Clint Mansell has firmly established himself as one of the top contemporary composers working in film scoring today, and one of the ways he made it to that position is his establishment of great collaborative partnerships with directors such as Duncan Jones, Darren Aronofsky, and Ben Wheatley, the latter of which is the director of Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (previously named Colin You Anus) which premieres on BBC2 this Christmas.
We have a track from Mansell’s score for you to listen to and it’s a cracker. ‘[music still, with shouts]’ has the hallmarks of Mansell’s work to date; the hypnotic and ethereal wash, the insistent strings, but here they have a Celtic flavour, with a particularly brilliant use of woodwind. Of course this is a Ben Wheatley film, so the track slowly descends into something twisted and dissonant, and it’s hard not to think of Wheatley’s interest in folk horror. You can listen to ‘[music still, with shouts] below, but we also have an exclusive note from Clint Mansell himself about scoring the film.
‘I had no idea Ben Wheatley was making a new film. There’d been some talk of something happening but nothing concrete, not as far as I knew anyway. Then the slate of ‘Colin You Anus’ popped up on-line but still I had no idea. Speculation was rife but I feel filmmaking is a personal venture so I didn’t like to quiz anyone about it.
Then late one night Ben Whats App’d me and asked if I’d like to see a rough cut of the film they’d been making! Does a shoe smell!? You bet I wanted to see it!
A new Ben Wheatley film, with many familiar faces both on screen and behind the scenes, is always a good thing so when Ben asked me if I was interested in scoring the film, I told him I’d have been really depressed if he hadn’t asked me!
They shot the film in 11 days! So we approached the music in the same way-recorded and mixed in one day! I’ve never worked like that before but it was the way it needed to be. I’d sketched the music in a way that I hoped would allow the musicians help me find an authenticity to the vibe we were going for. I love finding the right people to help me do what I do and then letting them do just that! The musicians we found were well up for it and I’m really happy with the result.
Filmmaking is such a collaborative venture. I love it when we end up in a place I would never have expected-and I certainly couldn’t have written this score in isolation. Even writing about it now makes me happy. I hope it does you too.’
Happy New Year, Colin Burstead will make its debut at the London Film Festival before publicly premiering on BBC2 this December. Lakeshore Records will be releasing the soundtrack digitally tomorrow, with Invada Records issuing the album on physical formats in December.
Thanks to Redg Weeks, Jane Arthy, Kurt Nishimura, and of course Clint Mansell.
