Featuring Original Music by Academy Award®-Winning Composer Dario Marianelli
and an Original Song with Words & Music by Comedy Icon Eric Idle
Back Lot Music will release THE BOXTROLLS – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally and on CD September 23, 2014. The album features an original score for the Focus Features and LAIKA family event movie by Academy Award®-winning composer Dario Marianelli (Atonement) and an original song by Eric Idle (of Monty Python fame), plus classic songs performed by the group Loch Lomond.
The Boxtrolls is the first animated feature that Oscar® winner Dario Marianelli has scored, and he began his work notably early in the production process.
“That was a huge benefit for us,” said The Boxtrolls co-director Graham Annable. “Dario started work when most of the movie was still in the storyboard phase, and he was able to ask for a few more seconds here and there to let his score breathe – and truly support key moments in the movie. Later, he would also adapt the waltz that he wrote to fit finished shots.”
“[Dario] came up with three pieces that, while differentiated, hold the movie together: music for the Boxtrolls’ wonderful world in their cavern, music for the White Hats’ high-society world in Cheesebridge, and music for the Boxtrolls-snatching Red Hats gang,” co-director Anthony Stacchi explained.
The quirky creatures known as the Boxtrolls spend their nights dumpster-diving on the streets of Cheesebridge to salvage thrown out or broken materials, which they then employ to build and fix things in their fantastical underground community. In much the same way, Marianelli employed unusual instrumentation for his score. “The orchestra made use, at one time or another, of a theremin, a saw, a music box, toy piano, dulcimer, accordion, rubbed glasses, washboards, broken light bulbs, forks and knives, and a typewriter,” said Marianelli.
A key piece that Marianelli composed is the barbershop quartet track “Quattro Sabatinos.” He noted, “One of the most important scenes was also one of the earliest I worked on: the montage sequence during which Eggs is growing up. I had a few goes at scoring it before we all agreed that having that one song going through would help the montage gel together better.”
Enhancing the humorous nature of The Boxtrolls with an original song was comedy icon Eric Idle, of the Monty Python troupe, who contributed the words & music of “The Boxtrolls Song.”
Idle explained, “I do like telling a story in song. From the artwork that the production sent me, I saw that this movie would have fresh and original characters. In context, this would be a song that the people of Cheesebridge sort of knew. So the song had to have a catchy hook to anchor it as well as quite a strong chorus. I started writing, and playing on my guitar, and came up with something that aimed for a Kurt Weill feel.”
“He just nailed it,” said Annable. “When you hear the song, the devilish wit in the lyrics marks it as Eric’s work. Monty Python was definitely an influence on The Boxtrolls, so we’re thrilled to have Eric be part of our movie.”
Rounding out the album are three tracks – old and new – from the Portland-based band Loch Lomond. The co-ed sextet distinctly incorporates harmonic vocals, mandolin, theremin, bass clarinet, and all manner of exclamatory percussion minutia to play off the distinct, arresting voice of lead singer/multi-instrumentalist Ritchie Young.
Focus Features will release The Boxtrolls, the new movie from animation studio LAIKA, the creators of the Academy Award®-nominated Coraline and ParaNorman, in theaters nationwide on September 26, 2014. The Boxtrolls – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack will be available digitally and on CD September 23, 2014. A vinyl version of the soundtrack will be released at the end of 2014.
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ABOUT THE BOXTROLLS
Being released nationwide by Focus Features on Friday, September 26, THE BOXTROLLS is the all-new family event movie from LAIKA, the creators of Coraline and ParaNorman that introduces audiences to a new breed of family – The Boxtrolls, a community of quirky, mischievous creatures who have lovingly raised a human boy named Eggs (voiced by Isaac Hempstead Wright of Game of Thrones) in the amazing cavernous home they’ve built beneath the streets of Cheesebridge. When the town’s villain, Archibald Snatcher (Academy Award® winner Ben Kingsley), comes up with a plot to get rid of the Boxtrolls, Eggs decides to venture above ground, “into the light,” where he meets and teams up with fabulously feisty Winnie (Elle Fanning of Maleficent). Together, they devise a daring plan to save Eggs’ family. Based upon the book Here Be Monsters, by Alan Snow, The Boxtrolls is directed by Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable and is MPAA-rated PG.
ABOUT DARIO MARIANELLI
Dario Marianelli was born in Pisa and studied piano and composition in Florence and London. After a year as a postgraduate composer at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he spent 3 years at the National Film and Television School, from which he graduated in 1997.
Dario won the Oscar®, Golden Globe and Ivor Novello Award in the Best Original Score category for the award-winning Focus Features and Working Title film Atonement, for which he also won the World Soundtrack Award and was BAFTA Award-nominated and nominated for a Classical Brit Award in the Soundtrack of the Year category.
Dario’s film scores include Eat, Pray, Love; V for Vendetta; The Brothers Grimm; The Brave One; Agora; Salmon Fishing in the Yemen; and Focus Features’ Jane Eyre. He has written orchestral music for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra and for the Britten- Pears Orchestra, vocal music for the BBC Singers, and incidental music for the Royal Shakespeare Company, along with several ballet scores. Dario has worked with several prominent directors, notably British director Joe Wright, for whom he has scored four films including Atonement.
He was nominated for an Oscar® in the Best Original Score category for his music to Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice, also for Focus and Working Title. This score won Dario the Classical Brit Award in the Soundtrack/Musical Theatre Composer of the Year category and also earned him an Ivor Novello Award nomination.
Dario’s most recent collaboration with Joe Wright was on Focus and Working Title’s Anna Karenina, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award®, BAFTA and Golden Globe Awards for Best Original Score, and for which he won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Original Film Score. Dario is currently working on Joe Wright’s new movie Pan.
ABOUT ERIC IDLE
Eric Idle is an English comedian, actor, author, singer, playwright, director, and songwriter. As co-creator of Monty Python, he has performed on TV and stage, and in five films including Life of Brian and The Holy Grail, which he later adapted for the stage with John Du Prez as Monty Python’s Spamalot, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2005 and also a Grammy Award and a Drama Desk Award. The musical played for almost five years on Broadway. He and Mr. Du Prez also wrote the comic oratorio Not the Messiah, He’s a Very Naughty Boy in 2007, which played ‘round the world and was filmed live at The Royal Albert Hall; and a musical play, What About Dick? He created and directed the first mockumentary, The Rutles, for NBC; starred as Ko-Ko in the English National Opera version of The Mikado in London and Houston; and appeared last year in The Pirates of Penzance in Central Park. He is also one of the conceivers of the musical Seussical. In 2012, he appeared live in front of a billion people worldwide singing his song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” at the Closing Ceremony of the London Olympics. He recently created, directed, and appeared in the sold-out final Monty Python reunion show One Down, Five to Go at London’s O2 Arena for ten nights, with the last performance broadcast live ‘round the world. He has acted in movies such as Nuns on the Run, Splitting Heirs, Casper, Shrek the Third, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; and written two novels as well as The Greedy Bastard Diary and a West End play. He seems unable to shut up.
TRACKLIST
1. The Unspeakable Has Happened
2. The Scavengers
3. The Boxtrolls Cavern
4. Eggs’ Music Box
5. Quattro Sabatinos – Dario Marianelli featuring Peter Harris, Alex Tsilogiannis, Thomas Kennedy, Edmund Saddington Peter Harris, Alex Tsilogiannis, Thomas Kennedy, Edmund Saddington
6. One Busy Night
7. Rooftop Chase
8. Broken Eggs
9. Cheesebridge Funfair
10. The Boxtrolls Song – Words & Music by Eric Idle; performed by Mark Orton & Loch Lomond
11. Snatcher and His Stooges
12. Allergic
13. To the Rescue
14. I’m Sure I Am Delicious
15. I Was Given to Them
16. What’s a Father
17. Slap Waltz
18. Snatcher’s ‘Dramatical’ Entrance
19. Look What You Did
20. Jelly!
21. Last Battle
22. Say Cheese
23. Little Boxes – performed by Loch Lomond
24. Some Kids – performed by Loch Lomond
25. Whole World – performed by Loch Lomond
