Liars announce the release of their first original soundtrack - '1/1'.
'1/1' is the soundtrack to Jeremy Phillips' directorial debut, due to be released in July 2018.
Starring Lindsey Shaw ('Pretty Little Liars'), Judd Nelson ('Breakfast Club', 'St Elmo's Fire') and
Dendrie Taylor ('Star Trek Generations', 'Twins'), the film submerges the viewer into the mind
of Lissa, a 20-year-old girl in rural Pennsylvania and her struggles with sex, drugs, love and
loss. Liars have created an electronic soundtrack that reflects the film's use of mixed media
abstractions and multi-film formats, which undoubtedly stands up as an album in its own right.
Created soon after Liars' 2014 album 'Mess', these are the last recordings by Angus Andrew
and Aaron Hemphill before Hemphill amicably left the band. In 2017 Angus Andrew released
'TFCF', Liars' eighth studio album and Aaron Hemphill recently released Nonpareils' 'Scented
Pictures', his debut solo album. (Both albums are out on Mute, Andrew and Hemphill's label
since Liars' debut, 'They Threw Us All In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top'.)
Angus Andrew and Aaron Hemphill were given the script for '1/1' and, after reading it on a
flight from LA to NY, immediately decided to take it on. 'It was very heavy, it was very intense
and by the time we got to New York, we'd read it. At that point, we hadn't seen anything but
we were on board just from reading the script,' explains Angus.
Soon after, Liars rented a space in Copenhagen and started work on the film's soundtrack. The
director, who up until that point had been using temp music to mark out where the score
would go, gave the band descriptions for each of the cues. Instead of giving musical direction,
he gave them emotional and descriptive language to describe what he wanted, such as
'imagine you have a 100 piece puzzle, but you have 1000 pieces - what would that sound like'
or 'the character is submerged in water at 4am' or 'an alarm clock won't stop ringing.' Liars
were delighted, 'This was the perfect thing for us to hear, that allowed us to explore that
feeling. At this point we still haven't seen the film, we were going off the script and a few
sample scenes. These descriptions were really helpful for us, and even though they were
abstract, they allowed a lot of interpretation.'
Hemphill goes on to say, 'We tried to find ways to take it off the grid. We would watch it, read
the script and try to get a feel for the plot development and then base the music off of our
memory.'
The result is a fractured, emotional response to characters within the film. Without using visual
cues that might allow the music to simply mirror emotion, Liars have delved deeper into the
reality of some of the more complicated themes of '1/1'. Director and writer Jeremy Phillips has
explained that the film was originally created in response to watching the films of John Hughes
for the first time - after the director's death in 2009 - and wondering what a Molly Ringwald
film would look like now. Highly personal, he explains that it 'started to connect me with the
past, and dealing with depression and anxiety.'
Phillips has described the film as very much a joint production between all of the artists
involved (he himself found specific inspiration in Liars' single 'No. 1 Against The Rush') and
some of the film was edited to work with the music, an unusual technique. The director
explains, 'I view this movie as ours, and that goes for everyone involved in the production. I
wanted there to be give and take between everyone working on it.' This is particularly evident
as the film was actually changed in some sections to adapt to the music.
Phillips goes on to say that 'The music, how it functions in the film, is really the access point to
the main character's thoughts/feelings. It's a coming-of-age story, she's very distant and the
music guides you through the emotions, as both she and the visual language of the film keep
maturing.
