WaterTower Music today announced the release of the soundtrack to filmmaker Guy Ritchie's action adventure King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, in theatres May 12, 2017. The album features music from Golden Globe-nominated composer Daniel Pemberton, and will be released in both a 26-track standard edition available on CD and digitally, as well as a 30-track digital deluxe edition. The digital versions will be released May 5, followed by the CD release on May 19.
The unique, inventive and broad creative range Pemberton brings to his projects is omnipresent on the King Arthur: Legend of the Sword album. "This isn't your usual Hollywood epic adventure, it's a Guy Ritchie Hollywood epic adventure," explained Pemberton. "That means usual rules don't apply. In fact no rules apply. All that matters is can you make a score that sounds like nothing else? That was the mission.
"I started to curate a mongrel orchestra made up of the weirdest instruments and sounds I could find and make," continued Pemberton. "I would be up at 2am with my face red and stinging, having spent the last hour slapping it as hard as I could to get unusual percussive sounds. I told my neighbors to not worry if they heard any screaming from my flat; I was just trying an idea out. There is so much rich imagery in the film – the dirt, the grime, the metal, the leather, the wood, the stones – I wanted to bring as much of this into the score as I could. We wanted the music to feel physically visceral. Bit by bit we built it into a soundtrack that could take you on a journey the size and scale of the movie itself."
Acclaimed Mercury Prize-nominated British folk singer and passionate explorer of ancient folk songs Sam Lee performs the film's end title track, "The Devil & The Huntsman," with Pemberton, who praises Lee's voice as "timeless."
"Seeing the visual and narrative brilliance of Guy and his team conjure up a world once so steeped in old song and then permit the unvarnished beauty of our inherited music into this vision is not only thrilling but nods at his masterful nose for authenticity and a sense of something unusual yet very familiar," recounts Lee. "It's about time British Folk music made it to Hollywood and Guy has finally got it there! Dan Pemberton's soundtrack is spellbinding. It brings a visceral and sonic grandeur to this powerful yet simple number, bringing drama to the song and many a scene in ways that fuse the spirit and vision of the story as though they had always existed together."