The Dead Don't Die soundtrack feat. SQÜRL getting vinyl release

The creepy, synth-enhanced score created by Jim Jarmusch's band SQÜRL for his new zombie flick is being issued by Sacred Bones on Sept 13th.

The Dead Don’t Die is writer/director Jim Jarmusch’s unique, semi-comic take on the zombie apocalypse genre. As with his recent efforts Only Lovers Left Alive and Paterson, the film’s score was composed and performed by SQÜRL, the band Jarmusch and producer Carter Logan founded in 2009. Sacred Bones Records, the same label that released the band’s EP #260 in 2017, is releasing the LP edition of the score.

The score to the The Dead Don’t Die is a true expression of where SQÜRL stand at the center of a decade of sonic exploration. It is the culmination of their passion for analog synths, with guitar violence reverberating from the darker corners of Americana. It is at once a tribute to the classic sounds of horror and sci-fi, as well as a decapitation of traditional film scores. It is naturally supernatural.

From their arsenal of tools, Jarmusch and Logan pulled electric guitars and basses made by Rick Kelly and Cindy Hulej at Carmine Street Guitars, an acoustic resonator, Moog Minitaur and Theremini synthesizers, Fender Rhodes electric piano, an old Ludwig drum kit, cheap vintage Casio and Yamaha keyboards and new synths from Critter and Guitari — all sculpted through a collection of effects pedals, notably from Earthquaker Devices.

The inspiration for SQÜRL’s score for The Dead Don’t Die came from some of the most iconic soundtracks of the past half-century of genre cinema — Tangerine Dream’s Sorcerer, Bebe and Louis Barron’s Forbidden Planet, Ennio Morricone’s The Thing and Once Upon a Time in the West, Goblin’s Dawn of the Dead, and all things John Carpenter. The singular Theremin work of Samuel J. Hoffman on films like Spellbound and The Day the Earth Stood Still also made its way into Jarmusch and Logan’s consciousness. The result is a new horror soundtrack that stands shoulder to shoulder with the great works of its genre.

Watch The Dead Don't Die soundtrack teaser below. Pre-order a limited edition "Black Dust" splatter wax copy of the LP right here.



The Dead Don't Die – Original Motion Picture Score (Sacred Bones)

1. Dialogue 1 (Adam Driver, Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny)
2. The Dead Just Don’t Wanna Die Today
3. Dialogue 2 (Larry Fessenden)
4. Replacement Sky
5. Dialogue 3 (Chloë Sevigny, Adam Driver)
6. This Is All Gonna End Badly
7. Dialogue 4 (Selena Gomez, Rosie Perez, Austin Butler, Luka Sabbat)
8. Malignant Wave Of Doom
9. Dialogue 5 (Caleb Landry Jones)
10 Toxic Moon
11 Dialogue 6 (Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray)
12 Pulsating Elevator Of Light
13 Dialogue 7 (Chloë Sevigny, Bill Murray, Adam Driver)
14 The Dead Don't Die
15 Dialogue 8 (Tom Waits)

The Sadies get a shout-out in Jim Jarmusch's zombie flick The Dead Don't Die

While trapped in a hardware store, Bobby Wiggins and Hank Thompson discuss the guitar playing skill of The Sadies' Dallas & Travis Good. 

Since Jim Jarmusch started making feature films, the part-time musician and full-time music fan has sought to sneak in cameos of his favourite artists. Beyond the starring roles frequently played by his longtime pals John Lurie and Tom Waits, Jarmusch always finds clever ways of getting some screen time for artists he loves, whether it's having underground NY rapper Rammelzee portraying "man with money" in his 1984 breakthrough Stranger Than Paradise, Screamin' Jay Hawkins serving as a hotel night clerk in 1989's Mystery Train, Butthole Surfters' frontman Gibby Haynes playing "man with a gun in alley" in 1995's Dead Man, Wu-Tang Clan's RZA and GZA discussing the finer points of alternative medicine with Bill Murray in 2003's Coffee and Cigarettes.

In Jarmusch's latest The Dead Don't Die – a cautionary tale about the hazards of fracking and consumerism run amok which opens this weekend), he's got regular collaborators Iggy Pop playing a coffee zombie, RZA appears as a WU-PS delivery man while Tom Waits has a key role as Hermit Bob, a mysterious forest-dwelling loner who provides Rod Serling-esque commentary. Alt-country star Sturgill Simpson is name-checked frequently as the singer of the film's title song whose CD of "The Dead Don't Die" serves as a prop throughout and Simpson himself later appears as a guitar-dragging zombie.

In a similar multi-level reference, there's a scene set in a zombie-surrounded hardware store where Bobby Wiggins (Caleb Landry Jones) and Hank Thompson (Danny Glover) talk about the awesome guitar skills of The Sadies' dynamic brother duo of Dallas and Travis Good after seeing a brief cameo which fans of the Toronto twangers won't soon forget. You'll need to see the film for that entertaining sequence but in the meantime, watch the trailer below followed by a video for Sturgill Simpson's title track.

Ginger St. James has invited The Sadies to play The Casbah (306 King St. West) in beautiful downtown Hamilton on Sunday (June 16) – Check the venue's page right here for more info and tickets – before they head to Saskatchewan for the Long Day's Night Festival with Reverend Horton Heat in Swift Current (June 20-23) and then continue on a Western swing through July before hitting Buffalo's Cobblestone Live Music & Arts Festival (49 Illinois St) August 2-4.
 

Whaddya mean you don't know Bob Prince

After this 1956 split album with Teo Macero, Bob Prince scored numerous TV classics through the 60s & 70s.