Break Break by Eve Essex

Following her debut soundtrack for Today, I Will Be The Bread comes Break Break, a new soundtrack from composer and multi-instrumentalist Eve Essex. Directed by Haldean Brown and written by Sarah Marsh, Break Break follows an apocalypse survivor as she struggles with loneliness and paralysis in the face of uncertainty. Containing no dialog and only sporadic voiceover permeated by empty radio waves and gentle forest sounds, the film’s emotional tenor is propelled by its expressive electroacoustic score.

Set in a depopulated world amongst the Sonoma redwoods, Break Break echoes the isolation and apprehension of pandemic-era quarantine. A ham radio serves as the film’s central motif and provides percussion samples for the titular “Break Break.” Swinging between woozy abandon and frenetic alertness, the track posits dance as its own means of survival at the film's visually and sonically pulsating climax. Meanwhile, a delicate soprano saxophone in “Comfort” and the almost-canon structure of “Around I Go” bring a contemporary spin to kosmische-esque moments, evoking soundtracks of Tangerine Dream and Irmin Schmidt. Taken as a whole, Essex’s electroacoustic score maps the emotional highs and lows that drive the film’s exploration of risk – what are you willing to leave behind, and for what reason?

Break Break includes explorations of scale and through-composed arrangements that are new to Essex’s recordings. Multi-tracked combinations of voices, soprano saxophone, flute, piccolo and clarinet are layered into beds of orchestrated synthesizers, creating textures and densities not yet heard in her work. The 12 tracks comprising Break Break mark a major shift for Essex to a production-forward process, and serve as a sonic midpoint between her debut solo record, Here Appear (2018), and the expanded big-band character of her forthcoming second album, The Fabulous Truth (spring 2024).

Eve Essex is a multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Brooklyn, NY. She performs with woodwinds and voice, accompanied by instrumental ensembles, and by electronic arrangements that use live processing, synthesizers, drum machines, and other sounds. Operating between songwriting, composition, and instrumental improvisation, her work slides easily from structured electronic pop to open-ended melodic explorations and big-band arrangements. Her practice has spanned media and genres over time — including soundtracks, installation and performance art, and the prog, jazz, and electroacoustic ideas explored with an assortment of collaborative combinations including The Fabulous Truth, Das Audit, and others. Her debut solo album, Here Appear, was jointly released by Soap Library (cassette) and Sky Walking (LP) in 2018. Essex’s second solo album, The Fabulous Truth, will be released by Soap Library in spring 2024.

Haldean Brown is an Oakland-based film director and Pixar computer programmer whose works detail our relationships to nature and the ways technology both gathers and isolates us. Break Break is his third live-action film as a director, after Great Job and The Time Traveling Cougar. Brown served as Effects Lead for the animated short Pete, which premiered in 2023 at the Tribeca Film Festival and won the Jury Prize at Festival d’Annecy.

Sarah Marsh is a Polish-Mexican screenwriter whose cross-genre dramas explore the broad spectrum of queer relationships, with a focus on female-identifying protagonists. Break Break is her second short film, followed by Buzz, a female-centric thriller. She is a graduate of the UCLA Professional Program in Writing for Television.

Eve Essex’s soundtrack to Break Break releases on Friday, February 23, 2024 in digital formats via Soap Library.

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Eve Essex performs with voice, winds and electronics, harnessing elements of distorted pop, avant-jazz, chamber music and drone.

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