Lakeshore Records will release the Bone Tomahawk – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on October 23, 2015. The album features the film's original music co-composed by Jeff Herriott and the film's writer/director S. Craig Zahler.
"Although we didn't start working on the music until after they had finished a first cut, Craig and I spoke well before the movie was ever shot about what roles the music would and wouldn't serve, discussing a few films as reference points," said Herriott. "The music in Bone Tomahawk often accompanies long shots, rather than close-ups, primarily because Craig didn't want the music to underscore emotion. He wanted the emotional scenes to be as direct and impactful as possible, and he thought that these scenes might be felt more intensely and honestly without music. Instead, music functioned primarily as transitional material when there was no dialogue, to set the mood or establish a scene."
"Craig wanted to use instruments that existed during the time period of the narrative, so that meant no electronic sounds," Herriott explained. "He decided early on that the sound world would consist primarily of stringed instruments, and we ultimately went with a somewhat lush string quartet for about half of the cues. For some of the more atmospheric cues, we considered bari saxophone and some other winds, but we wanted to make sure nothing even sounded electronic, so that meant we would need to stay away from extended techniques like multiphonics. We ultimately used percussion, voices, and strings for most of that material."
Bone Tomahawk will be released into select U.S. theaters on October 23.