Album Notes

"Usher" is the independent film shot in a movie theatre late at night where the crew and much of the cast worked, from midnight to 6 a.m. over the course of 12 weeks. Shot on film, it showed at the Silver Lake Film Festival and an early cut sold out at the Telluride Indiefest in 2004. It recently acquired distribution through a New York boutique company.

A young hit man, downsized after botching a job, gets a job as an usher in a movie theatre. He can't handle it.

He finds himself faced with the everyday frustrations of the workplace, and embroiled in the petty romances and power struggles of the high-school-aged employees. Unable to comprehend the social and moral rules of this environment, he begins to lose touch with reality. Eventually his hit man training resurfaces as his last defense.

USHER is a "genre-based" drama (the story of a "hit man in hiding"), but placed in a controlled, determined, work-based setting, to explore the quieter reaches of the genre. It's by turns romantic, a thriller, and a meditation on art (the theatre is treated as a museum), its consumption and presumptions.

Jeff Lunzaga scored the film, taking inspiration from '70s (pre-Star Wars) John Williams and the electronic ambient "mood washes" of Tangerine Dream. A trained musician, the score is a mix of symphonic instruments and synthesized tonalities that create a lush and moody environment in which Ash, the main protagonist, gets lost in his journey. Lunzaga, and his band DESCIPLE, have scored other independent films, including "Crow 2: Purgatory" and "Haunted House Party."