2010 was a good year for fans of more non-traditional film scores, with more than one great electronic or mixed-media score gathering mainstream attention. Obviously Reznor & Ross’s jagged, electronic soundscape for The Social Network has garned plenty of accolades, and the one-and-a-half Daft Punk scores released this year for Tron: Legacy and Enter The Void (semi-scored by Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk) are excellent. Hell, the Tron score blew up in a way that had even detractors of the film* jamming to it at work and in the car. Well now we have a couple of pieces of news of more electronic artists working with interesting directors to score new films, in addition to the news that Fincher would be calling on Reznor and Ross to score his latest film, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
First up is word from Pitchfork that independent electronic artist and performer Dan Deacon will be scoring Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt Now And Sunrise. The musician is known for his concerts that have him at ground level with the audience, and a body of musical work that ranges from long collection of droning tones, to fully accessible electro-albums. You can check out his website here, where there is plenty of music freely available, along with the Facebook page that gives you an idea of his various doings. The film will star Val Kilmer, Elle Fanning, and Bruce Dern and little is known about the story or a possible release date.
Attack The Block is a new science fiction film from Joe Cornish, who is a frequent collaborator with the Blood & Ice Cream team, having helped write TinTin with Edgar Wright and been a part of the Ant-Man development. His film is about an alien invasion and one group’s attempt to defend their block in South London. Nick Frost makes an appearance, and it turns out that Basement Jaxx, the popular U.K. electro-pop group will be providing the score. A tweet from Edgar Wright caught by The Playlist let the cat out of the bag, and the director seemed to like what he heard.
Who knows what either of these scores will sound like, as musicians like this often have no problem ditching their well-known styles to explore new territory. Both represent mixtures of artists that could produce extremely interesting results though.
The major success of this last years scores could mean we start seeing more collaborations like this on larger films. Electronic scores are nothing new –as Wendy Carlos and John Carpenter will tell you– and independent directors often find themselves seeking musicians outside of the symphonic world due to cost or artistic intent. Bigger budget studio films tend to be a bit more traditional though, and there’s definitely room to shake things up at that level, and definitely plenty of talented musicians to do it.
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*…or the “very vocal minority [who] incessantly bitch about it” as Harry Knowles has so condescendingly put it, in one of his several sloppy blowjobs for the film.