A Winged Victory For The Sullen, the otherworldly collaboration
between Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie and Dustin O’Halloran,
commence the New Year with their third full-length titled Iris
– available worldwide via Erased Tapes on January 13th 2017.
Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie and Dustin O’Halloran first met the
director Jalil Lespert after he had discovered A Winged Victory For
The Sullen on a music search online. After listening to their music, he
immediately knew: “it was the sound of my new film”. With an
excellent cast of France’s finest actors Romain Duris, Charlotte Le
Bon, and the director himself, plus a script filled with tension, sexuality
and darkness, they knew there was a lot of musical territory to mine.
It was agreed that they wanted to explore more analogue electronique
experiments as well as working with a large string ensemble, to create
something that felt very modern and still cinematic.
“Despite A Winged Victory For The Sullen being associated with film
score type music, trying to survive the process of creating the modern
film score is not for people with fragile egos. It requires those who are
the most responsive to change. The director and the film presented a
new set of challenges, so 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”, the duo elaborate.
The recording sessions began with their long time sound collaborator
Francesco Donadello in the form of some modular synth sessions in
Berlin. Dustin and Adam began working from the script in their own
studios, and after filming commenced they continued to create music
that could be used for first edits of the film – each day getting new
scenes that triggered ideas that would become the base of the film
score. Over the course of the next few months the two slowly crafted
the music with weekly discussion from their studio to the editing room.
The final sessions to what is now the score of Iris were recorded with
a 40-piece string orchestra at Magyar Radio in Budapest.
Upon label founder Robert Raths’ request the over sixty minutes of
material were then edited down to a concise album listen at forty-one
minutes with a physical release set for January 13, 2017. The digital
bonus track edition includes two solo pieces by Adam Bryanbaum
Wiltzie entitled The Endless Battle Of The Maudlin Ballade Part 2 and
The Endless Battle Of The Maudlin Ballade Part 3, as well as tracks
by Petite Noir, dOP, DJ Pone and The Shoes which feature in the
film. The artwork was created by Berlin based illustrator Stephanie F.
Scholz who also created the iconic cover for Nils Frahm’s Music for
The Motion Picture Victoria.