usually minimalist soundtrack, successfully portraying them as something Hushpuppy experiences in between or as well as her own mental soundtrack (i.e. the main soundtrack to the film). It is a clever concept that I’d guess would come across much better if you have seen the film.

Get the soundtrack from iTunes and the other usual places and have a listen on Spotify (boo!). Try and see the film if you can, it is a joyous watch. Check out the trailer below.

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