Animal Collective Are Scoring a Film About SoundCloud Rappers

'Crestone' follows a group "who live in solitude, growing weed and making music for the internet"

BY Calum SlingerlandPublished Jan 14, 2021

Animal Collective's Brian "Geologist" Weitz and Josh "Deakin" Dibb have made music for a new documentary that follows SoundCloud rappers living in a Colorado desert town, marking the band's first film score.

Produced and directed by Marnie Ellen Hertzler, Crestone centres on a group of recording artists living in solitude in the titular town, "growing weed and making music for the internet." However, "when an old friend arrives to make a movie, reality and fiction begin to blur."

Crestone will see release on PVoD on February 16, while its score will arrive digitally February 19 through Domino Soundtracks. A vinyl release will arrive in April and is now available for pre-order. You can watch a trailer for the doc below.

"Having wanted to score a movie for many years, this was an ideal first project to explore the process," Dibb explained of the score in a statement. "For me, the initial phase of developing the ideas for this was just to pull up a scene and sit down at my piano and improvise to the energy I interpreted. In many cases this initial pass was recorded and used for the final composition. This process of using the images, characters, editing and practical sound as a sort of sheet music to play to was really freeing and inspiring."

Weitz added: "Living in the Sonoran Desert in the early '00s had a long-lasting and profound effect on me, especially after multiple years in New York City. Since then I've had a vague idea for a sound that would reflect that experience, but no project ever led me to it. The images, sounds, stories, and structures created and documented in Crestone finally did. Many thanks to Marnie, her crew, Dead God, the land, and as always, my brother Josh for the inspiration and opportunity to work on this project."

Animal Collective's most recent studio album remains 2016's Painting With, though the group shared last year that they were at work on new material in the vein of EP Bridge to Quiet.



Crestone (Original Score):

1. Dome Yard
2. Eye in the Sky
3. Boxing & Breathing
4. Scavengers
5. Wake Up Ryan
6. Benz's Dream
7. Sloppy's Dream
8. Sand That Moves
9. Over the Sangre de Christo
10. EBS
11. Sad Boy Sleeping
12. Ramshack
13. Smoke & Broken Mirror
14. Zapata Falls
15. Oh California
16. Cotton Candy Sky (Dead God Theme)

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