Community Music announced today that it will release All Is Lost original motion picture soundtrack on Oct. 1. The soundtrack features 10 original compositions and one new song all written, composed and produced by frontman Alex Ebert.
The record label said the “new body of material is the sonic companion” to the forthcoming film, which will be released in the United States on Oct. 18.
The soundtrack features the first solo work from Ebert since his solo album Alexander in March 2011, Community Music said in a release. The final song on the soundtrack, titled “Amen,” is currently available for streaming on Soundcloud.
“This project was a dream – an open space to play in but also space to listen to the elements – wind, water, rain, sun, are the story’s other characters to me,” Ebert said. “I knew I had quite a task ahead of me: to at once allow the elements to sing and to give Redford a voice with which to, once in a while, respond.” Read more from Community Music.
Academy Award winner Robert Redford stars in All Is Lost, an open-water thriller about one man’s battle for survival against the elements after his sailboat is destroyed at sea. Written and directed by Academy Award nominee J.C. Chandor, the film is a “gripping, visceral and powerfully moving tribute to ingenuity and resilience.” The film has virtually no dialogue.
According the press materials from the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, it was Ebert’s first film project.
“It was sort of a shocker in some ways,” Ebert said “It’s amazing that J.C. would have that kind of faith in someone who hadn’t scored a film.”
Ebert says he played various instruments, including synthesizer, crystal bowls and Tibetan bowls. According to the press materials, Ebert also came up with themes on the piano, then mocked them up with sampled flutes or other sampled instruments. He brought in other musicians to play certain parts, including Seth Ford-Young, bassist for ESMZ. Ford-Young provided a “number of sounds that evoked the calls of whales and other sea mammals.”
“The biggest challenge was walking that fine line between truth and melodrama,” Ebert says. “You don’t want to undershoot it and you don’t want to overshoot it. You want to nail the emotion precisely. Anything else is not doing it justice.”
Read more from the Cannes Film Festival.
On Oct. 1, Community Music is also releasing “Beatles Reimagined. The Zeros are one of 10 up-and-coming American bands featured on the album. The Zeros sing a cover of “I Saw Her Standing There,” which was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and is the opening track on the Beatles’ debut album, “Please Please Me,” released in March 1963. The song was came in at No. 140 on Rolling Stones’ list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
“It was sort of a shocker in some ways,” says Ebert. “It’s amazing that J.C. would have that kind of faith in someone who hadn’t scored a film.”