Eye On Horror
Eye On Horror
Composing Keeper with Edo Van Breemen
This week, the boys sit down and talk to composer Edo Van Breemen about his work on Keeper! Going from the big Looney Tunes stings of The Monkey to Keeper's creaking house anti-sting and everything in between.
But first, the boys burn off their Thanksgiving dinners by reviewing Wicked: For Good, Death By Lightning, Bugonia, Sisu: Road to Revenge, The Carpenter's Son, and Correia gets really into The Substitute movies (#4 is the best!). This and more on an ALL NEW EYE ON HORROR!
Movies mentioned on the show: https://letterboxd.com/correianbbq/list/eye-on-horror-podcast-sn-8-ep-15/
Follow us on the socials: @EyeOnHorror or check out https://linktr.ee/EyeOnHorror
Get more horror movie news at: https://ihorror.com
Welcome to eye on horror, the official podcast of ihorror.com this is episode 155 otherwise known as season eight Episode 15. I am your host, James Jay Edwards, and with me, as always, is your other host, Jacob Davison, how you doing?
Jacob Davidson:Jacob? Doing good, working off a turkey and pumpkin pie hangover while I'm back on the East Coast.
James Jay Edwards:Yeah, we are recording this on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. So yeah, there's a lot of trip. The thing going on here, also with us, as always, is your other other host, Jon Correia, how you doing? Correia, doing great.
Jonathan Correia:I spent Thanksgiving by myself, which was fucking fantastic. I started off the day with a Weapons style breakfast of like four hot dogs, and then went and saw Bugonia finally, which was great. What a great Thanksgiving movie. And just like as like a mental reset at the end of the day, I watched The Straight Story, and just kind of like felt better about where I live in this country because of it. What a beautiful movie, what a perfect fucking movie, The Straight Story. God damn,
James Jay Edwards:I kind of had to work all day because, you know, the day job, there were only three events, but they went from eight in the morning until about 6pm so it was one of those, always something happening. But I got to sit around and kind of like hang out, watch football. And after
that, I caught up with Wicked:For Good, which? Which is better than the first Wicked, In my opinion, I wasn't a fan of the first Wicked, not a huge fan of Wicked: 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 of ripped the soul out of it. I mean, I'm not quite sure what it is about the music, because the performances are good, the vocals are amazing. You know, the Ariana Grande and Cynthia Rebo can sing their asses off, but there's just something about it that's just sterilized. But this one is, it kind of gets into the events of Wizard of Oz, like, cursory, like, it doesn't focus on it at all. All you really see of Dorothy is her feet. But it shows you kind of the origin ruby slippers, yeah, and yeah, and the slippers, and all you, you, it kind of shows the origin of the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and you kind of saw a little of the Cowardly Lion in Wicked but so that was a little more relatable to me, for you know, having grown up watching Wizard of Oz, and it is, I mean, I know we're eye on horror, so I'm going to tell you the origins of some of these creatures are kind of horrific, but yeah, that was my Thanksgiving. How was yours?
Jacob Davidson:Jacob, I had a good time, like I said, I'm over visiting my folks in New England. Mainly just hung out with my family and ate a lot of Turkey and pumpkin pie, and then just kind of hung out, caught up on that Death by Lightning Netflix show with Michael Shannon, where he's James A Garfield, which I wouldn't have expected to be so enthralling, but it is A very fascinating show and character study, and then I watched, oh yeah, the new Mighty Nein, the new Critical Role animated series Yeah. And I waited up all night for the big black friday unveiling for vinegar syndrome and Severin films and, holy shit, those absolute bad yeah, in 4k troll two, 4k that's eight trolls.
Jonathan Correia:Oh, man, I'm so excited to experience troll two and 4k I will say I'm a little surprised they didn't try to get the rights to the Best Worst Movie or best, best, worst movie documentary, that's it is. Yeah, yeah. I for
Jacob Davidson:some funny, because their vision just put out a Blu ray of that. So I guess they that already happened, but you can still get them separately and just kind of do it. It's like a double feature, I guess. And have I mentioned that I'm in that documentary
James Jay Edwards:few times?
Jonathan Correia:Jesus, this shit again?
Jacob Davidson:George Hardy, the dad from Troll 2, I can't live this down.
James Jay Edwards:Have you? Have you gone looking for it yet? Correia,
Jonathan Correia:no, but when I get back from my record store day shift, I'm gonna have to fucking look again. Well, no, I was mostly disappointed because I have the shit. Yeah, the Scream Factory double feature release of Troll 2 and that. And then when I didn't have the document, I was like, fuck now I gotta hold on to it again. But maybe, maybe I'll look into the Terror Vision if it's got more features. But, yeah, no, what an insane lineup from Vinegar Syndrome this year. I mean, Garbage Pail Kids in 4k and Troll 2, it's like they're really scraping the bottom of the fucking trash can and putting it in glorious 4k I love them.
Jacob Davidson:Oh yeah, though, I was particularly happy that they put out a new blu ray of Abel ferrara's New Rose Hotel. Like, is, like one of my favorite kind of 90s cyber punk neo noirs. I mean, you got Chris for you got Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Asia Argento, yeah, no, it's such is so under it. And speaking of they, the other big secret announcement was the new 4k of the Stendhal Syndrome. Oh, yeah, but Severin, Severin also had some really good stuff, like, I immediately jumped on the new release, or, well, the only release really, of Alex winters and Tom Stern is The Idiot Box.
Jonathan Correia:Yes, I didn't do, I'm not doing much Black Friday shopping, but that was one of the that was one of the things I grabbed, was that and, and they had a the Penelope Spheeris, The Boys Next Door 4k discounted. upgrade? Yeah. I had to, had to upgrade. And then they had a damaged postcard that was signed by the star of The Devil's Honey. So 10 bucks. I was like, you guys know my obsession with that movie. So it's like, the saxophone, isn't it, with the saxophone being played into the lady's crotch. Yes, I'm gonna get it's her signature. So is, you can imagine, I'm very excited. Yeah, get framed. I Devil's Honey is so fun. What a what a wacky ass movie.
James Jay Edwards:So not that much has come out since last time we talked. But speaking of fun, the big thing, I think, that has actually released is Sisu: Road to Revenge. Yes, have you guys both seen Sisu 2?
Jonathan Correia:No, I thought was that was gonna be the other movie I was gonna see yesterday. But then it was only like playing in one theater, and it was like a bit of a drive. And you know,
James Jay Edwards:it's funny because they screened Sisu: Road to Revenge for press the same night they did wicked for good. So I actually made the choice to see Sisu: Road to Revenge because, and as I told the rep who kind of made fun of me for being there, I was like, I enjoyed Sisu a lot more than I enjoyed Wicked. So I'm hoping the sequel,
Jonathan Correia:there's a there's a lot more fascist punching in Sisu than there is in Wicked. So here's
James Jay Edwards:the thing. Here's the thing about Sisu: Road to Revenge. And as it was going, I was wondering, Am I remembering sisu wrong, but I wasn't the enemy in Sisu: Road to Revenge is not the Nazis. It's the commies. He's fighting the Red Army and but in I was thinking, shit, was it communists in Sisu too? But no, sisu was literally not. It was Nazis, and it's now commies, so it's not quite as satisfying to see him kill communists as it is Nazis. But holy shit, Sisu: Road to Revenge is literally everything you could want from a Sisu sequel.
Jacob Davidson:See, the thing is, though, is that they gave him a very formidable enemy in this one, it's like Steven Lang plays this crazy Red Army colonel who went on a killing spree and killed his family, and now the this general sends him out to finish the job, because the old man killed a bunch of their soldiers in retaliation. And it's like somebody put it
best is basically they Mad Max:Fury Road slash Looney Tunes the sequel, because it's a road movie. It's like the old man taking back the lumber from his ancestral home, and it's all these army men trying to take him out. And they've got, like, soldiers and motorcycle special planes. They send out a tank and planes, yeah, so they just throw everything at him.
James Jay Edwards:Yeah, it is. The first half of it is very Fury 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 who the guy chasing him is, the dude who killed his family, then it kind of becomes, this is where the revenge it's like the road is the Fury Road part, the revenge part. It's almost like a slasher movie, like there's this one scene where he's on a train and he's sneaking through all of these sleeping cars full of sleeping Red Army soldiers, trying not to wake them up. And. And it gets to a point where, I don't want to spoil anything, because it's actually kind of hysterical, but it gets to, kind of like the scene in Naked Gun where 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 make an average person scream. It's, it's pretty funny, but, yeah, it is. It's everything you could want from a sisu sequel. It's his, I mean, just, it's just over the top gory kills. Steven Lang is incredible, as is the guy. I don't know that the guy's name, who plays the it's the same guy from sisu, but, yeah, but he's amazing. And here's the other thing I always want to spoil this the dog lives the dog from the first one, this one, he lives through this one too. So go ahead and go. Go into it. You don't have to worry about seeing a dog die.
Jacob Davidson:Oh, and the old man is played by, I'm think I'm pronouncing this right, yorma or Jorma Tamila,
James Jay Edwards:yes, yeah, that's his. Yeah. I wouldn't if you pronounced it wrong. I wouldn't know, but yeah, that's his name. We tried if you're, if you're listening yorma or Jon Ma,
Jonathan Correia:I had the reverse happen with a franchise I got into the other day. Have you guys ever watched The Substitute movies?
Jacob Davidson:Uh, I think I saw the first
James Jay Edwards:one, yeah, yeah. I think so too. Oh, those are those ones with treat Williams.
Jonathan Correia:The sequels are the first one, okay? Is, is, what's his face? It's not treat Williams. It's Tom Berringer.
James Jay Edwards:Tom Beringer, okay. Beringer, yeah. I must have seen at least one of the sequels, because I remember treat Williams
Jonathan Correia:here as well. Yeah. Well, okay, the first two are very like war on drugs proper, kind of propaganda where it's like, yeah, the the city schools are rampage with drugs and take and filled with the cartel and stuff. Substitute one and two and then three, it goes to a college, and it's all about, 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 fucking bonkers. It's I remember in the 90s where every horror sequel ended up at a military school. That's this one, which actually makes the most sense, because this whole time it's the basic part of the substitute is there's something going on in the school, usually involving gang 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's like Class of 1984 meets. What is it? A Dangerous Minds, but four they go to, he gets sent to a military school because there's a neo Nazi creating, or, like, spreading Nazi ideology and creating, like an SS group within the military school. And it's fucking great. It's just Treat Williams blowing up and shooting Nazis or Neo Nazis, and awesome. Highly recommend.
James Jay Edwards:Have either you guys seen this movie The Carpenter's Son.
Jacob Davidson:No, I didn't know it was out yet.
James Jay Edwards: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 the company, but when I saw it was in the pack, I kind of moved it to the top of the queue because I was curious, because of the hype, it's really bad. What it is is basically, people have always talked about the missing Jesus is born in the Bible, and then next thing you know, he's like, 32 years old. And there's the missing childhood and adolescence of Jesus. And this, although they never actually say Jesus, Joseph and Mary, that's who these characters are. And you can tell and Nick Cage is the carpenter who is Joseph, and it's actually Noah Joop. He is the son, although it's thinly veiled as Jesus and FKA Twigs is Mary. But this is it, kind of, he already knows that he's got this power, and he's starting to kind of be able to see things and experience things. And there's also a stranger who he meets who ends up being significant, but there's a lot of him questioning his existence because he has a brother who he looks nothing like, and everyone's like, Is your dad really 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's pretty horrific, but it's, it's really bad. It's really disjointed. The one thing that is cool about it is it has beautiful locations. They shot it in parts of Greece. It's beautiful looking. It's just, it's, it's rough, it's rough.
Jonathan Correia:So what you're saying is it's nowhere near as
good as Damian:The Omen 2, which, which is the, you know, anti the negative, the flip side of that a timeline of Jesus's life. And, you know, I There are books about that time of Jesus, they just consider it like Extended Universe
James Jay Edwards:title of the Bible. Yeah, it's not gospel,
Edo Van Breemen:yeah, yeah, yeah. I
Jacob Davidson:prefer the Dogma version.
Jonathan Correia:You guys know me, I'm a big fan of the extended universe of the Bible,
James Jay Edwards:if I mean, I don't want to spoil anything, but there is something to that Damian, you know, omen. But no, it is. It's nowhere near as good as that, but there, but it is kind of, yeah, I don't know. It's rough. It's rough.
Jacob Davidson: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 del Toro documentary, Sangre Del Toro? Either of you guys seen it?
Jonathan Correia:No, but that's on Netflix now, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. It was
Jacob Davidson:kind of a group release with Frankenstein to kind of accompany it, accompany it. But I really liked it. It really goes in depth about Del Toro and his history and his philosophy and a lot on his Catholic upbringing, which definitely puts a lot of his style and sensibilities in his work into perspective, plus, you know, kind of going over his origins in Mexico. And you know, kind of talking about the transition from, you know, is in more independent projects like Cronos to big American budget movies like Pacific Rim. So, you know, after seeing Frankenstein, it is fascinating to see that, and as it covers him and like he had this exhibit up in Mexico at this college. So it, it does kind of pair well together.
Jonathan Correia:Does it explain why he's so into Monster fucking
Jacob Davidson:Well, little bit, it it touches upon it. I mean, again, I think a lot of it goes back to Catholicism, understandable.
Jonathan Correia:I get it. I grew up as an altar boy. It leads to, yeah, it explains a lot in a lot of people, indeed.
Jacob Davidson:But yeah, no, he he also talks a lot about his philosophy and life and death and just kind of how that's evolved through his films, and just kind of immortality versus mortality. He has a lot of really intriguing interviews. So yeah, if you see Frankenstein, it's worth giving a watch just to kind of see the man behind the monsters.
Jonathan Correia: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's in the book. They reference a scene that's not in the movie. And he was like, oh, yeah, it'll be in the physical release. Yeah.
Jacob Davidson:Well, I mean, after, you know, his last several films getting released for Criterion, and I was hoping that that would be the case
Jonathan Correia:fucking better, still need to get that Nightmare Alley, 4k Oh
Jacob Davidson:yeah, 4k Frankenstein, though I'd like that.
James Jay Edwards:Now, let's bring in our special guests for the episode. This episode, we've got the composer for the score of Keeper. Edo Van Breemen. How you doing Edo?
Edo Van Breemen:Pretty good. Thanks for having me on the show this morning.
James Jay Edwards:Thanks for being on the show. I always love talking to composers on the on our show here, we always like to start with kind of the origin story. What? How'd you get your start as a composer?
Edo Van Breemen:I mean, I'm, I played in a lot of different little Canadian indie bands back in the day, and i i Also, I'm, I'm originally a classically trained pianist, but I didn't study music, and I just kind of got into music scenes. Ended up meeting some directors along the way, and I put songs in their short films, and then it just kind of snowballed into a career. I always thought it was a fake job, to be honest, and I I was like, when you know, when is the rug gonna be pulled out from under me and still doing it? So. I'm very grateful to have this this job, and a lot of people have supported me along the way, so I'm grateful to them, but yeah, that's and I just kind of you kind of learn along the way, and like you move from working in bands and writing songs to just understanding what score is and its function as kind of an emotional tool in filmmaking. And I found that really interesting. And I like all of the detail of production. I'm also an engineer and producer, so kind of like, you know, composing and producing scores
James Jay Edwards:and keeper is, is this your second film with with Osgood Perkins, you did The Monkey as well, right? Anything before that?
Edo Van Breemen: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 in Vancouver, Longlegs as well. And, yeah, I mean, I had some conversations with him. They were looking for a composer for Keeper initially, and, you know, we had some good chats about some sort of concepting chats. And Oz is a cool guy. He's a he's, he's different from a lot of directors I've worked with. He's, he's very like, wants the his creative team to express themselves in his work. So I like the way he's thinking about filmmaking. And so I'd signed on to Keeper, and then with The Monkey, I hadn't originally been signed on to that project, but they had something come up where their composer wasn't possible for their composer to do the film at that time, and I had to step in and sort of do it at the last minute. So The Monkey was a very almost like for me. It was a rush job. It was less than two months. It was only six weeks actually, to do that score. Wow. And and then so the with Keeper, we had a lot more time.
James Jay Edwards:And it's interesting because the two scores are pretty different. Keeper sounds more minimalist than the monkey. So it almost, it almost sounds like it's the opposite, like, like it would have taken longer to do The Monkey. So it's interesting that The Monkey was the quote rush job. You know, you say, yeah, yeah.
Edo Van Breemen:That's funny. I mean, the thing about The Monkey is, it was because they were already pretty far along the line, and in their editing process, they had tempted a lot of music. It's more of a, you know, The Monkey is using some more kind of, like mainstream scoring tropes. They were, do they had some temp music that was like Elfman, I don't know, sounded more like fantasy, kind of horror, and that was so it was easier to kind of fill in those blanks, whereas, like, Keeper was kind of an open book, and we just said, how do we, you know, how do we want to approach this is much more experimental creative process with Keeper.
James Jay Edwards:Yeah, Keeper is a more experimental film, I think, and The Monkey, it's an odd Osgood Perkins movie. Actually, I almost feel like it's not as in his wheelhouse as the Keeper, because, because Keeper is more along the lines of Blackcoat's Daughter or or Longlegs, you know, it's just more, it's, it's just more serious, for lack of a better word, whereas The Monkey is, like you said, it's almost like an Elfman, kind of a thing going on. It's, yeah, it's a little wacky.
Jonathan Correia:So you're saying the monkey was wacky. What those Looney Tunes? I loved it. It's great,
Jacob Davidson:plus being a Stephen King adaptation, yeah.
Edo Van Breemen: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 like to see something that's a little bit more like playful and has the point of processing death in a playful way, in a more accessible way, is probably, probably fun for
James Jay Edwards:him, the deaths in the monkey just how they get progressively more and more more and more outlandish.
Jacob Davidson:Yeah, yeah. Off of that, how did you score, like, based off of I imagine that you were given the scenes of just how insane and over the top these deaths were. So in that case, how did you score off of that.
Edo Van Breemen:I mean, it was all it was really about building original stings, like, so the there, obviously there's, you know, like the regular score music 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, hit them on the like, in weird ways. Like, play, play the strings on their neck. Like, grab a bunch of brass and and every time you hear a sting of the monkey, it's kind of rendered in a different way, although we did kind of re sample and use some stuff. But, yeah, we.
James Jay Edwards:Was, yeah, that's what I was gonna ask, are those live instruments, or were they all synthesized for The Monkey? Were those all live instruments you were recording in your studio?
Edo Van Breemen:We, like always use a combination of acoustic instruments and synths, but also, like sampled instruments in The Monkey. There was a lot more of that going on because, you know, we couldn't afford full orchestras for everything. Whereas in Keeper, there was no sampled instruments, I was kind of almost like, like, religious about that. Like, I didn't, I didn't want there to be any sample packs that I got from third party, so I created all of my own sample instruments for Keeper. So there's, yeah, there's a, there's a clear distinction between the two films there,
James Jay Edwards: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 more minimalistic, minimalistic.
Edo Van Breemen:But all the instruments are like, you know, a real drum kit or a real, you know, fiddle and voice plays a big part in that film, too.
Jonathan Correia:Yeah, no. What one of the things I especially appreciated about Keeper is that a lot of the soundtrack, the how you use the instruments, it feels like it's reflecting, like the sounds you would hear in a house in the woods, like the creaking, like there's a few parts where, like the strings are going, and it feels like, you know, the creaking of the walls or woodpecker off in the distance. It's a clocking. And I was, I was listening to it while working last night again, and I was like, Ah, man, I feel like I'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.
James Jay Edwards:The bubbling of the stream almost sounded like the rhythm of the sound. You know, the sound design and score are just so tightly interwoven, it's almost like, yeah, did you work closely with the sound designer, or was that just kind of a happy accident?
Edo Van Breemen:Yeah, Eugenio Battaglia. He's a really good friend of mine, and, you know, we were friends before we started working together, and he did sound design on Longlegs as well, and The Monkey, and we've done a whole bunch of other projects throughout our career together, so it's really easy for us to have this conversation. And he's also the mixing engineer, so it's like, we can kind of anticipate how score will, like weave into the sound design. And we have, like this, this dialog going before I even start composing, where it's like, okay, let's let the wind, or let's let cabin creeks do their thing here, and then this is how we're going to insert score. But to speak to the kind of creaking quality of of the composition and the minimalistic, you know, nature of it, it's like, I wanted to give, like, the environment and the cabin of voice and give it a theme. But I just like, really, I don't know, I didn't want to hear another sort of cabin in the woods score that's just like overpowering tremolo violins and, you know, just like big, big hits and stuff like that. Oz doesn't really like hits, which is cool. It's like, let silence speak and be the creepy element here, and then just kind of have these sounds peppered in. So, yeah, it was, it was, it was fun to try to, like, hit that minimalism,
Jonathan Correia: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 sitting there with the characters in the moment, in this house, in the space both between the music and the camera work and the editing, it's like the house feels bigger than it is, but also more claustrophobic. But you're it feels like you guys are almost playing with different genres to kind of be like, Oh no, is this a ghost story? Oh no. Is this a killer in the woods story? What's it gonna
James Jay Edwards:be the movie is very much like that. Like, yeah, I seriously thought that it was just a slasher, until it gets to that one scene with Minka. And I don't want to to spoil anything, but if you've seen it, you know the one you know with the tree, you know you're you're like, Okay, this isn't just a slasher. There's something else going on. So we're backtracking a little bit on this. What is your process like? Like, okay, so you get maybe a script, or maybe even a lock, a picture. Lock. Where do you go from there? Wait, how do you start it?
Edo Van Breemen:I guess it depends. Yeah, usually you know if you're brought onto the project. At an early stage, you'll get a script and you start 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 just looking at early edits and and then having a discussion with Oz about kind of where his reference. Points for first score and desires and and then I kind of presented a few different sources of inspiration, like, there's this i I'm friends with a guy in LA who's like, Well, you probably heard of a Mac DeMarco. I put out a couple of records on an old label of mine. And he was like, showing me this weird record that one of his jazz friends had showed him this easily, black wood. He's like a composer from the 60s who did this, like, kind of micro tonal things. And I thought that sounds messed up, that sounds deranged, like here, kind of almost medieval lute songs, but they're, they're rendered in this bizarre way. And I wanted to kind of create a feeling of, like, kind of some type of folk music that was like skewing away from reality to kind of represent this, like dissolving trust in Tatiana's character, so, like, she knows something's wrong. I'm not going to give too much away, but like, the music is supposed to kind of fall apart and also be minimal enough that you can kind of feel that happening. So my process was like to kind of look at some of these reference points and then figure out, like, with my set of instrumentation, creating a lot of limitations in the sounds I was using, you know, how to kind of, like mimic this kind of psycho acoustic creep. And I'm just kind of, like, it's early in the morning, I'm trying, I'm trying to kind of describe how we were, how we approached us with Oz. Oz was like, Yeah, cool. Do whatever you want. And obviously he was a sounding board for anything I was coming out with, the studio and, and, and kind of like offering some suggestions.
James Jay Edwards: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 so subtle that, unless you're listening for it, you I won't say you don't notice it, because you do notice it, but it's not overpowering. Was he on the same page? Is that what he wanted going in?
Edo Van Breemen:Yeah, definitely. I mean, he had talked about Mika Levi and under the skin, and that, that favorite I would, I love Mika Levy, yeah. I mean, my favorite modern composer, yeah, or my favorite modern film composer, yeah, totally. Miko levy is a legend, living legend, and I hadn't heard, I mean, I usually, when you have a movie like that come out, or some, some, some sort of game changing score movie, like Sicario or drive, everybody wants to sound like those composers for a while. And I feel like under the skin that happened, and then nobody referenced it for a very long time. So oz brought that up and and I was like, Okay, that's cool. There's just like, singular percussive sounds. But then how do we get the percussive sounds to, I think, relate more to the idea of a creaking cabin or these kind of like, like, scuttling entities, you know? So it's like, instead of it being like, one hit, it has to be some kind of rhythmic element. And that's what led me to these sort of weird loops that are played at different speeds on a sample keyboard, so that essentially it's just a few drum loops that are sampled, and then I'm playing them back in a sampler at lower pitches or higher pitches. And it's actually once I figured that out, it was really fun to compose, because I just sat there with the MIDI keyboard, and I had my drum loops just readily there, and I would just play them slower, faster, higher pitch, lower pitch.
Jonathan Correia:That's awesome. Yeah,
James Jay Edwards:it sounds not overly processed, but you can tell that it it's not a natural these aren't the sounds that you're going to hear in nature, although I think the roots of them are like, did what percussion 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 get these sounds to samples?
Edo Van Breemen:Some of them were actually, yeah, like, hitting a piece of, like wood on a on, like a table, or like a log or something outside. I brought a Zoom recorder around a little bit, and then actually, like, I have a little cabin that I ran on a small island about an hour outside of Vancouver, called Galiano Island. And it's just like this old creepy cabin that was built in the 60s. And oh, Geno and I went there. And so he recorded all of the actual creaks of the house in this cabin, and then I was kind of like knocking on some of the walls and stuff. So we sort of turned that cabin, in a way, into an instrument. But, you know, this old Ludwig drum kit, and I'm not a drummer, but I played those. I. I turned all the lights off in the studio and was like, What's a creepy drum beat? I would just a bunch of these things and then chop them up later. So between the stuff from the cabin that we recorded and some of the stuff in the studio, I was able to kind of create a palette of progressive instruments that were used all over the film, but that were, yeah, they're processed a little bit. They're also just recorded in a way that's weird,
James Jay Edwards:that's definitely not just throwing sheet music in front
Jonathan Correia:of an orchestra. Is it works really well. Often when we interview composers, there's always that, ah, no, didn't have the budget for the orchestra. But, like, it really does work like that isolation in the house in the creaking campus for this,
James Jay Edwards:yeah, this is the score. Is almost another character in the movie, and it this score. And this is going to sound like I'm blowing smoke, but this score is exactly what this movie needed. I mean, in in my opinion, I think it worked really, really well.
Jacob Davidson: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 the background as things escalate into horror.
Edo Van Breemen:Hmm, cool. That's true. That's cool to hear from you guys, because I'm sure you listen to a lot of horror scores, yes,
James Jay Edwards:and even the minimalist vibe worked like, like, there's one scene in it where the trash bag scene and and there's almost like, it's almost like a jump scare. But even with the minimalist vibe of the score, it's like, you score it. It wouldn't have been as effective without your score helping along that jump. You know,
Edo Van Breemen:I love that. You bring that moment up, because that was one where we were kind of like, how do we do an anti sting, like, so whereas, like, Monkey was all about these big jump scares with like, huge orchestral stings, that's kind of like you're subtracting out you have this percussion leading up to that point, and then when You have the bag kind of shift, there's a weird it's actually, it's my friend Dave Biddle, who played the sacks, but through a whole bunch of pedals, and I recorded him, like he would just watch the picture, and we just recorded, like, 20 minute string outs of stuff, and then I would chop that up. And I found this one take he did, which was through, like a pitch delay pedal. And it's just like this kind of tape warble thing that starts after the sting moment. So instead of like creating, like a spike, it's, there's still music that comes in, but it'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 to it. So I was looking for things like that that would not just be the sting moment, but all of a sudden you're like in another world of of her realization that things are starting to get, you know, worse and worse. And these sounds sort of like linger, because they're almost like act, you know, dynamic pads or whatever.
Jonathan Correia:Yeah, that's fucking awesome. Yeah. I love hearing stuff like that. I love hearing the process. I love especially like the so much is in for this, this film, it's so much of it is like two, maybe four characters at a time. So you really have to rely on, like the audience connecting with your protagonist. And, I mean, first of all, you got Tatiana Maslany, who's amazing, but just like the the whole what's going on with her head is so well represented, but not only in the in the music, but with the cinematography and sound design, and you're just, you're in it. And it's, it's interesting seeing, because I saw it with a crowd, it's interesting seeing, like, you can feel a crowd being in it with a characters. Because sometimes you'll be sitting there and you'll be, like, half these people aren't paying attention. They're trying to sneak looks at their phone. But like, definitely everyone was in it, just going, what?
Jacob Davidson:Yeah, no, I had a similar experience, and I was lucky enough to see it at the new Beverly, with the 35 millimeter print and also much stricter 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 that build up and, you know, just the dread of a jump scare coming because, you know, it's the feeling that it's too quiet for too long, something's gonna jump out at her.
James Jay Edwards:Yeah, I actually saw it from the screener pack the neon sends out on my couch with my dog, and I'll tell you, it's just as effective there as it would have been in a theater. I think so, you know, I imagine Correia is experienced with like, a full theater. Everybody's completely, you know, wrapped but sitting on my couch watching it, I wasn't reaching for my phone. Then either. So it's definitely engaging. It's interesting that you're talking about, like the recording and the gathering and stuff. But it seems like once everything was recorded, that's where your work started. Because, like you said, you get it recorded, and then you go kind of chopping it up and syncing it, you know, like you said, you had your friend play sax through 20 minute interval, and then you started using that. Is that kind of how it was, just like you had this library of score, and then you started assembling
Edo Van Breemen:it, yeah, definitely. Like, once I had the samples, like I had the percussion samples, that was a big piece of the puzzle. So I was able to kind of go through some of the pivotal scenes. But I did a lot of studio work with my friend Aiden Ayers. He he plays the violin and fiddle and guitar and a bunch of instruments. And Jeff Ennis, who is my he co composes a lot of stuff. Like he worked on The Monkey and also did a bunch of cues for Keeper. Like, I have a kind of Borg mind going into the studio with these people that I I hire, musicians that I hire, and also Jeff, because he's always here working alongside me. And then, you know, we're taking some of the elements that are pre recorded, and now we get Aiden to just kind of like, sit with his fiddle and and like track over scene. So like, this whole psychedelic waterfall moment, I'm giving you know him some cues. Like, this is supposed to be some sort of pioneering fiddle folklore vibe, but, like, she's maybe on mushrooms, so interpret that, and swatch the picture and kind of vibe to it. And then, yeah, we'll have like, a maybe more formed recording session. And then that gets distilled again, so there's like, several levels of editing. And then, like, if there's a very composed section, for example, with like, Jen at the end, she's singing the song about, I don't want to give up the narrative, but like that, she's singing a song about about her relationship to these entities, and it's part of the, you know, narrative reveal. So it has to be a more composed segment of music. And it's like we know what we're doing. It's been written, the melody has been written, the harmonies have been written, and she'll come in. But then we can kind of combine that with some of the other textures that we've developed for, you know, the cabin theme, or the river, you know, the general environment.
Jonathan Correia:That's awesome. I think a DVD copy needs to be in, like every like isolated, like Airbnb, or something just like, if it almost 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 a nice, isolated area, and you discover this DVD, and you're like, oh, this should be fun. And then you're sitting there, you're like, well, the vacation just took a totally different vibe.
Edo Van Breemen:I mean, it's true. It's the soundtrack like a crumbling relationship or like, like a stranger danger kind of
James Jay Edwards:so are there? I know that this is, is on my mind. 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?
Edo Van Breemen: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 the monkey as well. They usually do beautiful pressing. So, I mean, they'll, I think, actually, you can pre order it now, I believe.
Jacob Davidson:Okay, so, yeah, it's on the website. I just looked it up, and it's going to be released in March of 2026,
James Jay Edwards:March. Have to wait that long.
Jacob Davidson:Good things comes to those who wait, yeah.
James Jay Edwards: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?
Jonathan Correia:Yeah, the soundtracks available on streaming sites. Yeah, yeah. So I guess to tide you over, yeah, make sure you warn your partner first. I was listening to it while sitting on the couch and doing work last night, and my partner came out. It was just like, so this is a vibe, I guess. Oh, working on lawyer stuff. Yeah, it became so bad. I just thought there was the lawyer stuff getting me anxious.
Edo Van Breemen:I mean, that's the whole point. Is like to create it like, and this is what I'm saying, is like to create a score that creates, like, this anxiety that you're not even really aware of. It's like you have no sort of control over it building inside of you. Rather than to, like, just blast people with scary sounding music, I'm I don't actually come from like, a horror music background, so it's like, I try to scare myself and get under the skin. You know?
James Jay Edwards:Yeah, there's. Again, speaking of that, I always like to kind of ask, who are the modern composers that they have you excited? What scores do you listen to? Scores a lot, and who do you like?
Edo Van Breemen:I mean, I had a list that I wrote down the other day, but I think, you know, I, I like, obviously, like Jon, Jon Hansen is amazing. I think some of his orchestral stuff is, is really cool. We talked about Mika Levy. I like Ryu chi Sakamoto. I love The Revenant score. I think there's a beautiful minimalism there. And also some of his earlier work is cool. Who else you know going in the monkey you're looking at Elfman and Alexandra deplat and composers like that are kind of more on the nose, kind of Hollywood. And yeah, let me think about other there's a there's a new guy, Kangding Ray, who's more in the electronic realm. He's done this film recently called Sirat, that Neon put out. That's pretty cool. So, yeah, there, I'm kind of looking around. I think one otrix Point never does some cool stuff. And I, yeah, yeah, I'm it's sometimes, like with references, I kind of struggle, because there's so many, you know, and I, and I, I'm looking through my playlist right now. Poush goes awesome.
James Jay Edwards:I always like to try to to find out if people have heard, have you seen or heard Swiss Army?
Edo Van Breemen:Man, I haven't. You know, that's one of these movies that passed me by a long time ago, and I've been meaning
James Jay Edwards:to watch. Okay, this that I I would love to hear what you think of the score. The score is, it's the Manchester orchestra guys, and it's pretty much all vocals. And it, I mean, there's a little bit of keyboards in there, but it's like all and they'll do things like they'll do the Jurassic Park theme, but it'll just be like three part harmony of just vocal. It's an amazing score. You definitely, you definitely should at least check out the score, because it's, it's probably one of the more inventive scores that we've heard over the last 10 years or so.
Edo Van Breemen:That's awesome. I'll definitely check that out.
Jonathan Correia:Jay is out here promoting the Swiss Army Man soundtrack, like he's got, like he's got skin in the game
James Jay Edwards:Swiss Army Man and Mika Levi, those are the two that I always anybody who wants to listen, I'll talk. So what do we got next for you? You got anything in the hopper coming up?
Edo Van Breemen:Yeah, I'm working on a on a project called the Rackrooms. It's directed by this guy, Kane Parsons, or he goes by Kane pixels online. He's kind of a, he's a, he's a young director. I think he's the youngest director to ever direct A24 film. He just turned 20.
James Jay Edwards:This is the creepy pasta one, right the back rooms that, yeah, yeah. That's based on the creepy pasta. Yeah. So it's almost it, i It'll almost be better that you have a 20 year old directing, you know, someone who's in touch with it,
Jacob Davidson:yeah, I was gonna say, didn't he do like a bunch of backroom shorts on YouTube?
Edo Van Breemen:Yeah, it's, I think it comes from that sort of subreddit, like liminal spaces a little bit, and these idea of these kind of dead zones. I'm not like an expert in this realm. So so like Kane, if you're listening, forgive me, because I can't do this justice. But I think it's like there are these, like, as far as I understand, in in like video game architecture, or kind of like architectural rendering with like, computer generated spaces. You have these, like, you know, he's trying to create these environments that feel like they're, they're kind of like realms of a video game that don't, that don't have anything to do with the actual game, that just kind of, you know, places, spaces you can get lost in, and they inherently feel creepy. And so I think he made the short video called the back rooms. It's like a seven or eight minute piece. There's like 68 million views online or something. And it's, it's just kind of in that, like skivity, like YouTube phenom realm, and they've, they've kind of now transformed it into a longer form for esque narrative. Although he's not really a horror guy either. I think he comes from this kind of, yeah, he comes from a little bit of a different background, and it is just terrifying, what he's been creating. So. So there, there seems to be potential to make a film out
Jonathan Correia: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 of support, you know,
James Jay Edwards:yeah, and Kane, if you are listening, if you are listening, come on the show. We love to talk to you.
Jacob Davidson:And it might be a bit preemptive, but can you describe what kind of tone or style of music you're going for a project like that?
Edo Van Breemen:Well, if you listen to the back room, so actually, Kane is CO composing with me. It's an interesting situation where, where, where he's he's a composer and a producer, and he has a very particular musical palette, although, if you go on Spotify, he literally, he's got like, 300 tracks on there, like, he's just very prolific composer. And like, he has various ways of he's not, I don't think he doesn't play these instruments by hand, but he knows what he wants to hear, and he he's learning like he also like has since, and he comes in the studio, but I think primarily he's kind of like a concept composer, and so he has a very like, well formed inspirational palette that he's been Using, and he'll use a bunch of his own tracks too in this film.
James Jay Edwards:Sweet. Anything else you got coming up that you can talk about? We always deal with NDAs here, so I don't know what you can talk about and what you can't, but you have anything else coming
Edo Van Breemen:up, well, I'm doing a documentary, which will come out sometime next year. It's a Canadian documentary on people who are involved in cryogenic freezing so they my friend Dave Ehrenreich is has been filming a documentary for five years following this kind of cult of people who are preparing to freeze themselves to be reanimated sometime in the future. And it's a very bizarre treatment and and the subjects are all really interesting. So I work on in documentary a lot, and I find it's a nice thing to go between narrative, film and documentary, and kind of glean inspiration from the real life horror that people experience.
Jonathan Correia:God, those, those sound like interesting people. I mean, just, yeah, you know, to when you have, because it's not cheap, so like, to have the 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
James Jay Edwards:the thing. There's no guarantee that you're gonna be thought out. So yeah, there's, there's some faith,
Edo Van Breemen:yeah, dealing with those people. And, sorry, go ahead. Jay, oh no.
Jonathan Correia: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 is not there to reanimate. So you're, you're gambling on a future,
Edo Van Breemen:yeah, that's what's really weird about it. And I had no idea, and you don't even think about think about this is like a lot of the documentary deals with the initial stages of death and how you basically have to immediately freeze these bodies and get that to like a different holding facility. So they and there's no support for that. And first responders, like, with ambulances 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 finances to immediately freeze these bodies. So these people are obsessed with, like, their own sort of first respondent protocols. And it's just very weird to see how they bond in life around that obsession, you know? So it's, yeah, it's a cool doc,
Jacob Davidson:wow, that's never really thought about it. But I can only imagine how much the cost must be for, yeah, oh yeah, you know that maintenance.
James Jay Edwards:And it seems like you would have to, like, will that cost to the facility? Because, you know, you're not going to be around. It's like, they don't let you adopt a Galapagos tortoise without naming a next of kin, because it's going to outlive you. You know, it's like, that kind of a thing, wow, yes, things just don't think about. So, where are you on the socials so people can keep up with the newest on these projects?
Edo Van Breemen:Yeah, I'm on Instagram. That's kind of my only Avenue. And, but I post what I'm working on, so as I get into the back rooms, and you know, hopefully there'll be some other cool films next year and, and, yeah, they'll be info about that.
James Jay Edwards:And what's your what's your screen name there, what you're at?
Edo Van Breemen:It's @EdovanB,
James Jay Edwards:okay,@EdovanB, okay, great. Yeah, cool. Well, thank you for joining us on this. It we didn't warn you that we record early, so you're a trooper for hanging
Edo Van Breemen:out of bed. And, yes, yeah, it's fun.
James Jay Edwards:I. And everybody go see Keeper, because it's definitely worth it. Our theme song is by Restless Spirits, so go check them out. And our artwork is by Chris Fisher, so go check him out. You can find any of us on the socials under @eyeonhorror or at ihorror.com which is the site we all call home. And again, everybody goes to Keeper. And if you haven't see The Monkey too while you're at it, give, give neon twice your money and and keep an eye out for the Backrooms. And what was name of the of the dock?
Edo Van Breemen:The it's, I think it's called, relax,
James Jay Edwards:relax. Okay.
Edo Van Breemen:Open your eyes. Relax. Open your eyes. I think, yeah,
James Jay Edwards:okay, follow Edo on Instagram to know when that's coming out, and we will see you in a couple of weeks. So for me, James Jay Edwards,
Jacob Davidson:I'm Jacob Davison,
Jonathan Correia:I'm Jonathan Correia, and
Edo Van Breemen:I'm Edo van Breemen.
James Jay Edwards:Keep your eye on, horror.
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