Featuring the Original Score Composed By Heather McIntosh

Varèse Sarabande will release the Z For Zachariah – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally August 28 and on CD on September 4, 2015. The album features the original music composed by Heather McIntosh (COMPLIANCE, MANSON FAMILY VACATION).

“This is my second time working with Craig Zobel, so our director-composer language is pretty well developed,” explained McIntosh. “With our last collaboration [COMPLIANCE], the ensemble was super minimal, super biting, but minimal. This time we wanted to push ourselves with the score and it's thematic development. Really go for it, you know? Though it is a chamber work, we wanted the sound to be full and orchestral.”

McIntosh had the opportunity to write for organ in a scene where Margot Robbie’s character plays the instrument on screen. “We knew that we needed to get the tone of this right. It needed to feel like a timeless hymn and also be a defining theme for Ann. I started working on this after reading an early draft of the script, long before the film was shot,” McIntosh described.

Before Heather McIntosh composed her first movie score, she was already leaving a permanent mark in the music scene. She toured with Lil' Wayne, played bass for Gnarls Barkley, created music with indie bands like Animal Collective, Norah Jones, and St. Vincent, and has performed on stage with a variety of artists, such as Bright Eyes, of Montreal and Cat Power. An indie rocker at heart, she collaborated with the Elephant 6 Collective on various projects.
Heather’s first two feature-length narrative films were accepted into the Sundance Film Festival ­ in 2012 COMPLIANCE (directed by Craig Zobel) and then again in 2013 THE RAMBLER (directed by Calvin Lee Reeder, co-composed with Scott Honea and Jed Maheu). She was one of only four women who made the Academy Awards shortlist of composers for Best Original Score for the 2013 Awards for her score to COMPLIANCE, which was included in the "Best Scores of 2012" by Film Music Magazine and "Top 10 Film Scores" by Sound on Sight. The New York Times cited her score as “ominous, cello­driven…plucks our nerves and stirs our stomachs.”

In the wake of a disaster that wipes out most of civilization, Z for Zachariah is about when a young woman who believes she is the last human on Earth meets a dying scientist searching for survivors. Their relationship becomes tenuous when another male survivor appears. As the two men compete for the woman's affection, their primal urges begin to reveal their true nature.

“This work has a very pastoral tone, even though we are depicting the end of the world, it takes place in the only part of the world unaffected by the apocalypse,” said McIntosh. “Along with lush chamber strings and horns, there is also an subtle underlying tension developed by the use of electronic and acoustic manipulated sounds.”

Available from Varèse Sarabande and from Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Amazon France and Amazon Germany.