Creating the music for Steel Country
The initial genesis for the soundtrack of Steel Country/A Dark Place began with a meeting at BAFTA Piccadilly, between JHM, our agents at Faber, and producer Gareth Ellis-Unwin and director Simon Fellows. What followed was a creative musical journey spanning the tides of Wales and America.
Having created some initial musical material as a starting point for ongoing creative conservation, with one of these early ideas forming the basis for the opening title music of the film, the majority of the musical ideas came from the summer months when the film was shooting in America. Working collaboratively with our sound design and director colleagues, we soon arrived at creative consensus for the musical direction of the film.
Central to our musical arguments was the psychology of the main character Donny, played by award-winning actor Andrew Scott. His portrayal of Donny (a garbage collector in a small town in rural Pennsylvania who lay somewhere on the autistic spectrum) was nuanced and sensitive, providing us with much to work from, from a musical perspective. It was our intention that the music reflect the tension and pressure he so often experienced in his inner world, balancing this with the grace and perfectionist tendencies that he also inhabited; ultimately, it was he who embodied the most compassion of all the characters in the film. Our JHM sound-world managed to echo his inner space, but also the hard edged and beautiful setting as well as the gritty unfolding of this nuanced story.
From the JHM team, Benjie’s trusty Mandolin was called into action, e-bowing its way into becoming a main sonic feature of the score, whipping and gritting its way to the foreground as well as providing pedal type structures on which other elements could take the stage. A wonderful recording session of multi-tracked strings went into creating the musical logic for much of the chordal movement in the score, notably underscoring the finale as well as a few other key moments in the drama. This recording was based on a tight mathematical formula onto which we rigidly held, emulating how we thought the character of Donny approach writing music. Alongside this was an exploration into various layers of beeping and juddering textures with which we hoped to convey his thought patterns, and for the more intense moments in the film, we determined a more electronic sound was required. Whenever intensity was needed at key plot moments, we tended to lean on Native Instruments’ array of software synths in order to create a growling sense of unseen threat and fear. That, coupled with Benjie’s knowledge of EDM production, when fused with the already existing musical elements, engendered particularly powerfully dramatic moments that became key features of the score.
Musical post-production focused on overall aesthetic, achieved through continuous conversation with director Simon Fellows and sound designer James Hayday, whose approach was singularly musical. With notable command over sound as a creative resource, James’s approach not only paved the way for the fusion of the sound score and musical score, but also inspired us to alter our own approach in order to adapt to and reflect his ideas.
As part of Steel Country/A Dark Place’s legacy, we have created the soundtrack album, which is available to stream or to purchase.