Nick Cave & Warren Ellis: Original Motion Soundtrack: Loin Des Hommes

Bad Seeds make big score.

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While the world always awaits the inevitably monumental arrival of a new Bad Seeds album, Cave and Ellis have been carving out a prolific parallel career sculpting superbly evocative movie soundtracks and theatre scores.

Usually built around Cave’s sonorous piano and Ellis’s wringingly emotive violin, these started in 2005 with John Hillcoat’s savage outback western The Proposition.

They then soundtracked 2007’s The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (starring Brad Pitt), Hillcoat’s The Road, Mexican crime thriller Days Of Grace, Amy Berg’s 2012 murder documentary West Of Memphis and Hillcoat’s Depression-era bloodbath Lawless, bringing in Willie Nelson and Mark Lanegan. No wonder there’s only been time for two Bad Seeds albums, but they’re the better for it.

This score for David Olehoffen’s adaptation from a Camus short story set in Algeria’s war of independence is one of their best, weaving gnawing loops and desolate piano and violin over the haunting central motif./o:p

Kris Needs

Kris Needs is a British journalist and author, known for writings on music from the 1970s onwards. Previously secretary of the Mott The Hoople fan club, he became editor of ZigZag in 1977 and has written biographies of stars including Primal Scream, Joe Strummer and Keith Richards. He's also written for MOJO, Record Collector, Classic Rock, Prog, Electronic Sound, Vive Le Rock and Shindig!