“When I was fifty six I went mute for ten days.” – Katherine Amesbury
In a departure from Daniel Thomas Freeman’s previous solo music work and his ten years in Rameses III, the forthcoming release of the feature film “The Silence After Life” on 27th November marks his debut as a film writer / director. Ahead of the film’s release, Fluid Radio have been given an exclusive four track preview of the soundtrack album (see below) which will also be released on 27th November. On release day Fluid Radio will also be sharing 25 free rentals of the film itself.
Buried ghosts hiss and moan …
The feature “The Silence After Life” is a 70-minute experimental drama / meditation on grief, spirituality and the beauty of nature, with minimal dialogue and immersive score / sound design. It stars Sally Mortemore (“Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”, “Game of Thrones”) as Katherine Amesbury, a lonely woman in her fifties who, after a serious accident, experiences intense visions as she loses her voice and runs away from home to live rough in the beauty of the English woods.
Synthetic-acoustic string choirs glow at magic hour…
Daniel’s score acts as a main character in the film – rather than simply reacting and supporting the onscreen images, actions and dialogue it attempts to push the edges of the frame outward, to reach for the beyond, to depict the struggle between mortal despair and eternal hope. Inspired by work from artists such as Jóhann Jóhannsson, John Luther Adams, Jonny Greenwood, Arvo Pärt and Alan Splet (‘Eraserhead‘, dir. David Lynch, 1977), the score uses layer upon layer of electric violin, harp, percussion, electronics, organ, piano and purposefully-misused sampled instruments.
A slow-terror riff dissolves into a locked-groove drone then collapses in on itself…
The music shifts between more ragged, atonal pieces of grief to longer, more melodic and more conventional pieces steeped in beauty and hard-earned peace. All of the score was first performed freehand before being heavily edited, processed and mixed to give an artificial but still organic sound, reflecting how Katherine’s perceptions and emotions shift and shimmer throughout the film.
Soft-light harp meditations get beautifully lost amongst the trees…
The album The Silence After Life (Original Film Soundtrack) re-masters all of the music cues from the film in their original order but also includes five bonus tracks. Poultice I and Poultice II are taken from the short film of the same name made in preparation for the feature. Woozy and Blurred and Passing were initially unused score from the short film Lockdown (dir. Max Sokoloff, 2016) but were revived as early templates for the feature’s score. Finally, Never That Simple, is included as an early version of the film’s Revelation.
Pre-order the film “The Silence After Life”
Pre-order the music “The Silence After Life (Original Film Soundtrack)”
thesilenceafterlife.com/