The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to The County, with music by Valgeir Sigurðsson, was released on 10 January 2020, exclusively on Bedroom Community. The 15-track album features eerily beautiful and scene-setting melodies created by the Icelandic musician. The drama had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2019 and was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section. The County is the follow-up to Grímur Hákonarson’s Festival de Cannes Award-winning debut Rams and stars actors Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir, Sveinn Ólafur Gunnarsson, as well as Þorsteinn Bachmann.
“Director Grímur Hákonarson and I have worked together a few times in the past, so it helped that we already had a dialog and a fluidity in the way we work together. First I watched the film a few times, and then I turned off the screen and just wrote music in response to what I had seen. I often do this because I want to make a score that flows with its own narrative. On Grímur’s suggestion, we used a lot of synths and electronic textures, and also used some of the real sounds from the film for the score. There is an obnoxious milking-robot that features quite heavily, as well as other sounds from around the farm and the environments that I also managed to incorporate into the score. Then, I also recorded a lot of solo strings that I was really excited about, but mostly didn’t need to be in the film once the images were turned back on. In the final mix I think we cut about 50% of the score that I had completed, or more even, we agreed fully on all the cuts. But, on the soundtrack release I keep many of these elements because they informed my process and I feel that they are integral to the music and necessary when it is stripped of the images it was created for” – Valgeir Sigurðsson, composer.
Released on January 10, 2020