Zuydervelt / Belorukov / Aquarius – The Red Soul

Comes in a matt finish digipack…

After making several films without music, director Jessica Gorter went for a different approach for her recent film ‘The Red Soul’. Rutger Zuydervelt (aka Machinefabriek) was brought in to make the soundtrack for the documentary. They quickly agreed that the score needed to be very subtle, and not cliché-driven or overdramatic. An old bakelite record with a speech from Stalin and a few old LPs with Soviet songs became the starting point for the music.

Fragments of these were sampled, transformed and combined with the saxophone of Ilia Belorukov and percussion by René Aquarius (of Dead Neanderthals). The result is a series of textural and tonal collages that evokes a sense of decay as well as (false) nostalgia, perfectly fitting the theme of the film. On the soundtrack album, the various parts of the score are assembled to be heard as one seamless piece – as a story in itself.

The Red Soul was selected for the prestigious IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) International and Dutch Competitions.