'Catch Me Daddy OST'
Matthew Watson and Daniel Thomas Freeman

Album released Wednesday 3 June 2015 on Important Records as CD and digital

description

"The crystal in men's heads / Blackened and fell to pieces / The valleys went out / The moorlands broke loose"
- from Ted Hughes "Heptonstall Old Church"

So begins "Catch Me Daddy", the award-winning feature film* from the Wolfe brothers, underscored by the beautiful and bleak wind-ravaged music from Matthew Watson (a.k.a. Matthew Wolfe) and Daniel Thomas Freeman (whose debut album "The Beauty Of Doubting Yourself" was described by Norman Records as "a profoundly moving piece of music").

Set in the desperate small-town areas and unrelenting West Yorkshire Moors, the film follows Laila, a British Pakistani girl, and her Scottish drifter boyfriend, Aaron, in their attempts to escape her violently protective family. A relentless fever dream, as the Wolfe brothers subvert genre with a sense of poetic realism. Esteemed cinematographer Robbie Ryan (Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights) brings a haunted beauty to the landscapes and faces.

Due for release in the UK on February 27th 2015, the film has already garnered praise at the Cannes Directors' Fortnight and the London Film Festival from Dazed & Confused ("one of the most exciting British debuts for years"), the Guardian ("John Ford on the Yorkshire moors ... a fierce and boldly questioning drama") and The Hollywood Reporter ("gripping, highly charged").

Taking inspiration from such classics as the Popul Vuh score to Werner Herzog's "Aguirre, the Wrath of God", Carmine and Francis Ford Coppala's "Apocalypse Now" soundtrack and the opening moments of "High Plains Drifter" combined with the influence of Swans, Tim Hecker and English Tudor choral music, "Catch Me Daddy" almost exclusively uses a deliberately limited instrumental palette of piano, percussion and oscillators twisted, gnarled and ghosted beyond recognition to realise the sound of the biting moorland wind as it hammers against metal doors and rusted corrugated roofs, sings in the lonely high tension wires and distant choirs howl into the swirling darkness.

The score was envisioned to gradually impart an increasingly mythic quality as the story progresses, a sense of something greater beyond the grey concrete and desperate cash-in-hand jobs where the iron heather, limestone cliffs and turbulent skies surrounding the battered dwellings re-frame this tiny human story into the epic dimensions experienced by the fleeing couple.

"Blackened Crystal" fades in the dread as whining oscillators circle above the heavy clouds blanketing the car parks and heathland alike. Then the amalgamated cues "A Walk Up Eldon Street / Hunting Through A Locked Door / Falcon (For Jay Ali) / Burning Fields III" juxtapose the submerged epileptic machine judders of small-town existence against the promise of endless skies just out of reach: primitive gong rhythms and rusted piano clanks wrestle with cymbal chords, piano frame choirs and electric violin drones. "Dobrudden" continually jump cuts between staggering bass, throbbing pain tones, distorted running polyrhythms and shifting internal drones before the jagged tension finally breaks and utter panic sets in.

"Descent From The Bridge" in the next reel tracks the hunters stalking street by street, enormous bass caverns bloom under the sodium lights as bloodshot eyes try to penetrate the municipal gloom. By "The Moorland Broke Loose" the remnants of humanity are fighting against each other, wolves howl in the near-distance, torches search, find and chase their prey as Palaeolithic rock impotently crashes and rages around them. The bitter ice-rain squalls "... On Calderdale Ridge" wash hope down to its rawest form ending with the initial core of the entire score: the lamenting roar of two wounded souls being torn apart by events way beyond their control. Then "Leave This Place" paints a sole moment of battered but undaunted tenderness with snatches of beauty half-heard and half-remembered through the winter gales, before "Waiting For The Brake Lights" quickly drowns it out with its piston rhythms careering downhill. And then we are left at the feet of "Monument I" as wind-choirs hail the blank stare of disbelief at cruelty unleashed.

The film ends with the headache tones of "High Tension Wires" cross-fading into the slow motion scream of the title track from Daniel's next solo album "The Infinite And The Unknowable (excerpt II)" (due late spring 2015). And yet, even as the last bass gongs mark the seconds passing like hours, a glimmer of the human spirit is left as an obscure corner of England is forever marked by something like mercy.

The album is completed by a further 7 unused themes selected and re-worked from the 5 hours of music written for the film. "Monkey Puzzle" and "Burning Fields I" narrate the original beauty and innocence of Laila and Conor's dream, whereas "Gorse Wind" is forever lost in the moorland blackness. The oscillators and ghosts of "Under The Sodium Lights" and "Doubt" lead into the monumental distortion slabs and requiem of "Codeine Fuzz" before, finally, "Heath Land Siren" issues its rusted animal warning across the rain-sodden hills.

Daniel Thomas Freeman, March 2015
Edited by Matthew Watson, Daniel Wolfe and Mike Elliott

* FILM INFORMATION
"Catch Me Daddy" is a film by Daniel Wolfe and Matthew Wolfe and is an EMU FILMS production supported by Film4, BFI, Lipsync, Screen Yorkshire and Studio Canal.

* AWARDS
Selected for the Cannes Directors' Fortnight 2014 (France) and nominated for the Camera D'Or.

Winner of Most Promising Newcomer (actor Sameena Jabeen Ahmed) and nominated for 4 other awards in the British Independent Film Awards.

Winner of Best British Newcomer (Sameena) at the BFI London Film Festival 2014 (UK) and nominated for the Graham Sutherland First Feature Award and Best British Newcomer (writers / directors Daniel and Matthew Wolfe).

tracklisting

01 Blackened Crystal
02 A Walk Up Eldon Street /
     Hunting Through A Locked Door /
     Falcon (For Jay Ali) /
     Burning Fields III
03 Dobrudden
04 Descent From The Bridge
05 The Moorland Broke Loose
06 ... On Calderdale Ridge
07 Leave This Place
08 Waiting For The Brake Lights
09 Monument I
10 High Tension Wires /
     The Infinite And The
     Unknowable (excerpt II)
11 Monkey Puzzle
12 Burning Fields I
13 Gorse Wind
14 Under The Sodium Lights
15 Doubt
16 Codeine Fuzz
17 Heath Land Siren

credits

The original film soundtrack has been re-mastered and slightly edited for this album which includes re-worked versions of additional music written in the same sessions but unused in the film

Written and produced by Matthew Watson and Daniel Thomas Freeman

Engineered, mixed and mastered by Daniel Thomas Freeman

"The Infinite And The Unknowable" was written and produced by Daniel Thomas Freeman and is licensed from the album of the same name on Fellwater Recordings

Graphic design by Fraser Muggeridge studio

Front cover image: original artwork by Mu pan

Catalogue Number IMPREC424

"superb use of visuals and music together to create something which is almost fairy tale" Mark Kermode (BBC)

"a rumbling, sometimes discordant score ... provides a highly effective assist" Variety

"4/5 ... feels primal and strangled when combined with the unearthly din of [the] primordial score" Fan The Fire

"the ominous ambient score ... feeds into this slow crescendo of rumbling unease" The Hollywood Reporter

"'Catch Me Daddy's stunning soundtrack ... perfectly matches Robbie Ryan's beautiful 35mm cinematography" Black Project

"[the score] also veers away from any genre, or even cinematic, traditions" Close-Up Film

"hugely impressive debut feature ... a fine use of music to inform the ramping up of tension" Moviescramble

"some extraordinary music cues" Sight & Sound magazine

"stunning visuals and visceral soundtrack" The Thin Air

"the score ... is wild ... the frenetic music propels the entire film forward" FathersOnHolyGore

"Some people are going to go nuts for this. Or go nuts listening." Record Collector