Double “Cloud and Pennant Banner” vinyl available this winter
Waxwork Records, in partnership with Back Lot Music, has announced the release of Nope Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Michael Abels on double Cloud and Pennant Banner vinyl. The package comes complete with 180-gram colored vinyl, deluxe packaging with heavyweight gatefold jacket, matte coating, and original artwork by Ethan Mesa, along with a multi-page 12”x12” booklet, liner notes and more. It’s scheduled to ship in December.
Abels is known for his genre-defying scores for Jordan Peele films Get Out and Us, for which Abels won a World Soundtrack Award, the Jerry Goldsmith Award, a Critics Choice nomination, and multiple critics’ awards. The hip hop influenced score for Us was short-listed for an Academy Award. Abels is also co-founder of the Composers Diversity Collective, an advocacy group to increase visibility of composers of color in film, gaming and streaming media.
“Michael is one the most exciting composers working today – he has this amazing ability to create new sounds which was important for this film,” Peele says. “He’s able to play in the familiar and in the unfamiliar at the same time, so that helps give every film its own character, and he has an incredible mastery of so many different music genres.”
The album also features songs from the film, including a new version of Corey Hart’s classic “Sunglasses at Night (Jean Jacket Mix),” Dionne Warwick’s “Walk on By,” The Lost Generation’s “This is the Lost Generation,” Exuma’s “Exuma, the Obeah Man,” and a never-before-released gem by a young Jodie Foster, “La Vie C’est Chouette” from the 1977 film Moi, Fleur Bleue.
“Nope is my most ambitious score to date,” says Abels. “There are elements from the genres of sci-fi, action, horror, and westerns, but always through the tonal palette of Jordan Peele’s unique vision. The lines between source music and score are blurred, as a good part of the score seems to be playing at the theme park, which is a key location in the story. The score is at times terrifying, yet also invokes the sense of awe and wonder that the characters feel as they realize what they are seeing. The film eventually becomes a grand adventure, and so the music expands into the larger-than-life scale we expect of a summer blockbuster. It was a joy to compose a score that encompassed such a broad range of genres and emotions, and I’m thrilled to have audiences experience all of them through this album.”
The film reunites Oscar winners Peele and Daniel Kaluuya, who is joined by Keke Palmer and Oscar nominee Steven Yeun as residents in a lonely gulch of inland California who bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery.
