Liars have provided the soundtrack for a forthcoming film by Jeremy Phillips, entitled 1/1. Above you can hear the first taste, ‘Liquorice’.
The recordings were made shortly after the band’s 2014 album Mess, and constitute the last work by Angus Andrew and Aaron Hemphill as a duo; the latter left the project amicably in 2017.
The pair first decided to take on the soundtrack project after reading a script for the film on a flight. Hemphill explained: "It was very heavy, it was very intense and by the time we got to New York, we’d read it. At that point, we hadn’t seen anything but we were on board just from reading the script."
The film is Phillips’ directorial debut. For Liars’ commission he sent them emotional cues rather than musical direction, such as ‘Imagine you have a 100 piece puzzle, but you have 1000 pieces – what would that sound like’ or ‘the character is submerged in water at 4am’ or ‘an alarm clock won’t stop ringing’.
"This was the perfect thing for us to hear, that allowed us to explore that feeling," Hemphill continued. "At this point we still haven’t seen the film, we were going off the script and a few sample scenes. These descriptions were really helpful for us, and even though they were abstract, they allowed a lot of interpretation. We tried to find ways to take it off the grid. We would watch it, read the script and try to get a feel for the plot development and then base the music off of our memory."
The film, which is released on 17 July, concerns Lissa, a 20-year-old girl in rural Pennsylvania and her struggles with sex, drugs, love and loss. It stars Lindsey Shaw, Judd Nelson and Dendrie Taylor.
Director Phillips said: "I view this movie as ours, and that goes for everyone involved in the production. I wanted there to be give and take between everyone working on it. The music, how it functions in the film, is really the access point to the main character’s thoughts/feelings. It’s a coming-of- age story, she’s very distant and the music guides you through the emotions, as both she and the visual language of the film keep maturing."
Liars’ soundtrack is released on July 20, to pre-order it click
here.
