The latest ravishing score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis is for director
David Olehoffen's Loin Des Hommes (Far From Men). Loin Des Hommes was a triple
prizewinner at the Venice film festival (2014) and stars Viggo Mortensen and
Reda Kateb. Adapted from a short story by Albert Camus, it is a powerful tale of
divided loyalties and colonialist violence
during Algeria's war of independence. With its mesmeric drones, pointillist
piano jabs, weeping strings and nerve jangling electronics, this is one of the
duo's most emotive and experimental soundtracks to date, sounding both achingly
intimate and cosmically vast.
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis create film and theatre scores that are elegantly
minimal, hauntingly beautiful and instantly recognizable as theirs alone. Full
of light and shade, creeping dread and inconsolable yearning, these heavily
instrumental sound paintings inject aching humanity into ghostly frontier towns,
parched desert vistas and postapocalyptic
war zones. Most are built around the duos intertwined piano and violin melodies,
with sporadic use of guitar, flute, mandolin, celeste, percussion and other
elements. Vocals are rare and sparing. But even without lyrics, they are always
lyrical.