Broadcast announce ‘Berberian Sound Studio’ soundtrack

Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio has emerged as one of the most critically acclaimed indie films of the year, gaining comparisons to the mastery of David Lynch and Francis Ford Coppola. The film’s sublime soundtrack was composed by Broadcast (aka Trish Keenan and James Cargill), before Trish’s untimely passing last year.

Initially conceived as the soundtrack to The Equestrian Vortex, the film-within-a-film (watch opening credits here) around which Berberian Sound Studio unfolds, it would eventually spill outwards to encapsulate the entire world Strickland had created and populated with eccentric, magnetic characters. On it’s own, the music sets a sinister and atmospheric tone that still exists well within Broadcast’s sonic universe.

The film’s plot, which involves a British sound recordist’s slowly degenerating mental state while working in an Italian film studio, has clearly been one driving force behind the music as has the work of pioneering Italian composers such as Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai. Working closely with Strickland as well as the film’s supervising sound editor Joakim Sundstrom, Cargill wove in sound effects, screams and snatches of dialogue in order to bring elements of the film back into the soundtrack. The outcome is the rare piece of film music that not only enhances the visual, but exists on it’s own as an independent work, and one that is an invaluable edition to Broadcast’s inimitable history.

Broadcast ‘Berberian Sound Studio’ is released on CD, Vinyl & Digital on 04 January 2013.

Tracklist:

1. A Breeze Through the Burford Spur
2. The Equestrian Vortex
3. Beautiful Hair
4. Malleus Maleficarum
5. Mark of the Devil
6. Confession Modulation
7. Monica’s Fall
8. Teresa’s Song (Sorrow)
9. The North Downs Dimension
10. Collatina is Coming
11. Such Tender Things
12. Teresa, Lark of Ascension
13. Monica’s Burial (Under the Junipers)
14. Found Scalded, Found Drowned
15. Monica (Her Parents Have Been Informed)
16. The Fifth Claw
17. Saducismus Triumphatus
18. The Gallops
19. They’re Here, They’re Under Us
20. Collatina, Mark of Damnation
21. Treatise
22. A Goblin
23. The Equestrian Library
24. The Serpent’s Semen
25. Burnt at the Stake
26. All Chiffchaffs
27. The Curfew After the Massacre
28. Poultry In Mind
29. The Sacred marriage
30. Valeria’s Burial (Under the Fort)
31. Edda’s Burial (Under the Clumps)
32. The Game’s Up
33. It Must’ve Been the Magpies
34. The Dormitory Window
35. Anima di Cristo
36. His World is My Shed
37. Collatina’s Folly
38. Here Comes the Sabbath, There Goes the Cross
39. Our Darkest Sabbath