Nick Cave and War­ren Ellis’ The Road score is com­ing to vinyl

Back in April, Mute Records released a remas­tered ver­sion of Nick Cave and War­ren Ellis’ immor­tal score for The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James by the Cow­ard Robert Ford on vinyl for the first time. It must’ve sold like hot cakes, too, because the label is now back at it with anoth­er fresh treat­ment of anoth­er Cave composition.

Mute have announced plans to roll out a remas­ter of Cave and reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tor Ellis’ score for The Road, John Hill­coat​’s adap­ta­tion of the post-apoc­a­lyp­tic Cor­mac McCarthy nov­el. As with Mute’s pre­vi­ous Cave titles, the all-new vinyl release will print on col­ored wax – from the graph­ic pro­vid­ed, a nifty ​“grey smoke” spin-art design to mir­ror the life­less ash blan­ket­ing the film’s landscape.

Cave and Ellis’ music accom­pa­nies a sur­viv­ing father-and-son team (Vig­go Mortensen and a then-unknown Kodi Smit-McPhee) as they make the treach­er­ous jour­ney through the des­o­late remains of civ­i­liza­tion in search of refuge. They face rov­ing gangs of maraud­ers, their own hunger, and the fun­da­men­tal degra­da­tion of their human­i­ty as they strug­gle to remain alive with­out sub­mit­ting to savagery.

Cave and Ellis’ music pro­vid­ed a fit­ting­ly somber accom­pa­ni­ment to the mis­er­able trek, using sparse, haunt­ed arrange­ments to con­jure images of stark expans­es filled with dead trees and infer­tile ground. Cave’s exper­i­ments with drone-tones and oth­er expres­sions of raw sound make this one of the most dis­tinc­tive, arrest­ing scores in his var­ied career.

Cave had worked with Hill­coat four years ear­li­er on the director’s pre­vi­ous film The Propo­si­tion, for which the musi­cian had also writ­ten the screen­play; by the time they reunit­ed for The Road, they’d achieved a rare cre­ative syn­the­sis. Even just lis­ten­ing to the music, some­one who’s nev­er seen the film can for­mu­late a men­tal image of it that’s not too far off from the real thing – the sign of a good score.

Nick Cave and War­ren Ellis’ orig­i­nal film score to The Road will be released in the US and UK on 2 August. Pre-order your copy here.