Album released Friday 27 November 2020 on
Blink in the Endless as digital
description
"When I was fifty six I went mute for ten days."
- Katherine Amesbury
THE SOUNDTRACK ALBUM
Buried ghosts hiss and moan; synthetic-acoustic string choirs glow at magic hour; a slow-terror riff dissolves into
a locked-groove drone then collapses in on itself; soft-light harp meditations get beautifully lost in the English woods;
an open-ended expanse of never-repeating organ chords, seismic orchestral shifts and high-altitude strings circle a dissonant throb ...
... This is the score to the feature film 'The Silence After Life', an experimental feature-length drama / meditation on grief, spirituality
and the beauty of nature, with minimal dialogue and immersive score / sound design. The 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 Alan Splet
('Eraserhead', dir. David Lynch, 1977), Jóhann Jóhannsson, John Luther Adams, Jonny Greenwood, Arvo Pärt and Daniel's previous work as
part of Rameses III, the score uses layer upon layer of electric violin, harp, percussion, organ, piano and purposefully-misused orchestral
sampled instruments, all initially played by hand then heavily processed and edited afterwards.
'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', an early version of the film's 'Revelation', ends the album
with a manic swamp of piano, endlessly spiralling upwards.
THE FEATURE FILM
The feature 'The Silence After Life' is the debut of Daniel Thomas Freeman as a film writer, director and composer, starring Sally Mortemore
('Game of Thrones', 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets') and Emma Spearing ('Red Call'). It is a 70 minute experimental drama /
meditation on grief, spirituality and the beauty of nature, with minimal dialogue and immersive score / sound design. Following a serious
accident, a lonely woman in her fifties experiences intense visions as she loses her voice and runs away from home to live rough in the beauty
of the English woods.
"Haunting ... wonderful performances"
- Brenda Blethyn, Oscar nominee
"Packed with gravitas and pathos, power and beauty"
- Brighton Rocks International Film Festival
"An intensely poetic meditation on life, grief and spirituality"
- Ramsgate International Film & TV Festival
Film festival screenings (online because of COVID-19):
tracklisting
01 - I Just Had a Bit of an Argument
02 - But You’re Dead
03 - The Woods Girl
04 - Three Days Gone
05 - Boneyard
06 - The Distance Between Earth and Heaven
07 - Running in Your Sleep
08 - Oil and Wax
09 - Revelation
10 - The Stark Beauty of the Divine (TSAL Edit)
11 - Crawling out of the Void
12 - Poultice II
13 - Poultice I
14 - Woozy and Blurred (Unused Theme from Lockdown)
15 - Passing (Unused Theme from Lockdown)
16 - Never That Simple
credits
Music written, performed, produced, mixed and mastered between 2016 and 2020 by Daniel Thomas Freeman
Cover photo from the film 'The Silence After Life'
Catalogue Number BE012DTF