Songs From The Falling (Ep)

Set in a girls' school in the late '60s, The Falling (2014) is the atmospheric debut feature film by acclaimed director Carol Morley (Dreams of a Life (2011), The Alcohol Years (2000)), which garnered a rave five-star review in The Guardian when it premiered at the London Film Festival in September 2014. The soundtrack is dominated by eight songs and sketches by Tracey Thorn, which are gathered together on the 17-minute mini-album CD Songs from The Falling, also available as a 10 released on Record Store Day 2015 (FEEL 017EP). Written after consultation with Morley to fit the film's mood and themes, Thorn's music was inspired by one the central scenes in which several girls form the Alternative School Orchestra and jam listlessly on instruments left lying around in the music room. Carol sent me a cardboard box full of the instruments they used - the typical things you'd expect, wood-block, tambourine, triangle, recorder - and I decided to use the scene as a springboard for my songs, says Thorn. Recorded in the north London home studio she shares with her partner Ben Watt (who engineered the recordings), Thorn added guitar and piano, wrote the songs and then playing everything herself, allowing herself only one take on each of the instruments. I wanted to leave in all timing discrepancies to try and capture the loose freeform feel of an untutored school performance, she adds. The final mixes were done by Bruno Ellingham. Part folk, part minimal garage band, the music's gauzy simplicity harkens back to Thorn's cult debut album A Distant Shore (1982).