Award Winning Composer Nainita Desai Earns Best Music Score
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- Category: East/West Europe A&E, Lifestyle, Culture
- Published on Sunday, 06 June 2021 08:34
- Written by Janet Walker
Mercury KX is thrilled to announce today's release of the single "Drowning in A Sea of Words," from the forthcoming OST of the Sundance 2020 winning feature film 'The Reason I Jump' by award-winning composer Nainita Desai.
A soundtrack that has already been nominated for both a BIFA and Cinema Eye Honors Award for Best Music Score.
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Based on the best-selling book by Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump is an immersive cinematic exploration of neurodiversity through the experiences of non-speaking autistic people from around the world, directed by Jerry Rothwell.
The film blends Higashida's revelatory insights into autism written when he was just 13, with intimate portraits of five remarkable young people. It opens a window for audiences into an intense and overwhelming, but often joyful, sensory universe.
Nainita Desai Reveals New Track 'Drowning In A Sea Of Words' From Her Forthcoming OST Album
of Sundance 2020 winning feature 'The Reason I Jump' Album Release Date: June 18th 2021 (Mercury KX) To coincide with the film's UK release by Picturehouse Entertainment.
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After its US release earlier this year, the film will be shown in UK theaters from 18 June onwards, followed by a release in several other European territories soon.
Like the book upon which the film is based, Desai's score opens a door to a constellation of divergent ways of experiencing reality. The aim was to evoke the intense sensory worlds described in the book with a Dolby Atmos 360 soundtrack.
Distinctions were made between the musical worlds of the different characters in the soundtrack, using different instrumentation. True to the film's themes, Nainita sought authenticity towards Autism and Neurodiversity, Elisabeth Wiklander, cellist with the LPO is autistic and a cultural ambassador for the National Autistic Society and her contribution brought great sensitivity and perception.
"The third single 'Drowning in A Sea Of Words' takes the experiences of Joss, one of the characters in the film, whose memories are like 'a pool of dots'; his hyper-specific recollection of memories and time that are never connected in the right order and evokes this feeling of disconnection with rippling violin arpeggios. Eventually you are enveloped in a sea of interwoven layered strings that form a warm bath of emotion conveying the joy of sensory overwhelm," says Nainita Desai.
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Music video by Nainita Desai performing Drowning In A Sea Of Words (From ''The Reason I Jump'' Soundtrack). A Mercury KX Recording; © 2021 The Reason I Jump LTD, under exclusive licence to Universal Music Operations Limited
"We're already confident enough to call it one of the year's best soundtracks." - A Closer Listen
"Nainita Desai's score builds little symphonies out of ambient noise." - Indiewire (film review of 'The Reason I Jump')
"The editing is fluid and dreamlike; and the soundtrack of rhythmic noises and atonal music both soothes and startles." - The Boston Globe (film review of 'The Reason I Jump')
"Quick cuts, predominantly in close-up combined with a gorgeous soundtrack put you in an alternate headspace... a viscerally stunning documentary." - Reel News Daily (film review of 'The Reason I Jump')
"Nainita Desai's score does impeccable work reflecting the complex interior worlds of the on-screen subjects...Desai's score can shift between various tones with ease. As a result, the score is just as versatile as people like Amrit or Ben. The editing and score reinforce The Reason I Jump's central theme about versatility of the autistic community. " - The Spool
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About Nainita Desai:
Royal Television Society award winning composer, Nainita Desai, is an Ivor Novello Awards and British Independent Film Awards nominee, a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit, the International Film Music Critics Association Breakthrough Composer of 2020 and described by Film4 as one of the top five composers of 2020.
Amongst various BAFTA, Oscar and Emmy acclaimed productions, Nainita's recent projects include Oscar 2020 nominated and BAFTA & Cannes winning feature doc For Sama, Bad Boy Billionaires (No1 Netflix series in India), American Murder Netflix's most watched documentary to date, BBC drama series Unprecedented (James Norton, Olivia Williams, Gemma Arterton). Her projects have been in the Top 5 Film Scores and Video Games scores of 2019 by Scala Radio.
Her Sundance 2020 and BIFA 2021 winning feature The Reason I Jump, is an immersive cinematic exploration of neurodiversity. The ground-breaking feature, which won an Audience Award at Sundance in 2020, is based on the nonfiction bestseller by Naoki Higashida.
The Reason I Jump is her 7th soundtrack release but also her most personal; a hybrid OST and personal album 'the album embodies my roots in sound design, the human voice, electronic and sonic exploration of acoustic instruments that hint at the journey I am embarking on my own with my own personal music'.
With musical foundations that are rooted in world music, Nainita has moved seamlessly between working with orchestras, fusing her collection of custom made instruments, electronics and found sound.
Coupled with a background in sound design and technical innovation that fuels her powerful emotive scores, her immersive approach involves deeply researched collaborations to find voices not usually heard, creating sounds that are truly unique.
Nainita Desai was born and brought up in London to Indian parents and her eclectic musical upbringing led her to studying the sitar, piano, guitar, table, singing and the violin. As a sound designer she has worked on feature films for Bertolucci (Little Buddha); and Werner Herzog (Lessons Of Darkness). Her passion for music technology has also led her to working in music engineering alongside Peter Gabriel during the legendary Real World Recording Week sessions, as well as working with acclaimed artists such as Billy Cobham, Daniel Lanois, Jane Sibbery, Nigel Kennedy, Sinead O'Connor, and Ravi Shankar.
"With footage as raw and dramatic as this, it's a credit to composer Nainita Desai that her score remains restrained and understated throughout, emphasising subtler themes of endurance and empathy, while gesturing gently toward the possibility of hope – of love – even in the midst of tragedy" - The Guardian (film review of 'For Sama')
"…it's all set to a stirring score by Nainita Desai… and never drags even through long sequences of footage." - Vox.com (review of 'American Murder')
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'The Reason I Jump' OST Album Track Listing
1.Time Has No Boundaries
2.Beauty Is In The Detail
3.I, Too, Exist
4.Floating Into Focus
5.Shaking The Ropes Loose
6.Memories And Images
7.Outside The Flow Of Time
8.Drowning In A Sea Of Words
9.The Reason I Jump
10.Green Boxes
11.The Prettiness Of A Dandelion
12.Imaginings
13.Forever Swaying
14.Permission To Be Alive
15.Faulty Robot
16.The Sensory World
