Illustrations by Stephanie Lane Gage.
When making my sound work, I always try to bend the material in front of me to find alternative possibilities of context or (re)context. Here, I was drawn to so many personal favorites, moods, and textures that these 70-odd minutes are more akin to a year-end work of catharsis. The result is as much a personal mix as a 2024 roundup.
This was aided by a number of films with great music supervision, particularly four heavy hitters: Love Lies Bleeding (all films 2024), Civil War, Dahomey, and Janet Planet. Artists like Throbbing Gristle, Anna Domino, Silver Apples, Suicide, Dean Blunt, and Laurie Anderson offered a huge prop of character within these films. They could set each film in a specific time and place, or, in the case of Civil War, give a punk, psychedelic energy to a near-future world.
Staying through the end credits is important for many reasons: in this work, you can find Dennis Harte’s “Summer's Over,” which comes in after the crazed climax of Guy Maddin’s Rumours, underscoring a tender melancholic moment after the madness. The narrative of Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun is structured around atmospheric moments of voice-over, which are edited here to transport the listener to its setting, the rugged and mysterious coastline of Papa Westray, Scotland. It was a great surprise to find that a song I love, “This Is the Day” by The The, plays during the film's end credits, evoking both reflection and a chance to start again.
There’s fragments of voices, courtesy of Catherine Breillat (from a post-screening discussion of her own work, following the release of Last Summer), the sweet school children from Ruth Beckermann’s Favoriten, a snippet of Martin Scorsese from Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, and the residents of Ushimado, Japan (from Kazuhiro Soda’s The Cats of Gokogu Shrine). At the end of Luna Carmoon’s Hoard,we hear even more voices, spoken reflections and memories accompanied by Everything But The Girl.
Overall, I was drawn to sourcing sounds and music that echo enigmas and different states of emotion.Hopefully this mix can be taken as a narrative in and of itself, an overall feeling, showcasing how film sound has evolved by blending both the future and the past. There’s plenty of experimentation, but classical scoring remains as impactful as ever. (To the latter point, a special hats off to John Debney’s work on Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter 1.)
TRACKLIST
All films from 2024, unless specified.
1. Throbbing Gristle, “Hamburger Lady,” Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass) 00:00
2. Excerpt, Favoriten (Ruth Beckermann) (edit) 04:51
3. Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, “Friday Afternoons, Op. 7: A New Year Carol (Part 2),” Challengers (Luca Guadagnino) 04:51
4. Suicide, “Rocket USA,” Civil War (Alex Garland) 05:56
5. Excerpt, The Promised Land (Nikolaj Arcel, 2023) (edit) 10:05
6. Anna Domino, “Everyday I Don’t,” Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass) 14:28
7. Andrea Datzman, “Creating a Sense of Self,” Inside Out 2 (Kelsey Mann) 19:03
8. Libana, “Russian Lullaby,” Janet Planet, (Annie Baker, 2023) 20:12
9. John Debney, “Cloth Flowers,” Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter 1 (Kevin Costner) 23:24
10. Dean Blunt, “Flaxen,” Dahomey (Mati Diop) 26:04
11. Excerpt, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Pham Thien An, 2023) (edit) 30:12
12. Excerpt, The Cats of Gokogu Shrine (Kazuhiro Soda) (edit) 30:12
13. Laurie Anderson, “My Eyes,” Janet Planet (Annie Baker, 2023) 31:57
14. Hans Zimmer, “Beginnings Are Such Delicate Times,” Dune: Part Two (Denis Villeneuve) (edit) 37:16
15. Excerpt, Catherine Breillat on Last Summer (2023), desire, and grace at Film at Lincoln Center's retrospective “Carnal Knowledge: The Films of Catherine Breillat,” 2024 (edit) 37:47
16. Excerpt, Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (David Hinton, 2024) (edit) 42:52
17. Excerpt, The Outrun (Nora Fingscheidt) (edit) 44:15
18. Excerpt, My First Film (Zia Anger) (edit) 51:16
19. Maria BC, “Taper,” I Saw The TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun) 53:09
20. Excerpt, Rumours (Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson, and Evan Johnson) (edit) 57:20
21. Dennis Harte, “Summer's Over,” Rumours, 1:51:00
22. Silver Apples, “Lovefingers,” Civil War (Alex Garland) 1:05:50
23. Excerpt, Hoard (Luna Carmoon, 2023) (edit) 1:09:35
24. Everything but the Girl, “Missing,” Hoard, 11:11:47
