July 19, 2021
The Green Knight Soundtrack by Daniel Hart Out on July 30 from Milan Records
Milan Records is releasing THE GREEN KNIGHT (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) with music by composer and performer Daniel Hart on July 30th.
From visionary filmmaker David Lowery comes a fresh and bold spin on a classic tale from the knights of the round table. THE GREEN KNIGHT is an epic fantasy adventure based on the timeless Arthurian legend. It tells the story of Sir Gawain (Dev Patel), King Arthur’s reckless and headstrong nephew, who embarks on a daring quest to confront the eponymous Green Knight, a gigantic emerald-skinned stranger and tester of men. Gawain contends with ghosts, giants, thieves, and schemers in what becomes a deeper journey to define his character and prove his worth in the eyes of his family and kingdom by facing the ultimate challenger. THE GREEN KNIGHT makes its theatrical debut Friday, July 30 from A24.
The film score is the latest in a longstanding creative partnership between Lowery and the film’s composer Daniel Hart. The resultant soundtrack album is a 29-track collection both as epic and unique as the film itself, a sweepingly dramatic and expansive body of music that straddles the divide between medieval and modern. Of the soundtrack, Hart says “Making this music was somehow both like running from a pack of hyenas and wading through a river of chocolate mud. It has never taken David [Lowery] and I this long to find what we were looking for musically on any of his films, so to listen back now and actually love what we made is all the more satisfying, especially when I think about how many late nights and hair pullings went into it. Much like Gawain himself, I was stumbling through the wilderness most of the time and found little moments of good fortune here and there, often through stubborn dumb luck. I hope that when you listen to the soundtrack, you’ll think about things other than me sitting in my studio, endlessly fretting. But if you do, then your imagination is very accurate.”
The album’s lead single, “One Year Hence,” is a darkly foreboding number underscored by a haunting, heavy synth and punctuated with jittery recorders and dissonant choral bursts – preview this track at these links.
Daniel Hart is a composer and performer based in Los Angeles. Hart made his feature film debut in 2013 with the critically acclaimed Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, which began his collaboration with filmmaker David Lowery. Hart has composed the music for all of Lowery’s films, including PETE’S DRAGON, A GHOST STORY, OLD MAN and THE GUN, and now THE GREEN KNIGHT. Over the past decade, he has also scored multiple TV shows, from Fox’s THE EXORCIST, to SMILF, to THE SOCIETY. Hart has written music for THIS AMERICAN LIFE, and composed the score for he popular podcast S TOWN.
“The synth which enters halfway through ‘One Year Hence’ was the bulk of the demo, with some recorders and vocals layered on top in a couple places, much like the music which ended up in the film,” said Hart. “David [Lowery] placed a version of that demo in the beheading scene first and liked it, and then I began to refine it, keeping the synth as its core. I had created that sound after just messing around on the Prophet for a couple hours, within the first week of taking it out of the box. I took notes on what I was doing, because I was so happy with it, and felt like I’d want to come back to it later on.”
– via PromoJukebox and Terrorbird Media
For more information on the composer, see https://www.danielhartmusic.com/
Watch the trailer to THE GREEN KNIGHT below:
