Music by GRAMMY AWARD®-Winning artist COLIN STETSON
FEATURED IN THE NEW SERIES BASED ON JUNJI ITO’S ICONIC HORROR MANGA
Milan Records today announces the release of UZUMAKI (ANIME SERIES ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK) with music by GRAMMY® Award-winning saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and composer COLIN STETSON. Available digitally now, the album features an original score written by Stetson for Adult Swim and Production IG USA’s animated TV series based on the iconic horror manga by Junji Ito. Both a highly coveted collaborator to the likes of Lou Reed, LCD Soundsystem, The National, Bon Iver and countless others, as well as an acclaimed composer with a diverse scoring roster including Hereditary, The Menu, Red Dead Redemption 2 and more, Stetson now makes his first foray into the world of Japanese anime with Uzumaki.
A captivating masterclass in psychological horror and obsession, Uzumaki centers on residents of a Japanese town as they become increasingly consumed by a strange curse involving spirals. As the story progresses, the spirals continue to wreak havoc on the town both physically and mentally, culminating in a dread-filled exploration of the unknown and the power of obsession. Much like the story itself, the spiral was the starting point for composer Colin Stetson as he approached the score, looking at the various ways a spiral could be translated through a musical lens.
Almost kismet in nature, an obvious initial parallel for Colin was his performance style itself, namely the circular breathing technique he has become synonymous with since the start of his career. On full display throughout the score’s 13 tracks, his singular technique manifests itself in loping, serpentine saxophone melodies, his sustained notes repeating and looping to create a hypnotic soundbed that draws viewers further into the onscreen story. He expertly intertwines distorted layers of woodwinds and strings throughout (with strings performed by frequent collaborator Matt Combs), the cyclic nature of the score turning in on itself and subverting past cues as it progresses to mirror the town’s descent into madness and chaos. The result is a mesmerizing original score that deeply parallels the thematics of the series – from his technique to the instrumentation and sonic progression – the music provides a constant companion to the horrors unfolding onscreen.
Of the score, composer Colin Stetson adds, “I absolutely adored my time making this music and inhabiting the strange, gorgeous, horrifying, and spectacular spiral world that Ito-Sensei created.”
Co-produced by Adult Swim and Production IG USA, Uzumaki premieres on Adult Swim on Saturday, September 28 at 12:30 AM during the Toonami block, with new episodes available for streaming on Max the day after. New episodes will air weekly on Saturdays in Japanese with English subtitles, with English dub encores on Thursdays at 12:30 AM beginning October 3.
ABOUT UZUMAKI
Kirie tries to escape from her town Kurouzu-cho, where the residents get obsessed with spirals due to an unexplained curse.
ABOUT COLIN STETSON
Colin Stetson’s recorded output, not to mention studio and live collaborations – with, among others, Laurie Anderson, LCD Soundsystem, The National, Chemical Brothers, Bon Iver and Bill Laswell – has proven as prolific as it’s praiseworthy. Since the 21st century’s early years, he’s gained a well-deserved reputation as an exceptional musician, his devotion to craft consummate, his commitment to innovation indisputable. Known for assertive, powerhouse performances on the saxophone – chiefly bass and alto, but also soprano, tenor and baritone – for many years he was a wrestler, a sport whose “insane physical extremes” he credits with his style, alongside, among other things, a love for acts like Pixies and Fugazi. He’s similarly at home, though, whatever the musical context, on clarinet, flute, French Horn and cornet. One might even say he operates in a field all his own.
It was at university that Stetson first began playing regularly, “searching, reaching, and exploring the instrument” with Transmission (later Transmission Trio), before heading to San Francisco after graduating and, six years later, Brooklyn. Contributions were made to other artists’ recordings, not least Tom Waits’, and he made his own lowkey records too. It wasn’t, though, until 2007 that his breakthrough album, New History Warfare Vol. 1, was released, and this coincided with his drafting by Arcade Fire, with whom he’d play until 2010. That year he moved to Montreal to join his future (but now ex-) wife, the band’s Sarah Neufeld, with whom he recorded 2015’s Never Were The Way She Was, and the following year he released Sorrow, an extraordinary reimagining of Gorecki’s legendary Symphony of Sorrow. In-between he completed the New History Warfare trilogy, a virtuosic illustration of the “world-building”, as he calls it, that’s critical to much of his solo work, while 2017’s All This I Do for Glory consolidated his reputation, earning multiple nominations for critics’ Album of the Year lists.
Stetson’s nature is defiantly single-minded, and his dogged focus is always evident, his swooping, circling and soaring motifs displaying as much sensitivity as strength. This is something to which his striking – and diverse – contributions to film, TV and game scores also powerfully attest, including, most recently, 2018’s Hereditary and Red Dead Redemption 2, 2021’s Among The Stars, and 2022’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Menu. As distinguished broadcaster Mary Anne Hobbs once observed, Colin Stetson is “an artist that can change the way you actually think about music.”
TRACKLIST
1. Uzumaki
2. Join me in the spiral
3. The eye follows the pattern
4. Obsession
5. For a split second, the drifting smoke
6. Kirie and Shuichi
7. Ruins Alive
8. The Labyrinth
9. Eerily in the dark
10. Hey! Are you trying to escape?!
11. The Eternal Spiral
12. Twisted souls
13. Medusa
