Exclusive: Ben Lovett’s THE WIND Score Shines in “We Shall Be Monsters”

Jonathan Barkan   |  

Apr 3, 2019

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Ben Lovett is a name that is fast becoming one of the genre composers you need to know. After bursting on the scene in 2007 with The Signal, Lovett’s recent years have shone particularly brightly amongst the horror crowd. Last year, his work on the Netflix film The Ritual set teeth on edge and spines tingling. His work can also be heard in the highly anticipated upcoming horror feature I Trapped The Devil. But today, we are here to celebrate his work on The Wind, which will be released in theaters and VOD by IFC Films on April 5.

Above, you can listen to the track “We Shall Be Monsters”, which slowly builds transitions from beauty to beast. Strings open the track, moving from hypnotic stutters to subtly eerie moments before fully embracing the darkness, discordant melodies clashing against each other. As the music swells, strange vocalizations that don’t seem quite human whisper incoherently until everything comes to a halt, the echoes lingering like ghosts.

Lovett tells Dread Central, “On any film score I start by looking for material in the story I can relate to personally.  I didn’t grow up on the prairie in the 1800s and I’ve never been chased by wolves, but I’m very familiar with the dangers that come from too much time alone with your own thoughts.  That was my first connection point with the film thematically, the way jealousy and loneliness and confusion can bore their way into your thoughts and warp your perspective.  In the movie, as in life, I suppose, the demons to fear most are often the ones lurking in your own head.”

He continues, telling us, “In the film, our main character is very much haunted by the spectre of this other woman’s involvement with her husband, and the questions that come with it. Musically I wanted to emblify that path of emotion where confusion becomes suspicion that warps into jealousy, eventually growing into a monster of its own making.  The track features a pair signature instruments from the score, the Bass Flute and the Nyckelharpa, as well a small choir I had doing these weird breathing exercises to try and exaggerate that suffocating feeling these kinds of thoughts can have on you.”

Talking about the overall score, Lovett states, “The score needed to narrate many sections of the film where no dialogue exists, and in order to adequately describe the internal story of the main character I felt we needed to employ an element of chaos into the scoring process. I just felt the sound of someone coming apart mentally and emotionally might not be something particularly elegant or composed.”

Says Lovett on using the Nyckelharpa, a 16 string keyed violin that originated in the 15th century, as well as other key instruments: “There’s something naturally haunting about the sound of the Nyckelharpa, it immediately invokes a sort of spooky, old world religion that felt appropriate for the film. The bass flute became the tonal foundation of the score’s atmosphere. We wanted to establish a constant and unnerving presence of wind, and I was asked if there was a way to represent this in the score somehow. Naturally, my first instinct was to try a wind instrument.”

Lakeshore Records will release The Wind OST digitally on April 5.

Emma Tammi’s directorial debut was written by Teresa Sutherland. The Wind stars Caitlin Gerard and Julia Goldani-Telles.