"April's Bathroom Bummer" - Blood Orange [SoundCloud Audio Stream] | Zumic

The British composer and songwriter Devonté 'Dev' Hynes, also known as Blood Orange, has released the single "April's Bathroom Bummer" from his score of the upcoming independent film, Palo Alto.

The track opens with reverb soaked percussion that becomes the pulse and foundation on which the rest of the song is built. A heavily delayed piano run forms a harmonic ostinato for multiple layers of synth and brass (played by Jason Arce) to provide the melodic theme on top of. These sounds culminate into a contrapuntal web that evolves into a backdrop for the vocals (performed by Samantha Urbani). The harmonic progression remains consistent until just short of two minute mark. The track's penultimate moment occurs with a sinister harmonized melody in the brass/synths that ends in abrupt silence, leaving only the delay and reverb ringing out until the track's final seconds. The texture is remarkably thick, and sounds in many ways like its own entity. I'll be looking forward to seeing how it'll serve Gia Coppola's debut film.

Hailing from a prestigious family of filmmakers (she is the granddaughter of cinematic mastermind Francis Ford Coppola), Gia combined forces with James Franco to bring his 2010 collection of short stories also titled Palo Alto, to the big screen. The official synopsis of the novel states that the story, "Traces the lives of a group of teenagers as they experiment with vices of all kinds, struggle with their families and one another, and succumb to self-destructive, often heartless nihilism." The film got a limited release on May 9th, and is available for preorder on iTunes.

You can purchase Blood Orange's score to Palo Alto on iTunes and Amazon.