Milan Records will release Arbitrage - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally and in stores on September 11, 2012. The album features original music by 2012 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductee, composer Cliff Martinez (Drive, Solaris) and songs by Björk ("I See Who You Are"), You Say Party! ("Laura Palmer's Prom"), Stan Getz ("Para Manuchar Meu Coraçao"), Billie Holiday ("Just One More Chance"), and Robi Botos ("My Foolish Heart").
2011 would prove to be a banner year for composer Cliff Martinez. That year would begin with the release of The Lincoln Lawyer, feature the release of two high profile films—Steven Soderbergh's Contagion and Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive—and end with an email from Flea telling him he would be joining the Red Hot Chili Peppers at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Perhaps it is because of his time in the punk scene playing for artists like Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Weirdos, The Dickies, Lydia Lunch and Foetus frontman Jim Thirlwell, and the final incarnation of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band that composer Cliff Martinez's approach to scoring is nontraditional. His scores tend towards being stark and sparse, utilizing a modern tonal palette to paint the backdrop for films that are often dark, psychological stories like Pump Up the Volume (1990), Narc (2002) Solaris (2002), The Limey (2009) Wonderland (2003), Wicker Park (2004), and Drive (2011). He has enjoyed a longstanding relationship with director Steven Soderberg beginning with 1989s sex, lies, and videotape and continues with such films as Traffic, Narc, and Contagion.
Cliff Martinez was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2012 with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He recently served as a juror for the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and served on the International Feature nominating committee for 2011 Film Independent Spirit Awards. He has been nominated for a Grammy Award (Steven Soderbergh's Traffic), a Cesar Award (Xavier Giannoli's A L'origine), and a Broadcast Film Critics Award (Drive). Martinez's upcoming films include Robert Redford's The Company You Keep, Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers (co-composed with Skrillex), and Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives.
Martinez's work on films like Traffic and The Lincoln Lawyer would be a great influence on director Nicholas Jarecki for his debut feature film Arbitrage. Luckily, the film's producer Laura Bickford knew Martinez and was able to bring him aboard.
Martinez jumped on board when approached to tackle the film. "What I really like about Arbitrage was that it was a film about a rather alien landscape of high finance and his [Jarecki's] parents happen to be in the financial trade," he said. "I knew when I first saw it I knew he wasn't a guy that did a month of research. He was actually steeped in the subject matter. So I think that was what was special and unique about the film."
Arbitrage, the feature directorial debut of writer Nicholas Jarecki, is a taut and alluring suspense thriller about love, loyalty, and high finance. When we first meet New York hedge-fund magnate Robert Miller (Richard Gere) on the eve of his 60th birthday, he appears the very portrait of success in American business and family life. But behind the gilded walls of his mansion, Miller is in over his head, desperately trying to complete the sale of his trading empire to a major bank before the depths of his fraud are revealed. Struggling to conceal his duplicity from loyal wife Ellen (Susan Sarandon) and brilliant daughter and heir-apparent Brooke (Brit Marling), Miller's also balancing an affair with French art-dealer Julie Côte (Laetitia Casta).
Just as he's about to unload his troubled empire, an unexpected bloody error forces him to juggle family, business, and crime with the aid of Jimmy Grant (Nate Parker), a face from Miller's past. One wrong turn ignites the suspicions of NYPD Detective Michael Bryer (Tim Roth), who will stop at nothing in his pursuits. Running on borrowed time, Miller is forced to confront the limits of even his own moral duplicity. Will he make it out before the bubble bursts?
Said Jarecki, "Cliff's score further unlocks the emotional heart of the film while driving it forward with an unrelenting tension and intrigue. New York as he hears it is a scary place, but filled with moments of love and life."
Martinez described, "My music [for Traffic and The Lincoln Lawyer] was kind of the blueprint for the score, and he [Jarecki] was very adamant about it—the placement, the style, the approach. That was really kind of the blueprint I got from Nicholas."
"Cliff brought exactly what we needed: a score rich with pathos, haunting in its sparseness and deep in its brooding, a darkened picture-postcard to the Manhattan of indsutry where dangerous moments of love burst through," explained Jarecki.