Milan Records (Sony Music Entertainment) has released The Seeding Original Soundtrack by French/American musician, composer, artist, and music producer TRZTN (Tristan Bechet). Arriving in conjunction with The Seeding’s release in theaters and on digital, the soundtrack features contributions by F.M. Einheit, founder of industrial pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten, as well as the song “Alina’s Lullaby,” featuring vocals by Karen O. Scoring the film’s haunting final moments and end credits, its sparse arrangement offers a deceptively tranquil coda to the horror that precedes it.
She explains, “I was happy to add my touch; a tender lullaby, with a subliminal ‘off’ quality. The first rendition of Mother’s Song was in gibberish, Barney liked the idea of the words being in an old dialect from Eastern Europe. Through a friend of a friend, Tristan tracked down an English Priest who was a missionary in Romania who knew Romani Chib. Tristan recorded the priest, who had the loveliest countenance, translating a poem that Barney had written for the film and from the lot I formulated the lyrics. The “cuckoo” part of the song was an idea I had from a Brazilian song about a bird that Barney’s mother used to sing to him when he was little. I loved the idea of this lullaby feeling authentically passed down from generations and in its own way was deeply personal to Barney’s own origin story. I’m also pleased to be following a lineage of horror film lullabies, deliciously skewed by their context. ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ Lullaby being the holy grail of course.
In The Seeding (2023 Tribeca Film Festival, 2023 Beyond Fest), a hiker lost in the desert takes refuge with a woman living alone, and soon discovers that she might not be there willingly. Directed by Barnaby Clay (SHOT! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra Of Rock), the film stars Scott Haze (Venom, Jurassic World Dominion) and Kate Lyn Sheil (You’re Next, V/H/S). TRZTN’s epic, synth-driven and Musique concrète-inspired score — initially composed with just the script to work off of — offers a perfect companion for the film’s tonal mix of environmental thrillers like Deliverance and the kinds of psychological thrillers like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre where “ordinary people become tainted by the madness of their situation,” as Clay states.
In order to immerse the viewer in the film’s setting TRZTN worked with legendary sound artist and musician F.M. Einheit and avant garde cellist Okkyung Lee to provide sonic textures that bring to mind the sand, stone, wind, and metal that are so prominent in the movie. “The music plays many roles,” TRZTN says. “Several key elements needed to be defined in the score – one was describing the oppressive environment and canyon as character. This was characterized with deep bass tones and a bulbous, bloated sound. Another feature was to create dissonant, odd, awkward and creepy themes that evoked a certain ‘emotional failure.’” Beyond the score, TRZTN also used a hybrid language made up of Romanian, Hungarian and Romani Chib to craft the spine-chilling incantations heard throughout the film.
The result is a soundtrack of genre-defying industrial experimentalism that plays many roles, from the characters’ psychological states of mind to the Canyon’s oppressive scale and the desert’s crushing heat.
Have you seen The Seeding yet?
