The soundtrack by its creators
Eugeni Bonet came to one of our concerts in La Capella in Barcelona in 2002. He must have liked what he heard because a few months later he contacted us with a proposal to do the soundtrack for his film Throw Your Watch to the Water. We knew nothing at all about Val del Omar. Eugeni gave us videos of some of Val del Omar’s work, which surprised and delighted us. He also showed us some twenty minutes or so of the first part of the film, already edited, and explained his idea about the general structure, approximate times, key themes and the kind of montage he intended to apply to the different parts.
At first we worked at a distance, by e-mail, phone and conventional mail. We divided up the tasks corresponding to the different parts: each of us was entrusted with accomplishing an open general structure of the themes we were assigned, drawing on the instrumental and creative potential of the rest of the members and taking account of the fact that the music would be generated in the actual moment of recording. Our preparations involved sampled sound material ranging from Falla to Japanese improvised music; we manipulated discs by everyone from Miles Davis to Enrique Morente; we recorded acousmatic material, water, voices, and so on, and we had sound recordings of Val del Omar himself, previously selected by Eugeni. We wrote motives and graphic scores for our improvisations. The compositional results took shape in the recording sessions we did in May 2003. After an appalling first take, it all came together at once. We recorded intensively over three whole days. As a novelty, in addition to our usual instruments, Pelayo brought along a violin, Sergi a set of glasses and a toy piano, and Cristina her Tibetan bell and some cans that we incorporated spontaneously. Òscar Celma played Spanish guitar on several themes and Jan Schacher provided some samples and additional sounds for the theme ‘Granada’. The recording technician was José Lozano, who also helped us with the final mastering in a highly creative way.
In June 2003 we gave Eugeni some first mixes to use as a support in his visual montage. About a year later Eugeni sent us a workprint that astounded us by its visual richness and the tremendous subtlety and empathy of the interaction between images and music. On the basis of this version, during May and June 2004, we produced the final master in 5:1.
FMOL Trio (Pelayo Fdez. Arrizabalaga, Cristina Casanova, Sergi Jordà)
| | | OST excerpt 1, length: 1'10'', «Granada» |
| OST excerpt 2, length: 1'04'', «Visionary Grace» |
| OST excerpt 3, length: 1'02'', «Visionary Grace» |
| OST excerpt 4, length: 1'01'', «Visionary Grace» |
| OST excerpt 5, length: 1'11'', «Handfuls of Time» |
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