December 24, 2010

  • Review: Red Hill (Golovko)

    Patrick Hughes feature directorial debut, Red Hill, from Australia which has made the rounds of several film festivals before appearing briefly in November here in the states.  The low-budget western town revenge picture features a score by Dmitri Golovko which turns out to be his first film score as well.

    The opening track presents the primary theme of the score.  With a smattering of dense notes, piano, strummed guitar and a slight bit of atmospheric sound, Golovko creates an intense musical sound reminiscent of some of Morricone’s 1960s experimental horror scores.  Character themes are spread throughout the score presentation.  “Alice’s Theme” is a simple waltz that features an almost improvisational solo guitar set against some random vocal, pitched backgrounds.  “Shane’s Theme” is dark and menacing and features the sort of Western-villain music complete with trumpet and drum straight out of a Spaghetti Western (this style recurs in “Payback” with slightly different instrumentation).  “Jimmy’s Theme” is brief with an echo-guitar idea that suggests a more brooding, restrained character. 

    The guitar-based score is surrounded by a variety of interesting sounds, and a variety of solo instruments that give the score a little bit of character.  The musical sequences as presented here are generally presented in brief minute-length stretches that introduce a small motivic idea derived from one of the four thematic ideas in the score.  The intensity in the music is created less by horror-genre sound design, and more with interesting close intervals and the unsettling instrumental choices.  String backgrounds also add a bit more dramatic feel (as we get to “Old Bill’s Speech”) that are almost cliché western gestures we would expect to hear.  The music works fairly well though because of these larger arching thematic connections.  “The Shootout” begins with a sequenced percussion background and manipulated pitches play against strings and piano ideas.  It takes on a more rock-like feel which seems slightly out of place after the setup of the previous cues.  The more atmospheric and design tracks begin to appear as the score presentation moves into its latter portion combining these compositional approaches with those of the previous parts of the score.  When the design elements appear, the musical tracks have less form and feel more nondescript.  The longest score track is the “Finale” which grows well into a climactic center and revisits briefly some of the thematic material complete with worldless wailing vocal and somewhat impassioned string writing.

    The disc is rounded off by a several songs.  Two feature Charlie Parr (one of which is a brief familiar hymn).  A 1970s song, “Black Eyed Bruiser,” from Stevie Wright and a newer one, “Rocking Horse” by Coda are also included.  All are spread throughout the disc.  There have been several western scores that take those experimental Morricone scores as a distant influence, intentionally or not, and this one will be of interest to fans of this sound revisited in the current era.  The score is interesting with a definite tension between being a horror-genre score with Western gestures.