When it played last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival, the supernatural love story film “Spring” was described as a supernatural twist on the “Before Sunrise” narrative. Directed by Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, the film stars Lou Taylor Pucci, Nadia Hilker, and Francesco Carnelutti. The movie follows a troubled American backpacker in Italy, whose romance with a seductive but mysterious local turns into an unexpected nightmare, when her dark, primordial secret threatens to destroy their new-found happiness.
In all the Midnight Madness fuss, some may have missed that the score was composed by Jimmy LaValle aka The Album Leaf — a sonorously beautiful ambient band known for Lavalle’s use of electronics, synthesizer and Rhodes piano, that has toured with Sigur Rós. His Icelandic counterparts often find their music being used for films, so it’s really about time other filmmakers became hip to LaValle’s cinematic and soundtrack-friendly music; clearly Moorehead and Benson took notice.
The original score from by Jimmy LaValle will be available March 24th from Eastern Glow Recordings, and we’ve got an exclusive first listen of the track “Louise Theme.” Here’s the composer’s statement:
I created the soundtrack to SPRING in just over a few months, first approaching the main tones that I wanted to repeat to follow the characters. There are many tense and suspenseful moments in the film and I wanted to be able to add to the intensity of these scenes in a unique way, so I began to sample a Chinese musical bowl, various music boxes, and other odd objects that I could stretch out the waveforms to create eerie ambient drones. During the process, my wife and son came in to say hello and she suggested that I sample our eight-month-old son’s voice, which I ultimately used quite heavily throughout the score. Once I had my sounds, absolutely everything else fell in place.
“Spring” hits theaters and VOD nationwide Friday, March 20th from Drafthouse Films and FilmBuff. The soundtrack is now available for pre-order on Amazon now. Listen to the score cut below.
