Co-inciding with the film’s release on April 13, MovieScore Media’s continuous efforts of presenting the best and the most unusual film scores comes to one of its most delightfully off-beat stops with John Mehrmann’s music for Honeydew. Directed by Devereux Milburn, Honeydew tells the story of young couple Sam (Sawyer Spielberg, the son of Steven) and Rylie (Malin Barr) who experience strange cravings and hallucinations after seeking shelter in the home of an aging farmer and her peculiar son. The highly unorthodox score has been cited in all the reviews with descriptions like "beautifully macabre razor-like" and "supremely off-kilter". With a combination of mouth sounds, bodily sound effects and percussion instruments using household objects like cutlery and water bottles, Honeydew is pushing the envelope akin to the soundtracks of the 1960s Italian scores. The digital release is to be followed later this year by a physical release (on CD and vinyl) by Svart Records.
As composer John Mehrmann explains: “When I started to write the soundtrack for Honeydew, my first few tracks were for fairly traditional instruments, but director Devereux Milburn made it clear that he didn’t want that, and he encouraged me to get weirder and weirder. The first time I sent him a track of me popping on my cheeks, he just about flipped out with excitement. I recorded the entire album with a single mic in my living room, using whatever sounds were at hand — namely, my voice, my body, long kitchen knives, glasses filled with water, little percussion instruments and sound effects. The fleshy body percussion, mouth noises and kitchen utensils were not really consciously chosen. But in retrospect they are the absolutely perfect ‘instruments’ for this film. I’m a percussionist and vocalist, among other things, and a lot of the soundtrack represents a hybrid of those two worlds.”
John Mehrmann is based in Maine. He is a composer of choral music (for the ensemble Voice of Twenty), an organist at Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Auburn and a member of the Bangor Symphony percussion section. A percussionist and music teacher by trade, Mehrmann is a relative newcomer to the world of film music, his only previous feature film score was written for Honeydew screenwriter Dan Kennedy's Loud Places.
MovieScore Media and its sub-label Screamworks Records have released over 400 soundtrack albums since the launch of the company in 2006. With its special knack for identifying up and coming talent, MovieScore Media was the first label to release music by many of the hottest composers in Hollywood today, including Benjamin Wallfisch (the composer of Blade Runner 2049 and It), who had his first MovieScore Media album of seven released in 2006; Daniel Pemberton (the composer of The Man from U.N.C.L.E and Enola Holmes), who had five MovieScore Media albums released before his big Hollywood break; and Pinar Toprak (the composer of Captain Marvel) who had her tender score for The Lightkeepers released by MovieScore Media ten years ago. [https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/]
Jeremy [Six Strings]
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