Spacefuzz has composed the original score for The Gardener, a new short film written and directed by Portland-based artist John Barrios, now available on YouTube.
The film began as a dream. “One morning I said to my partner, let’s film it right now,” recalls Barrios. Over the following months, the project took shape — a single continuous shot, stripped to its essentials, exactly as it had appeared to him in sleep.
When it came time to find a composer, Barrios knew who to call. “I knew I needed to reach out to someone whom I’ve had a musical spiritual experience with. My old friend Spacefuzz was the first to come to mind.” Having followed the Spacefuzz catalog closely, Barrios saw in Increvable! and Crush Depth an instinct for cinematic narrative. “His last two musical projects proved to me that he had an instinct for film.”
“John Barrios is a singular creative force — a writer, musician, and artist whose curious vulnerability has a way of reaching inside and connecting to something you didn’t know was there. When he asked me to score his first film, I immediately said yes.”
The brief was deceptively simple. Barrios sent two ideas. What came back exceeded expectations. “He sent back magic,” says Barrios. “The music sets a tone to open the film without losing an outdoors feel while setting the stage for something sinister.” As the film moves through its structure, the score shifts with it — building tension through a second act and delivering the finale with full force. “The soundtrack is essential and Spacefuzz delivered on a dream I had.”
For the soundtrack, the goal was atmospheric solitude — the spirit of Ennio Morricone’s western noir films, updated for indie vinyl-collecting sensibilities. To score the record room at the heart of the film, Spacefuzz drew on Kiss the Frog, his psychedelic thrash-bop trio, whose driving bass and drums carry the energy of a Goblin soundtrack. Two other sonic characters emerge throughout: the wind, rendered as dubbed-out echoes of hands sliding up and down an electric guitar fingerboard; and the internal tempo of the main character, portrayed by staccato drops of an eBow overdubbed multiple times, each successive performance falling purposefully out of phase.
The Gardener is available now on YouTube. Watch here →