In conjunction with The Green Knight opening in theaters, Milan Records is set to release the The Green Knight—Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on Friday, July 30, with music by Daniel Hart (The Exorcist TV series, A Ghost Story, Pete’s Dragon). Ahead of its release, you can get a feel for the dark fantasy epic’s distinct feel with the track “You Do Smell Like You’ve Been At Mass All Night,” below.
In a press release, the composer explains of the track, “This piece of music reprises the melody from an earlier cue. But whereas the introduction of the melody from the previous piece is fast and high-pitched, played on a soprano recorder, this version is lower and slower, taken on by the harp. In its introduction, the melody accompanies Gawain as he stumbles his way through a brothel, and is meant to echo his youthful abandon, his recklessness, his impulsive nature, and his desire to experience all of life’s pleasures.
In “You Do Smell Like You’ve Been At Mass All Night,” however, we watch Gawain prepare for an appearance at court, for the Christmas Feast. We watch him bathe, put on fine clothes, and have a heart-to-heart with his mother. As the audience of the film, we experience an immediate dichotomy in these back-to-back scenes, and so I wanted to reflect both that connection between and that separation of two worlds, all within the village surrounding Camelot.
“Making this music was somehow both like running from a pack of hyenas and wading through a river of chocolate mud. It has never taken David [Lowery] and I this long to find what we were looking for musically on any of his films, so to listen back now and actuallylove what we made is all the more satisfying, especially when I think about how many late nights and hair pullings went into it.
Much like Gawain himself, I was stumbling through the wilderness most of the time and found little moments of good fortune here and there, often through stubborn dumb luck. I hope that when you listen to the soundtrack, you’ll think about things other than me sitting in my studio, endlessly fretting. But if you do, then your imagination is very accurate,” Hart says of composing the entire score.
Lead single “One Year Hence” is available to listen to now, and you can preorder the entire 29-track soundtrack ahead of Friday’s release here.