Album Notes

This is dark and gritty music for a post-apocalyptic action film, starring Rutger Hauer and Joan Chen. When I started work on the score, I knew I wanted to find a "future-primitive" sound that would feel like it belonged in that blasted world, so I began building sounds: most of the percussion originated as recordings of junk being thrown around and smashed in a basement, and many of the melodic sounds came from bowed metal and wood. I turned to the orchestra only for brass and strings.

The story is set in a place and time in which lost cultures are rediscovered by literally digging in the dirt, and you're as likely to come across a pair of semi-functional accordions as a harmonica or a pair of Moroccan qakabas. With such a fluid culture as a setting, I had the freedom to use a long-standing interest in world music as a significant stylistic element in the score. In particular, the rhythmic basis of much of the music is 12/8 time, which is a favorite meter in the African music I've studied and played.