Varèse Sarabande Records will release A Walk Among the Tombstones – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on September 16 and on CD September 23, 2014. The soundtrack features an original score composed by Carlos Rafael Rivera. Directed by Scott Frank (The Lookout), A Walk Among the Tombstones opens in theaters, September 19, 2014.
Based on Lawrence Block's bestselling series of mystery novels, A Walk Among the Tombstones stars Liam Neeson as Matt Scudder, an ex-NYPD cop who now works as an unlicensed private investigator operating just outside the law. When Scudder reluctantly agrees to help a heroin trafficker (Dan Stevens) hunt down the men who kidnapped and then brutally murdered his wife, the PI learns that this is not the first time these men have committed this sort of twisted crime…nor will it be the last. Blurring the lines between right and wrong, Scudder races to track the deviants through the backstreets of New York City before they kill again.
"For the film, I looked for something malleable, haunting, dreadful," said Rivera. "And a motif of thirds shifting by half steps became central in establishing the two dark characters that inhabit the story. This really was the engine behind the score."
The composer discusses the use of a certain instrument used to evoke eeriness in A Walk Among the Tombstones, so famously used when Neo takes the red pill in The Matrix and a film with another infamous cop. "The waterphone is a fantastic instrument in that it behaves unexpectedly, creating mid-to-high range drones. Scott loved the opening for Dirty Harry. He constantly made reference to the scene's effectiveness—the girl in the pool with the sirenlike voice and the music," continued Rivera. "That opening instrument is a waterphone. This otherworldly sound ended up helping set the tone for impending trouble throughout the film, and to specifically underscore the killers' inner workings."