Happy to announce that Midnight Zone (Original Soundtrack to the Film by Julian Charrière) is out today on Awe! It was a beautiful process working with Julian on realizing the sound of his visual world and story. Midnight Zone is an incredible, powerful and meditative film.
Listen to Midnight Zone (OST) now!
The bulk of the drone passages on the soundtrack were recorded at Yamaha’s studios last February in Midtown NYC with a TransAcoustic piano and a Montage M8X synthesizer. The engineer Aaron David Ross (an amazing composer and artist in his own right) helped optimize the setup and mic placement, and he essentially hit record while I played long passages, waiting for the evolution and decay of the Montage synth sound amplified through the stringboard of the TransAcoustic. Sometimes, the TA would rumble and shudder, causing wooden, percussive rattlings. Other times a police car would come wailing by. Louis Vuitton, Moncler, the Trump Tower and food vendors were right outside. It was a specific challenge, how to accompany the quiet interrogation of the Fresnel lens, abstracted from its original location above water, as it encountered sea life during its descent. Aaron put blue lights on in the studio and dimmed the overhead lighting.
After this initial recording session, I spent time at home auditioning various synth sounds, in addition to processing ocean foley that Julian’s team had shared. I also spent a fair amount of time improvising layers of spectral harmony with violin and the viol da gamba. The specific task was to not anthropomorphize the lighthouse lamp, ocean water or sea life, all while being human using human tools to make these sounds.
After several rounds of back and forth with Julian, we honed in on a sound palette and flow for the music. A few months later, the film was premiered at Julian’s solo show of the same title at the Tinguely Museum in June 2025. Now, the show is opening at the Kunstmuseum in Wolfsburg, Germany (on view until July 12).
I’m grateful for Julian’s trust to also put out the music as an album on Awe. The album manufacturing process is generally a quiet, behind the scenes affair, collaborating on the mixes, mastering, graphic design, label management, distribution and release plan, all before the world sees an initial single release or album announcement. It’s a surprising amount of of work, but ultimately rewarding. Particularly when one can hold the final product in one’s hands. There is something powerful to me about the physical product these days, especially with this kind of visual content, holding the ocean or light in one’s hands. To me it conveys a feeling of possibility or the unknown.
The album is available as a gatefold vinyl with a special booklet featuring full color panels of film stills. Also, as a CD, and available digitally / on streaming sites.
Thank you to all the people involved in the making of this record: Julian & the wider studio team, Aaron, Paul Corley (mix engineer), James Ginzburg (mastering engineer), Hugo Blanzat (graphic design), the amazing Sofia/Adrian !K7 Label Services team, Carin and Regina, SoCal Viols, Yamaha Artist Services, and the NCM team ♡
MIDNIGHT ZONE LIVE
To celebrate the release, we are doing a run of four live score versions of the film, in the following cities. Get your tickets now!
APRIL 2 - BERLIN, DE - ZENNER (PRES. BY ANALOGUE FOUNDATION)
APRIL 10 - ISTANBUL, TR - SONAR ISTANBUL
APRIL 11 - THE HAGUE, NL - REWIRE FESTIVAL
I am always grateful for your support in the form of purchasing a physical album, digital album, buying merch, or a ticket to one of the upcoming gigs.
It’s a fucking miserable mess of a timeline that we are living in right now and I hope that the music that I make can provide some form of solace. Not to escape, but to synthesize, and reckon with.
x LH
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