Cat’s Eyes, the collaborative project between Canadian soprano singer Rachel Zeffira and The Horrors’ Faris Badwan, have scored The Duke Of Burgundy, the new film from Peter Strickland, the director of Berberian Sound Studio and Katalin Varga. The soundtrack is out on February 16 via RAF and Caroline Records, and we’ve now got an first play of the opening theme, a dreamy pop-lullaby awash with baroque strings, elegant clarinet melodies and Zeffira’s exquisite vocals – listen above.
Says Badwan of the process: "Like many other musicians, Rachel and I have always had aspirations towards working on film soundtracks – so we were happy when Peter trusted us to write the score for his incredible film. Working on the film, the narrative was already there and we had to write music tailored towards it. Long before any filming, we read the script and began writing music based on individual characters and themes. Once they had started filming, Peter began sending us references. In some cases the scenes were filmed to temp music and Peter wanted us to create the same atmosphere with our pieces. In one of the major scenes Peter had been using Mozart’s Requiem as temp music and everyone involved had become attached to it. He decided towards the end of the process that he wanted us to replace it, and Rachel ended up writing and arranging a full choral requiem the evening before the deadline. We were writing for Peter and the film rather than ourselves and in some ways that was sort of liberating. We had specific scenes to follow and subtle movements to draw attention to… it was very different to making a normal album. In the process, we must have watched the film hundreds of times… and we still like it. We were lucky in that the script was really great and there were some extremely memorable characters to work with."
The film stars Borgen‘s Sidse Babett Knudson and Chiara DiAnna, and will be released in UK cinemas on February 20. In the meantime, read Luke Turner’s 2011 interview with Cat’s Eyes here.
