In celebration of the success of the motion picture 300, Warner Bros. Records will release “300: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack – The Collector’s Edition” to coincide with the DVD on July 31. The limited edition will include three unreleased tracks from the movie — “First Battle Push,” “One Wild Night,” “Blood Drunk,” and Philip Steir’s “Sacrifice to Sparta” of “To Victory” Remix. The CD will be encased in a 42-page color hardbound book with epic scenes from the film and a personal commentary from composer, Tyler Bates.
Since its March 6th release on Warner Bros. Records, “300: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” has scanned 150,000 copies worldwide and enjoyed impressive chart success, including a Number 1 debut on iTunes’ Soundtrack chart and Number 2 on the online retailer’s Album Chart. The film’s score was written and produced by Tyler Bates, a composer best known for his work on the zombie horror films The Devil’s Rejects (written and directed by Rob Zombie) and 2004’s Dawn of the Dead, directed by Zack Snyder, who also wrote and directed 300.
300, which is based on the acclaimed graphic novel by beloved comic book writer and artist Frank Miller, is a certified box-office smash, opening at Number 1 and bringing in more than $200 million. The film, which stars Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, and Rodrigo Santoro, recounts the epic Battle of Thermopylae that pitted 300 Greeks against the massive Persian Army in 480 BC. For the music, director Zack Snyder asked Bates to develop a compelling overall sound that would heighten the audience’s emotional reaction to the Spartans’ heroism and sacrifice.
Bates began collaborating with Zack Snyder one and a half years prior to the beginning of production, prompting Snyder to choreograph some of the film’s key moments to music written during the early stages of development. Bates played many unorthodox instruments including the guitarviol (an obscure electric bowed instrument), which became a major thematic color in the score. The Xaphoon, complemented by haunting, soulful vocal performances, detuned electric guitars and exotic percussion, augmented the natural scope of sweeping orchestra in an epic film. Bates created a phonetic language for the choir to express the specific attitude that is unique to 300.
“My intent was to stay true to the inspiration of the film and that of the Spartans’ freedom and will,” Bates says. “The greatest challenge was to bead a musical thread throughout the film’s ever-changing landscape of visual art, while sustaining its epic and emotional qualities. I had to approach it in a style as inventive as the film itself.”
Snyder has nothing but praise for Tyler’s score. “It moves the film into mythology,” he says, “cauterizing the images as you view them, making them something they could never be alone.”
Source: Warner Bros. Records
