I’ve used A Winged Victory for the Sullen’s ambient post-classical music as a sleep aid on more than one occasion. The duo’s music is so beautiful and spacious, yet it moves so goddamn slowly, perfect for drifting toward a thoughtless nothing. “Galerie,” the first track released from the duo’s upcoming Iris soundtrack and available to stream below, starts as expected, building to a familiar combination of delicate piano and droning ambientscapes. The difference is the pacing, which is no longer soporific. It’s like AWVFTS has Gone Pop in service of the high drama on the screen.
In their words: “[We] decided to stop thinking about cinema as an object, and moved closer to using the film’s images as triggers for experiences. The more we were able to let go, and see the music as something that happens, like a process - not a quality, the more we were able to reach a place that sounded like us. It was as if we were making our first record all over again, except being filtered through another language littered with dead metaphors.”
Iris, directed by Jalil Lespert, is a French thriller about the kidnapping of a Parisian banker’s wife and her subsequent introduction into what looks like some kind of burlesque ring. Hardly a situation you’d want to write sleep songs for, so AWVFTS seem to have changed their game for the occasion. Recorded with a 40-piece string orchestra in Budapest, the soundtrack is out on Erased Tapes on January 13, 2017. One half of AWVFTS, Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie, has his own score for the film Salero due out this Friday.
Iris OST tracklisting:
01. Prologue Iris
02. Retour Au Champs De Mars
03. Fantasme
04. Gare Du Nord Part One
05. L’embauche
06. Le Retour En Foret
07. Metro Part Three
08. Flashback Antoine
09. Galerie
10. Le Renversement
11. Normandie
12. Comme On A Dit
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