Composing Keeper with Edo Van Breemen

Episode Transcript
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James Jay Edwards (00:25):
Welcome to eye on horror, the official
podcast of ihorror.com this isepisode 155 otherwise known as
season eight Episode 15. I amyour host, James Jay Edwards,
and with me, as always, is yourother host, Jacob Davison, how
you doing?

Jacob Davidson (00:39):
Jacob? Doing good, working off a turkey and
pumpkin pie hangover while I'mback on the East Coast.

Yeah, we are recording this on Black Friday,
the day after Thanksgiving. Soyeah, there's a lot of trip. The
thing going on here, also withus, as always, is your other
other host, Jon Correia, how youdoing? Correia, doing great.

Jonathan Correia (01:01):
I spent Thanksgiving by myself, which
was fucking fantastic. I startedoff the day with a Weapons style
breakfast of like four hot dogs,and then went and saw Bugonia
finally, which was great. What agreat Thanksgiving movie. And
just like as like a mental resetat the end of the day, I watched
The Straight Story, and justkind of like felt better about

(01:24):
where I live in this countrybecause of it. What a beautiful
movie, what a perfect fuckingmovie, The Straight Story. God
damn,

I kind of had to work all day because, you
know, the day job, there wereonly three events, but they went
from eight in the morning untilabout 6pm so it was one of
those, always somethinghappening. But I got to sit
around and kind of like hangout, watch football. And after
For Good, which? Which is betterthan the first Wicked, In my

(01:53):
opinion, I wasn't a fan of thefirst Wicked, not a huge fan of

Wicked (01:56):
For Good. I still think they did the same thing to the
music, where they sterilized it,because the music for Wicked is
so good, but they still kind ofripped the soul out of it. I
mean, I'm not quite sure what itis about the music, because the
performances are good, thevocals are amazing. You know,
the Ariana Grande and CynthiaRebo can sing their asses off,

(02:18):
but there's just something aboutit that's just sterilized. But
this one is, it kind of getsinto the events of Wizard of Oz,
like, cursory, like, it doesn'tfocus on it at all. All you
really see of Dorothy is herfeet. But it shows you kind of
the origin ruby slippers, yeah,and yeah, and the slippers, and

(02:38):
all you, you, it kind of showsthe origin of the Scarecrow, the
Tin Man, and you kind of saw alittle of the Cowardly Lion in
Wicked but so that was a littlemore relatable to me, for you
know, having grown up watchingWizard of Oz, and it is, I mean,
I know we're eye on horror, soI'm going to tell you the

(02:58):
origins of some of thesecreatures are kind of horrific,
but yeah, that was myThanksgiving. How was yours?

Jacob, I had a good time, like I said, I'm over
visiting my folks in NewEngland. Mainly just hung out
with my family and ate a lot ofTurkey and pumpkin pie, and then
just kind of hung out, caught upon that Death by Lightning

(03:30):
Netflix show with MichaelShannon, where he's James A
Garfield, which I wouldn't haveexpected to be so enthralling,
but it is A very fascinatingshow and character study, and
then I watched, oh yeah, the newMighty Nein, the new Critical
Role animated series Yeah. And Iwaited up all night for the big

(03:55):
black friday unveiling forvinegar syndrome and Severin
films and, holy shit, thoseabsolute bad yeah, in 4k troll
two, 4k that's eight trolls.

Oh, man, I'm so excited to experience troll
two and 4k I will say I'm alittle surprised they didn't try
to get the rights to the BestWorst Movie or best, best, worst
movie documentary, that's it is.
Yeah, yeah. I for

some funny, because their vision just put
out a Blu ray of that. So Iguess they that already
happened, but you can still getthem separately and just kind of
do it. It's like a doublefeature, I guess. And have I
mentioned that I'm in thatdocumentary

few times?

Jesus, this shit again?

George Hardy, the dad from Troll 2, I can't
live this down.

Have you?
Have you gone looking for ityet? Correia,

no, but when I get back from my record store
day shift, I'm gonna have tofucking look again. Well, no, I
was mostly disappointed becauseI have the shit. Yeah, the
Scream Factory double featurerelease of Troll 2 and that. And
then when I didn't have thedocument, I was like, fuck now I
gotta hold on to it again. Butmaybe, maybe I'll look into the
Terror Vision if it's got morefeatures. But, yeah, no, what an

(05:12):
insane lineup from VinegarSyndrome this year. I mean,
Garbage Pail Kids in 4k andTroll 2, it's like they're
really scraping the bottom ofthe fucking trash can and
putting it in glorious 4k I lovethem.

Oh yeah, though, I was particularly happy that
they put out a new blu ray ofAbel ferrara's New Rose Hotel.
Like, is, like one of myfavorite kind of 90s cyber punk
neo noirs. I mean, you got Chrisfor you got Christopher Walken,
Willem Dafoe, Asia Argento,yeah, no, it's such is so under

(05:48):
it. And speaking of they, theother big secret announcement
was the new 4k of the StendhalSyndrome. Oh, yeah, but Severin,
Severin also had some reallygood stuff, like, I immediately
jumped on the new release, or,well, the only release really,
of Alex winters and Tom Stern isThe Idiot Box.

Yes, I didn't do, I'm not doing much Black
Friday shopping, but that wasone of the that was one of the
things I grabbed, was that and,and they had a the Penelope
Spheeris, The Boys Next Door 4kdiscounted. upgrade? Yeah. I had
to, had to upgrade. And thenthey had a damaged postcard that

(06:28):
was signed by the star of TheDevil's Honey. So 10 bucks. I
was like, you guys know myobsession with that movie. So
it's like, the saxophone, isn'tit, with the saxophone being
played into the lady's crotch.
Yes, I'm gonna get it's hersignature. So is, you can
imagine, I'm very excited. Yeah,get framed. I Devil's Honey is

(06:49):
so fun. What a what a wacky assmovie.

So not that much has come out since last
time we talked. But speaking offun, the big thing, I think,
that has actually released isSisu: Road to Revenge. Yes, have
you guys both seen Sisu 2?

No, I thought was that was gonna be the other
movie I was gonna see yesterday.
But then it was only likeplaying in one theater, and it
was like a bit of a drive. Andyou know,

it's funny because they screened Sisu
to Revenge for press the samenight they did wicked for good.
So I actually made the choice tosee Sisu: Road to Revenge
because, and as I told the repwho kind of made fun of me for
being there, I was like, Ienjoyed Sisu a lot more than I
enjoyed Wicked. So I'm hopingthe sequel,

there's a there's a lot more fascist
punching in Sisu than there isin Wicked. So here's

the thing.

Here's the thing about Sisu: Road to Revenge. And as it was (07:52):
undefined
going, I was wondering, Am Iremembering sisu wrong, but I

wasn't the enemy in Sisu (07:58):
Road to Revenge is not the Nazis.
It's the commies. He's fightingthe Red Army and but in I was
thinking, shit, was itcommunists in Sisu too? But no,
sisu was literally not. It wasNazis, and it's now commies, so
it's not quite as satisfying tosee him kill communists as it is

Nazis. But holy shit, Sisu (08:21):
Road to Revenge is literally
everything you could want from aSisu sequel.

See, the thing is, though, is that they gave
him a very formidable enemy inthis one, it's like Steven Lang
plays this crazy Red Armycolonel who went on a killing
spree and killed his family, andnow the this general sends him
out to finish the job, becausethe old man killed a bunch of
their soldiers in retaliation.
And it's like somebody put it

(08:55):
Fury Road slash Looney Tunes thesequel, because it's a road
movie. It's like the old mantaking back the lumber from his
ancestral home, and it's allthese army men trying to take
him out. And they've got, like,soldiers and motorcycle special
planes. They send out a tank andplanes, yeah, so they just throw

(09:17):
everything at him.

Yeah, it is.
The first half of it is veryFury Road, because it's him
basically, you know, driving,trying to get away from anything
the commies can throw at him.
But then once he figures out whothe guy chasing him is, the dude
who killed his family, then itkind of becomes, this is where

(09:41):
the revenge it's like the roadis the Fury Road part, the
revenge part. It's almost like aslasher movie, like there's this
one scene where he's on a trainand he's sneaking through all of
these sleeping cars full ofsleeping Red Army soldiers,
trying not to wake them up. And.
And it gets to a point where, Idon't want to spoil anything,

(10:03):
because it's actually kind ofhysterical, but it gets to, kind
of like the scene in Naked Gunwhere OJ dies. It kind of gets
to that, that point of Ludacris,where, like, how much more is
going to be thrown at this dude?
And he's trying to stay quiet,and there's, like, all this
stuff happening that would makean average person scream. It's,

(10:25):
it's pretty funny, but, yeah, itis. It's everything you could
want from a sisu sequel. It'shis, I mean, just, it's just
over the top gory kills. StevenLang is incredible, as is the
guy. I don't know that the guy'sname, who plays the it's the
same guy from sisu, but, yeah,but he's amazing. And here's the

(10:53):
other thing I always want tospoil this the dog lives the dog
from the first one, this one, helives through this one too. So
go ahead and go. Go into it. Youdon't have to worry about seeing
a dog die.

Oh, and the old man is played by, I'm think I'm
pronouncing this right, yorma orJorma Tamila,

yes, yeah, that's his. Yeah. I wouldn't if
you pronounced it wrong. Iwouldn't know, but yeah, that's
his name. We tried if you're, ifyou're listening yorma or Jon
Ma,

I had the reverse happen with a franchise
I got into the other day. Haveyou guys ever watched The
Substitute movies?

Uh, I think I saw the first

one, yeah, yeah. I think so too. Oh, those
are those ones with treatWilliams.

The sequels are the first one, okay? Is, is,
what's his face? It's not treatWilliams. It's Tom Berringer.

Tom Beringer, okay. Beringer, yeah. I must
have seen at least one of thesequels, because I remember
treat Williams

here as well.
Yeah. Well, okay, the first twoare very like war on drugs
proper, kind of propaganda whereit's like, yeah, the the city
schools are rampage with drugsand take and filled with the
cartel and stuff. Substitute oneand two and then three, it goes
to a college, and it's allabout, like steroids and like
mafia and stuff. So it's like,kind of getting away from it.

But substitute 4, Substitute 4: Failure is Not an Option. Is (12:17):
undefined
fucking bonkers. It's I rememberin the 90s where every horror
sequel ended up at a militaryschool. That's this one, which
actually makes the most sense,because this whole time it's the
basic part of the substitute isthere's something going on in

(12:37):
the school, usually involvinggang and drug stuff and a
mercenary becomes a substitute,and then shoots up the school.
The cartel, not just the kids.
It walks a fine line. It's, it'slike Class of 1984 meets. What
is it? A Dangerous Minds, butfour they go to, he gets sent to

(12:59):
a military school becausethere's a neo Nazi creating, or,
like, spreading Nazi ideologyand creating, like an SS group
within the military school. Andit's fucking great. It's just
Treat Williams blowing up andshooting Nazis or Neo Nazis, and
awesome. Highly recommend.

Have either you guys seen this movie The
Carpenter's Son.

No, I didn't know it was out yet.

Yeah, I think it's out. I It came in one of my
screen or link packs. It's bad.
It is really bad. I kind of,when I saw that it was in the
pack from I even forget thecompany, but when I saw it was
in the pack, I kind of moved itto the top of the queue because
I was curious, because of thehype, it's really bad. What it

(13:49):
is is basically, people havealways talked about the missing
Jesus is born in the Bible, andthen next thing you know, he's
like, 32 years old. And there'sthe missing childhood and
adolescence of Jesus. And this,although they never actually say
Jesus, Joseph and Mary, that'swho these characters are. And

(14:10):
you can tell and Nick Cage isthe carpenter who is Joseph, and
it's actually Noah Joop. He isthe son, although it's thinly
veiled as Jesus and FKA Twigs isMary. But this is it, kind of,
he already knows that he's gotthis power, and he's starting to

(14:32):
kind of be able to see thingsand experience things. And
there's also a stranger who hemeets who ends up being
significant, but there's a lotof him questioning his existence
because he has a brother who helooks nothing like, and

(14:53):
everyone's like, Is your dadreally your dad? You know,
there's a lot of that going on,but, um, but. There. I mean, it
is a horror movie. It is. It'spretty horrific, but it's, it's
really bad. It's reallydisjointed. The one thing that
is cool about it is it hasbeautiful locations. They shot
it in parts of Greece. It'sbeautiful looking. It's just,

(15:18):
it's, it's rough, it's rough.

So what you're saying is it's nowhere near as

good as Damian (15:26):
The Omen 2, which, which is the, you know,
anti the negative, the flip sideof that a timeline of Jesus's
life. And, you know, I There arebooks about that time of Jesus,
they just consider it likeExtended Universe

title of the Bible. Yeah, it's not gospel,

Edo Van Breemen (15:47):
yeah, yeah, yeah. I

prefer the Dogma version.

You guys know me, I'm a big fan of the
extended universe of the Bible,

if I mean, I don't want to spoil anything,
but there is something to thatDamian, you know, omen. But no,
it is. It's nowhere near as goodas that, but there, but it is
kind of, yeah, I don't know.
It's rough. It's rough.

Well, on my end, I've been traveling, so I
haven't really been able to,been able to watch too much, but
I did see that new Guillermo delToro documentary, Sangre Del
Toro? Either of you guys seenit?

No, but that's on Netflix now, isn't it? Yeah,
yeah. It was

kind of a group release with Frankenstein to
kind of accompany it, accompanyit. But I really liked it. It
really goes in depth about DelToro and his history and his
philosophy and a lot on hisCatholic upbringing, which
definitely puts a lot of hisstyle and sensibilities in his

(16:53):
work into perspective, plus, youknow, kind of going over his
origins in Mexico. And you know,kind of talking about the
transition from, you know, is inmore independent projects like
Cronos to big American budgetmovies like Pacific Rim. So, you

(17:15):
know, after seeing Frankenstein,it is fascinating to see that,
and as it covers him and like hehad this exhibit up in Mexico at
this college. So it, it doeskind of pair well together.

Does it explain why he's so into Monster
fucking

Well, little bit, it it touches upon it. I
mean, again, I think a lot of itgoes back to Catholicism,
understandable.

I get it. I grew up as an altar boy. It
leads to, yeah, it explains alot in a lot of people, indeed.

But yeah, no, he he also talks a lot about his
philosophy and life and deathand just kind of how that's
evolved through his films, andjust kind of immortality versus
mortality. He has a lot ofreally intriguing interviews. So

(18:20):
yeah, if you see Frankenstein,it's worth giving a watch just
to kind of see the man behindthe monsters.

He did. He did let it slip that Frankenstein is
getting a physical release. Yes,I would. I saw that. Yeah,
someone mentioned, I think it'sin the book. They reference a
scene that's not in the movie.
And he was like, oh, yeah, it'llbe in the physical release.
Yeah.

Well, I mean, after, you know, his last
several films getting releasedfor Criterion, and I was hoping
that that would be the case

fucking better, still need to get that
Nightmare Alley, 4k Oh

yeah, 4k Frankenstein, though I'd like
that.

Now, let's bring in our special guests for
the episode. This episode, we'vegot the composer for the score
of Keeper. Edo Van Breemen. Howyou doing Edo?

Pretty good.
Thanks for having me on the showthis morning.

Thanks for being on the show. I always love
talking to composers on the onour show here, we always like to
start with kind of the originstory. What? How'd you get your
start as a composer?

I mean, I'm, I played in a lot of different
little Canadian indie bands backin the day, and i i Also, I'm,
I'm originally a classicallytrained pianist, but I didn't
study music, and I just kind ofgot into music scenes. Ended up
meeting some directors along theway, and I put songs in their

(19:46):
short films, and then it justkind of snowballed into a
career. I always thought it wasa fake job, to be honest, and I
I was like, when you know, whenis the rug gonna be pulled out
from under me and still doingit? So. I'm very grateful to
have this this job, and a lot ofpeople have supported me along
the way, so I'm grateful tothem, but yeah, that's and I

(20:09):
just kind of you kind of learnalong the way, and like you move
from working in bands andwriting songs to just
understanding what score is andits function as kind of an
emotional tool in filmmaking.
And I found that reallyinteresting. And I like all of
the detail of production. I'malso an engineer and producer,
so kind of like, you know,composing and producing scores

and keeper is, is this your second film
with with Osgood Perkins, youdid The Monkey as well, right?
Anything before that?

No, yeah, we've just done the two. Okay. How'd
you get hooked up with him?
Well, I had some friends here.
Those movies are produced inVancouver, Longlegs as well.
And, yeah, I mean, I had someconversations with him. They
were looking for a composer forKeeper initially, and, you know,

(21:08):
we had some good chats aboutsome sort of concepting chats.
And Oz is a cool guy. He's ahe's, he's different from a lot
of directors I've worked with.
He's, he's very like, wants thehis creative team to express
themselves in his work. So Ilike the way he's thinking about
filmmaking. And so I'd signed onto Keeper, and then with The

(21:33):
Monkey, I hadn't originally beensigned on to that project, but
they had something come up wheretheir composer wasn't possible
for their composer to do thefilm at that time, and I had to
step in and sort of do it at thelast minute. So The Monkey was a
very almost like for me. It wasa rush job. It was less than two
months. It was only six weeksactually, to do that score. Wow.

(21:55):
And and then so the with Keeper,we had a lot more time.

And it's interesting because the two
scores are pretty different.
Keeper sounds more minimalistthan the monkey. So it almost,
it almost sounds like it's theopposite, like, like it would
have taken longer to do TheMonkey. So it's interesting that
The Monkey was the quote rushjob. You know, you say, yeah,
yeah.

That's funny. I mean, the thing about The Monkey
is, it was because they werealready pretty far along the
line, and in their editingprocess, they had tempted a lot
of music. It's more of a, youknow, The Monkey is using some
more kind of, like mainstreamscoring tropes. They were, do
they had some temp music thatwas like Elfman, I don't know,
sounded more like fantasy, kindof horror, and that was so it

(22:46):
was easier to kind of fill inthose blanks, whereas, like,
Keeper was kind of an open book,and we just said, how do we, you
know, how do we want to approachthis is much more experimental
creative process with Keeper.

Yeah, Keeper is a more experimental film, I
think, and The Monkey, it's anodd Osgood Perkins movie.
Actually, I almost feel likeit's not as in his wheelhouse as
the Keeper, because, becauseKeeper is more along the lines
of Blackcoat's Daughter or orLonglegs, you know, it's just
more, it's, it's just moreserious, for lack of a better

(23:21):
word, whereas The Monkey is,like you said, it's almost like
an Elfman, kind of a thing goingon. It's, yeah, it's a little
wacky.

So you're saying the monkey was wacky.
What those Looney Tunes? I lovedit. It's great,

plus being a Stephen King adaptation, yeah.

I mean, it's Stephen King signed off. I
think, I think for Stephen King,he sees so many serious
renditions of his work, and liketo see something that's a little
bit more like playful and hasthe point of processing death in
a playful way, in a moreaccessible way, is probably,
probably fun for

him, the deaths in the monkey just how
they get progressively more andmore more and more outlandish.

Yeah, yeah. Off of that, how did you score,
like, based off of I imaginethat you were given the scenes
of just how insane and over thetop these deaths were. So in
that case, how did you score offof that.

I mean, it was all it was really about building
original stings, like, so thethere, obviously there's, you
know, like the regular scoremusic that's sort of like
pushing the narrative forward.
But those deaths are all about,like, wacky, zany, sort of
stings. And it was just fun to,like, get a whole bunch of
violins and, like, you know, hitthem on the like, in weird ways.

(24:44):
Like, play, play the strings ontheir neck. Like, grab a bunch
of brass and and every time youhear a sting of the monkey, it's
kind of rendered in a differentway, although we did kind of re
sample and use some stuff. But,yeah, we.

Was, yeah, that's what I was gonna ask, are
those live instruments, or werethey all synthesized for The
Monkey? Were those all liveinstruments you were recording
in your studio?

We, like always use a combination of acoustic
instruments and synths, butalso, like sampled instruments
in The Monkey. There was a lotmore of that going on because,
you know, we couldn't affordfull orchestras for everything.
Whereas in Keeper, there was nosampled instruments, I was kind

(25:29):
of almost like, like, religiousabout that. Like, I didn't, I
didn't want there to be anysample packs that I got from
third party, so I created all ofmy own sample instruments for
Keeper. So there's, yeah,there's a, there's a clear
distinction between the twofilms there,

but it is still, is the Keeper still like,
for lack of a better word,synthesized? I mean, you say
that you created the samples,but there's no orchestra there,
right? It's much moreminimalistic, minimalistic.

But all the instruments are like, you know,
a real drum kit or a real, youknow, fiddle and voice plays a
big part in that film, too.

Yeah, no. What one of the things I especially
appreciated about Keeper is thata lot of the soundtrack, the how
you use the instruments, itfeels like it's reflecting, like
the sounds you would hear in ahouse in the woods, like the
creaking, like there's a fewparts where, like the strings
are going, and it feels like,you know, the creaking of the
walls or woodpecker off in thedistance. It's a clocking. And I

(26:30):
was, I was listening to it whileworking last night again, and I
was like, Ah, man, I feel likeI'm back home in New Hampshire.
And like, I grew up in a cabin,so I would hear all these weird
noises, but like, uneasy, like,I'm like, don't make, don't
make. My noise is uneasy.

The bubbling of the stream almost sounded
like the rhythm of the sound.
You know, the sound design andscore are just so tightly
interwoven, it's almost like,yeah, did you work closely with
the sound designer, or was thatjust kind of a happy accident?

Yeah, Eugenio Battaglia. He's a really good
friend of mine, and, you know,we were friends before we
started working together, and hedid sound design on Longlegs as
well, and The Monkey, and we'vedone a whole bunch of other
projects throughout our careertogether, so it's really easy
for us to have thisconversation. And he's also the

(27:25):
mixing engineer, so it's like,we can kind of anticipate how
score will, like weave into thesound design. And we have, like
this, this dialog going before Ieven start composing, where it's
like, okay, let's let the wind,or let's let cabin creeks do
their thing here, and then thisis how we're going to insert

(27:47):
score. But to speak to the kindof creaking quality of of the
composition and theminimalistic, you know, nature
of it, it's like, I wanted togive, like, the environment and
the cabin of voice and give it atheme. But I just like, really,
I don't know, I didn't want tohear another sort of cabin in

(28:08):
the woods score that's just likeoverpowering tremolo violins
and, you know, just like big,big hits and stuff like that. Oz
doesn't really like hits, whichis cool. It's like, let silence
speak and be the creepy elementhere, and then just kind of have
these sounds peppered in. So,yeah, it was, it was, it was fun

(28:28):
to try to, like, hit thatminimalism,

yeah, well, and that's one of the cool
things about Keeper is like,especially in the beginning, it
you're, you're kind of sittingthere with the characters in the
moment, in this house, in thespace both between the music and
the camera work and the editing,it's like the house feels bigger
than it is, but also moreclaustrophobic. But you're it
feels like you guys are almostplaying with different genres to

(28:52):
kind of be like, Oh no, is thisa ghost story? Oh no. Is this a
killer in the woods story?
What's it gonna

be the movie is very much like that. Like,
yeah, I seriously thought thatit was just a slasher, until it
gets to that one scene withMinka. And I don't want to to
spoil anything, but if you'veseen it, you know the one you
know with the tree, you knowyou're you're like, Okay, this
isn't just a slasher. There'ssomething else going on. So

(29:21):
we're backtracking a little biton this. What is your process
like? Like, okay, so you getmaybe a script, or maybe even a
lock, a picture. Lock. Where doyou go from there? Wait, how do
you start it?

I guess it depends. Yeah, usually you know
if you're brought onto theproject. At an early stage,
you'll get a script and youstart talking about it. In this
case, I think I had the script,but they had already shot a lot
of the film, so I was justlooking at early edits and and
then having a discussion with Ozabout kind of where his

(29:59):
reference. Points for firstscore and desires and and then I
kind of presented a fewdifferent sources of
inspiration, like, there's thisi I'm friends with a guy in LA
who's like, Well, you probablyheard of a Mac DeMarco. I put

(30:20):
out a couple of records on anold label of mine. And he was
like, showing me this weirdrecord that one of his jazz
friends had showed him thiseasily, black wood. He's like a
composer from the 60s who didthis, like, kind of micro tonal
things. And I thought thatsounds messed up, that sounds
deranged, like here, kind ofalmost medieval lute songs, but

(30:44):
they're, they're rendered inthis bizarre way. And I wanted
to kind of create a feeling of,like, kind of some type of folk
music that was like skewing awayfrom reality to kind of
represent this, like dissolvingtrust in Tatiana's character,

(31:05):
so, like, she knows something'swrong. I'm not going to give too
much away, but like, the musicis supposed to kind of fall
apart and also be minimal enoughthat you can kind of feel that
happening. So my process waslike to kind of look at some of
these reference points and thenfigure out, like, with my set of
instrumentation, creating a lotof limitations in the sounds I

(31:29):
was using, you know, how to kindof, like mimic this kind of
psycho acoustic creep. And I'mjust kind of, like, it's early
in the morning, I'm trying, I'mtrying to kind of describe how
we were, how we approached uswith Oz. Oz was like, Yeah,
cool. Do whatever you want. Andobviously he was a sounding

(31:50):
board for anything I was comingout with, the studio and, and,
and kind of like offering somesuggestions.

There was, he pretty much on the same page as
you like, with, you know,wanting, like a minimalist score
that is all that is just sosubtle that, unless you're
listening for it, you I won'tsay you don't notice it, because
you do notice it, but it's notoverpowering. Was he on the same
page? Is that what he wantedgoing in?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, he had
talked about Mika Levi and underthe skin, and that, that
favorite I would, I love MikaLevy, yeah. I mean, my favorite
modern composer, yeah, or myfavorite modern film composer,
yeah, totally. Miko levy is alegend, living legend, and I
hadn't heard, I mean, I usually,when you have a movie like that

(32:40):
come out, or some, some, somesort of game changing score
movie, like Sicario or drive,everybody wants to sound like
those composers for a while. AndI feel like under the skin that
happened, and then nobodyreferenced it for a very long
time. So oz brought that up andand I was like, Okay, that's
cool. There's just like,singular percussive sounds. But

(33:00):
then how do we get thepercussive sounds to, I think,
relate more to the idea of acreaking cabin or these kind of
like, like, scuttling entities,you know? So it's like, instead
of it being like, one hit, ithas to be some kind of rhythmic
element. And that's what led meto these sort of weird loops

(33:24):
that are played at differentspeeds on a sample keyboard, so
that essentially it's just a fewdrum loops that are sampled, and
then I'm playing them back in asampler at lower pitches or
higher pitches. And it'sactually once I figured that
out, it was really fun tocompose, because I just sat
there with the MIDI keyboard,and I had my drum loops just

(33:44):
readily there, and I would justplay them slower, faster, higher
pitch, lower pitch.

That's awesome. Yeah,

it sounds not overly processed, but you can
tell that it it's not a naturalthese aren't the sounds that
you're going to hear in nature,although I think the roots of
them are like, did whatpercussion instruments? I mean,
are they actually instruments?
Or did you actually go around,you know, knocking on walls and
tables? I mean, how did you getthese sounds to samples?

Some of them were actually, yeah, like,
hitting a piece of, like wood ona on, like a table, or like a
log or something outside. Ibrought a Zoom recorder around a
little bit, and then actually,like, I have a little cabin that
I ran on a small island about anhour outside of Vancouver,
called Galiano Island. And it'sjust like this old creepy cabin

(34:38):
that was built in the 60s. Andoh, Geno and I went there. And
so he recorded all of the actualcreaks of the house in this
cabin, and then I was kind oflike knocking on some of the
walls and stuff. So we sort ofturned that cabin, in a way,
into an instrument. But, youknow, this old Ludwig drum kit,
and I'm not a drummer, but Iplayed those. I. I turned all

(35:00):
the lights off in the studio andwas like, What's a creepy drum
beat? I would just a bunch ofthese things and then chop them
up later. So between the stufffrom the cabin that we recorded
and some of the stuff in thestudio, I was able to kind of
create a palette of progressiveinstruments that were used all
over the film, but that were,yeah, they're processed a little

(35:20):
bit. They're also just recordedin a way that's weird,

that's definitely not just throwing
sheet music in front

of an orchestra. Is it works really
well. Often when we interviewcomposers, there's always that,
ah, no, didn't have the budgetfor the orchestra. But, like, it
really does work like thatisolation in the house in the
creaking campus for this,

yeah, this is the score. Is almost another
character in the movie, and itthis score. And this is going to
sound like I'm blowing smoke,but this score is exactly what
this movie needed. I mean, in inmy opinion, I think it worked
really, really well.

I was going to add that it did feel like it
added a presence to the story,kind of like, just all the
details you notice in thebackground as things escalate
into horror.

Hmm, cool.
That's true. That's cool to hearfrom you guys, because I'm sure
you listen to a lot of horrorscores, yes,

and even the minimalist vibe worked like,
like, there's one scene in itwhere the trash bag scene and
and there's almost like, it'salmost like a jump scare. But
even with the minimalist vibe ofthe score, it's like, you score
it. It wouldn't have been aseffective without your score
helping along that jump. Youknow,

I love that.
You bring that moment up,because that was one where we
were kind of like, how do we doan anti sting, like, so whereas,
like, Monkey was all about thesebig jump scares with like, huge
orchestral stings, that's kindof like you're subtracting out
you have this percussion leadingup to that point, and then when
You have the bag kind of shift,there's a weird it's actually,

(37:00):
it's my friend Dave Biddle, whoplayed the sacks, but through a
whole bunch of pedals, and Irecorded him, like he would just
watch the picture, and we justrecorded, like, 20 minute string
outs of stuff, and then I wouldchop that up. And I found this
one take he did, which wasthrough, like a pitch delay
pedal. And it's just like thiskind of tape warble thing that

(37:24):
starts after the sting moment.
So instead of like creating,like a spike, it's, there's
still music that comes in, butit's very subtle, and it's
almost like an ambient thing,but it's, it's very off, you
know, like the pitch is off,it's bending down, and it has
this kind of strange pulse toit. So I was looking for things

(37:47):
like that that would not just bethe sting moment, but all of a
sudden you're like in anotherworld of of her realization that
things are starting to get, youknow, worse and worse. And these
sounds sort of like linger,because they're almost like act,
you know, dynamic pads orwhatever.

Yeah, that's fucking awesome. Yeah. I love
hearing stuff like that. I lovehearing the process. I love
especially like the so much isin for this, this film, it's so
much of it is like two, maybefour characters at a time. So
you really have to rely on, likethe audience connecting with
your protagonist. And, I mean,first of all, you got Tatiana

(38:30):
Maslany, who's amazing, but justlike the the whole what's going
on with her head is so wellrepresented, but not only in the
in the music, but with thecinematography and sound design,
and you're just, you're in it.
And it's, it's interestingseeing, because I saw it with a
crowd, it's interesting seeing,like, you can feel a crowd being
in it with a characters. Becausesometimes you'll be sitting

(38:52):
there and you'll be, like, halfthese people aren't paying
attention. They're trying tosneak looks at their phone. But
like, definitely everyone was init, just going, what?

Yeah, no, I had a similar experience, and I was
lucky enough to see it at thenew Beverly, with the 35
millimeter print and also muchstricter rules on phones. So
nobody was doing that. But yeah,no, I think it did really kind
of hook the audience in,especially with just kind of

(39:22):
that build up and, you know,just the dread of a jump scare
coming because, you know, it'sthe feeling that it's too quiet
for too long, something's gonnajump out at her.

Yeah, I actually saw it from the
screener pack the neon sends outon my couch with my dog, and
I'll tell you, it's just aseffective there as it would have
been in a theater. I think so,you know, I imagine Correia is
experienced with like, a fulltheater. Everybody's completely,
you know, wrapped but sitting onmy couch watching it, I wasn't

(39:58):
reaching for my phone. Theneither. So it's definitely
engaging. It's interesting thatyou're talking about, like the
recording and the gathering andstuff. But it seems like once
everything was recorded, that'swhere your work started.
Because, like you said, you getit recorded, and then you go
kind of chopping it up andsyncing it, you know, like you
said, you had your friend playsax through 20 minute interval,

(40:20):
and then you started using that.
Is that kind of how it was, justlike you had this library of
score, and then you startedassembling

it, yeah, definitely. Like, once I had the
samples, like I had thepercussion samples, that was a
big piece of the puzzle. So Iwas able to kind of go through
some of the pivotal scenes. ButI did a lot of studio work with
my friend Aiden Ayers. He heplays the violin and fiddle and
guitar and a bunch ofinstruments. And Jeff Ennis, who

(40:49):
is my he co composes a lot ofstuff. Like he worked on The
Monkey and also did a bunch ofcues for Keeper. Like, I have a
kind of Borg mind going into thestudio with these people that I
I hire, musicians that I hire,and also Jeff, because he's
always here working alongsideme. And then, you know, we're

(41:10):
taking some of the elements thatare pre recorded, and now we get
Aiden to just kind of like, sitwith his fiddle and and like
track over scene. So like, thiswhole psychedelic waterfall
moment, I'm giving you know himsome cues. Like, this is
supposed to be some sort ofpioneering fiddle folklore vibe,

(41:34):
but, like, she's maybe onmushrooms, so interpret that,
and swatch the picture and kindof vibe to it. And then, yeah,
we'll have like, a maybe moreformed recording session. And
then that gets distilled again,so there's like, several levels
of editing. And then, like, ifthere's a very composed section,

(41:55):
for example, with like, Jen atthe end, she's singing the song
about, I don't want to give upthe narrative, but like that,
she's singing a song about abouther relationship to these
entities, and it's part of the,you know, narrative reveal. So
it has to be a more composedsegment of music. And it's like

(42:15):
we know what we're doing. It'sbeen written, the melody has
been written, the harmonies havebeen written, and she'll come
in. But then we can kind ofcombine that with some of the
other textures that we'vedeveloped for, you know, the
cabin theme, or the river, youknow, the general environment.

That's awesome. I think a DVD copy
needs to be in, like every likeisolated, like Airbnb, or
something just like, if italmost feels like one of those
type of movies where it's like,you're in a nice you're in like,
you're relaxed, you're in anice, isolated area, and you
discover this DVD, and you'relike, oh, this should be fun.
And then you're sitting there,you're like, well, the vacation

(42:52):
just took a totally differentvibe.

I mean, it's true. It's the soundtrack like a
crumbling relationship or like,like a stranger danger kind of

so are there?
I know that this is, is on mymind. Let's see if it's on
Correia and Jacobs as well. Is,are there plans for a, like, a
vinyl release of the soundtrack?

Yeah, made by mutant is a record label. I
think they're based in the UK,and LA, and they're putting out
the vinyl. They put out themonkey as well. They usually do
beautiful pressing. So, I mean,they'll, I think, actually, you
can pre order it now, I believe.

Okay, so, yeah, it's on the website. I just
looked it up, and it's going tobe released in March of 2026,

March. Have to wait that long.

Good things comes to those who wait, yeah.

Correia found the score on YouTube, like the,
not an isolated score, but like,what is that? Correia, it's just
kind of the, just the music,right?

Yeah, the soundtracks available on
streaming sites. Yeah, yeah. SoI guess to tide you over, yeah,
make sure you warn your partnerfirst. I was listening to it
while sitting on the couch anddoing work last night, and my
partner came out. It was justlike, so this is a vibe, I
guess. Oh, working on lawyerstuff. Yeah, it became so bad. I

(44:26):
just thought there was thelawyer stuff getting me anxious.

I mean, that's the whole point. Is like to
create it like, and this is whatI'm saying, is like to create a
score that creates, like, thisanxiety that you're not even
really aware of. It's like youhave no sort of control over it
building inside of you. Ratherthan to, like, just blast people
with scary sounding music, I'm Idon't actually come from like, a

(44:51):
horror music background, so it'slike, I try to scare myself and
get under the skin. You know?

Yeah, there's. Again, speaking of
that, I always like to kind ofask, who are the modern
composers that they have youexcited? What scores do you
listen to? Scores a lot, and whodo you like?

I mean, I had a list that I wrote down the other
day, but I think, you know, I, Ilike, obviously, like Jon, Jon
Hansen is amazing. I think someof his orchestral stuff is, is
really cool. We talked aboutMika Levy. I like Ryu chi

(45:36):
Sakamoto. I love The Revenantscore. I think there's a
beautiful minimalism there. Andalso some of his earlier work is
cool. Who else you know going inthe monkey you're looking at
Elfman and Alexandra deplat andcomposers like that are kind of

(45:58):
more on the nose, kind ofHollywood. And yeah, let me
think about other there's athere's a new guy, Kangding Ray,
who's more in the electronicrealm. He's done this film
recently called Sirat, that Neonput out. That's pretty cool. So,

(46:22):
yeah, there, I'm kind of lookingaround. I think one otrix Point
never does some cool stuff. AndI, yeah, yeah, I'm it's
sometimes, like with references,I kind of struggle, because
there's so many, you know, andI, and I, I'm looking through my
playlist right now. Poush goesawesome.

I always like to try to to find out if people
have heard, have you seen orheard Swiss Army?

Man, I haven't.
You know, that's one of thesemovies that passed me by a long
time ago, and I've been meaning

to watch.
Okay, this that I I would loveto hear what you think of the
score. The score is, it's theManchester orchestra guys, and
it's pretty much all vocals. Andit, I mean, there's a little bit
of keyboards in there, but it'slike all and they'll do things
like they'll do the JurassicPark theme, but it'll just be
like three part harmony of justvocal. It's an amazing score.

(47:17):
You definitely, you definitelyshould at least check out the
score, because it's, it'sprobably one of the more
inventive scores that we'veheard over the last 10 years or
so.

That's awesome.
I'll definitely check that out.

Jay is out here promoting the Swiss Army
Man soundtrack, like he's got,like he's got skin in the game

Swiss Army Man and Mika Levi, those are the
two that I always anybody whowants to listen, I'll talk. So
what do we got next for you? Yougot anything in the hopper
coming up?

Yeah, I'm working on a on a project called
the Rackrooms. It's directed bythis guy, Kane Parsons, or he
goes by Kane pixels online. He'skind of a, he's a, he's a young
director. I think he's theyoungest director to ever direct
A24 film. He just turned 20.

This is the creepy pasta one, right the back
rooms that, yeah, yeah. That'sbased on the creepy pasta. Yeah.
So it's almost it, i It'llalmost be better that you have a
20 year old directing, you know,someone who's in touch with it,

yeah, I was gonna say, didn't he do like a
bunch of backroom shorts onYouTube?

Yeah, it's, I think it comes from that sort of
subreddit, like liminal spaces alittle bit, and these idea of
these kind of dead zones. I'mnot like an expert in this
realm. So so like Kane, ifyou're listening, forgive me,
because I can't do this justice.
But I think it's like there arethese, like, as far as I

(48:52):
understand, in in like videogame architecture, or kind of
like architectural renderingwith like, computer generated
spaces. You have these, like,you know, he's trying to create
these environments that feellike they're, they're kind of
like realms of a video game thatdon't, that don't have anything

(49:15):
to do with the actual game, thatjust kind of, you know, places,
spaces you can get lost in, andthey inherently feel creepy. And
so I think he made the shortvideo called the back rooms.
It's like a seven or eightminute piece. There's like 68
million views online orsomething. And it's, it's just
kind of in that, like skivity,like YouTube phenom realm, and

(49:37):
they've, they've kind of nowtransformed it into a longer
form for esque narrative.
Although he's not really ahorror guy either. I think he
comes from this kind of, yeah,he comes from a little bit of a
different background, and it isjust terrifying, what he's been

(49:59):
creating. So. So there, thereseems to be potential to make a
film out

of that. Video is genuinely just like uneasy,
so I'm excited to see, like,what can be done with it. With,
you know that that kind ofsupport, you know,

yeah, and Kane, if you are listening, if
you are listening, come on theshow. We love to talk to you.

And it might be a bit preemptive, but can you
describe what kind of tone orstyle of music you're going for
a project like that?

Well, if you listen to the back room, so
actually, Kane is CO composingwith me. It's an interesting
situation where, where, wherehe's he's a composer and a
producer, and he has a veryparticular musical palette,
although, if you go on Spotify,he literally, he's got like, 300
tracks on there, like, he's justvery prolific composer. And

(50:53):
like, he has various ways ofhe's not, I don't think he
doesn't play these instrumentsby hand, but he knows what he
wants to hear, and he he'slearning like he also like has
since, and he comes in thestudio, but I think primarily
he's kind of like a conceptcomposer, and so he has a very

(51:16):
like, well formed inspirationalpalette that he's been Using,
and he'll use a bunch of his owntracks too in this film.

Sweet.
Anything else you got coming upthat you can talk about? We
always deal with NDAs here, so Idon't know what you can talk
about and what you can't, butyou have anything else coming

up, well, I'm doing a documentary, which will
come out sometime next year.
It's a Canadian documentary onpeople who are involved in
cryogenic freezing so they myfriend Dave Ehrenreich is has
been filming a documentary forfive years following this kind
of cult of people who arepreparing to freeze themselves

(51:54):
to be reanimated sometime in thefuture. And it's a very bizarre
treatment and and the subjectsare all really interesting. So I
work on in documentary a lot,and I find it's a nice thing to
go between narrative, film anddocumentary, and kind of glean
inspiration from the real lifehorror that people experience.

God, those, those sound like interesting
people. I mean, just, yeah, youknow, to when you have, because
it's not cheap, so like, to havethe money to do it, and like,
but also strongly believe in it,and like, there's a lot of faith
and hope in that. So yeah,that's

the thing.
There's no guarantee that you'regonna be thought out. So yeah,
there's, there's some faith,

yeah, dealing with those people. And,
sorry, go ahead. Jay, oh no.

I was just saying, I love the idea of love,
just like, asking these people,like, like, having that type of
faith, because the technology isnot there to reanimate. So
you're, you're gambling on afuture,

yeah, that's what's really weird about it.
And I had no idea, and you don'teven think about think about
this is like a lot of thedocumentary deals with the
initial stages of death and howyou basically have to
immediately freeze these bodiesand get that to like a different
holding facility. So they andthere's no support for that. And

(53:22):
first responders, like, withambulances or anything, because
they're not trying to do that.
They're just trying to, like,save the person or deal with the
dead body. They have, like,these teams that they create
with their own finance financesto immediately freeze these
bodies. So these people areobsessed with, like, their own
sort of first respondentprotocols. And it's just very
weird to see how they bond inlife around that obsession, you

(53:45):
know? So it's, yeah, it's a cooldoc,

wow, that's never really thought about it.
But I can only imagine how muchthe cost must be for, yeah, oh
yeah, you know that maintenance.

And it seems like you would have to, like,
will that cost to the facility?
Because, you know, you're notgoing to be around. It's like,
they don't let you adopt aGalapagos tortoise without
naming a next of kin, becauseit's going to outlive you. You
know, it's like, that kind of athing, wow, yes, things just
don't think about. So, where areyou on the socials so people can

(54:21):
keep up with the newest on theseprojects?

Yeah, I'm on Instagram. That's kind of my
only Avenue. And, but I postwhat I'm working on, so as I get
into the back rooms, and youknow, hopefully there'll be some
other cool films next year and,and, yeah, they'll be info about
that.

And what's your what's your screen name
there, what you're at?

It's @EdovanB,

okay, @EdovanB, okay, great. Yeah,
cool. Well, thank you forjoining us on this. It we didn't
warn you that we record early,so you're a trooper for hanging

out of bed.
And, yes, yeah, it's fun.

I. And everybody go see Keeper, because
it's definitely worth it. Ourtheme song is by Restless
Spirits, so go check them out.
And our artwork is by ChrisFisher, so go check him out. You
can find any of us on thesocials under @eyeonhorror or at
ihorror.com which is the site weall call home. And again,
everybody goes to Keeper. And ifyou haven't see The Monkey too

(55:22):
while you're at it, give, giveneon twice your money and and
keep an eye out for theBackrooms. And what was name of
the of the dock?

The it's, I think it's called, relax,

relax. Okay.

Open your eyes.
Relax. Open your eyes. I think,yeah,

okay, follow Edo on Instagram to know when
that's coming out, and we willsee you in a couple of weeks. So
for me, James Jay Edwards,

I'm Jacob Davison,

I'm Jonathan Correia, and

I'm Edo van Breemen.

Keep your eye on, horror.

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