As faithful readers of the Playlist will know, we’ve reported that musician/composer and soundtrack music supervisor Brian Reitzell (Sofia Coppola’s go-to soundtrack guy) has composed the score for the upcoming horror film, “30 Days of Night.”
While Reitzell – who has helped the musical tastemaking of “Lost In Translation,” “The Virgin Suicides,” “Marie Antoinette” and collaborated with Explosions In The Sky and Spoon for “Friday Night Lights” and “Stranger Than Fiction” respectively – has composed original music for films before, this is the first time he’s composed a film’s entire score (Reitzell will also always have the estimable distinction of coaxing My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields out of hermitude to compose original music for “Lost In Translation,” and then by proxy to speak to the press for the first time in almost a decade).l
For the ’30 Days’ score (what might seem like an unusual choice of film given his past work), Reitzell gerry rigged up a pottery wheel and affixed items like drum mallets and sticks to record weird and frightening sounds.
“I was trying to figure out the different sounds and colors and instruments to use,” Reitzell explained in a press release. “I thought if someone came at me with an ax or was trying to kill me or eat me, that was going to be such a horrific experience and was going to be totally new and unfamiliar, so I didn’t think what I was going to hear was something like an orchestra.”
The experiment yielded excellent results, but was apparently pretty dangerous. “The pottery wheel can spin up to 280 rpm,” he said. “You have to wear goggles and body armor. I was scared to death.”
Don’t you love having two street dates? The album goes digital on October 16 and physical CDs (what is the hell is that?) is due on the 30th. We’ve exclusively scored the tracklist below.
Reitzell’s next move will be reteaming with his breezy French cohorts Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin of Air to compose a non-existent soundtrack. “It’s probably a sci-fi- type film, but it’s very emotional, maybe someone trapped in a spaceship kind of thing.We’re conceptualizing it now. It might be that we take a book or take some images and just start to score to those images and then a film will find us.”
“30 Days Of Night” Soundtrack tracklist
01. Prelude / Last Day of Sun
02. Girl Bait
03. Muffin Monster
04. Soon There Will Be Just 5
05. Vampires On The Horizon
06. They Didn’t Take Me
07. Barrow Burns
08. Ditchwiched
09. Vampired Johnny
10. Gus Loses His Head
11. You Wanna Play With Me Now?
12. The Bloody Fruits Of Barrow
13. Eben Shoots Up
14. The one Who Fights
15. Daybreak
16. Overture
17. Underture
