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I spoke with The New York Times about composing the score for Guadagnino’s “We Are Who We Are”. Series premiere is tonight on @HBO Interview by @coralie.kraft

A post shared by Blood Orange (@devhynes) on Sep 14, 2020 at 11:25am PDT

The soundtrack will feature 12 tracks from the show’s original score composed by Hynes. In a New York Times interview, Hynes said that while he was in Italy Guadagnino and he had ‘got talking about music and composers [they] like.’ Hynes is a big fan of classical composer John Adams, who has written music for Guadagnino’s I Am Love and was also working on We Are Who We Are. Luca then asked Hynes if he wanted to have a go composing some more classical style music, and Hynes went back to New York and started working.

Interestingly, Hynes is actually ‘a classically trained musician who has performed alongside Philip Glass at Carnegie Hall’. In his score for We Are Who We Are, Hynes has blended classical influences with his avant-garde R&B style as Blood Orange. Previously, Hynes has done the scoring for Palo Alto, as well as this years big hit Queen and Slim.

In Palo Alto, his dreamy use of synthesisers and smooth vocals were perfectly matched to the films backdrop of a Californian summer. There is also something heady and distinctively teenage about Hynes’ score for that film. The lyrics of title track Palo Alto, ‘waiting til I know who you are// Waiting for a shot in the dark’ evoking that teenage feeling of waiting for something to happen.

His score for Queen and Slim was described as demonstrating ‘to the fullest Hynes’ ability to subtly evoke a range of emotional colour’. Luca Guadagnino said that he chose Hynes for the score because he appreciated the ‘eclec-ticity’ of his work, adding that he feels ‘seen‘ by the prolific musician.

Hynes reportedly wrote the score before quarantine, but did some last minute adjustments during lockdown. He described his process as a natural one, stating that he would watch a scene and immediately know ‘what landscape [he] wanted the score to exist in’. Sometimes he would even ‘start improv[ising] on the piano while watching the scene’. His 12-track score for Guadagnino’s miniseries will be sure to impress.

Alongside his prolific work as Blood Orange (releasing an album and a mixtape in the last two years), Hynes wrote the score for last year’s crime thriller Queen & Slim having first cut his teeth as a film composer with Gia Coppola’s 2013 film Palo Alto. We Are Who We Are meanwhile will see Guadagnino at the helm of his first television show, having accrued international acclaim as the director of the film Call Me By Your Name, as well as the 2018 remake of Suspiria.

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I composed an original score for the forthcoming HBO original series by Luca Guadagnino. “We Are Who We Are” @wearewhoweare airs September #lucaguadagnino @hbo @skyitalia @wildsidesrl @the_apartment_pictures #smallforward @fremantle

A post shared by Blood Orange (@devhynes) on Jul 7, 2020 at 10:13am PDT

Set for release in September this year, the series stars Jack Dylan Grazer (from the horror movie It) as well as newcomer Jordan Kristine Seamon, whose father is played by the musician Kid Cudi. So far, all that has been made available for the series’ promotion is a 20 second trailer that contains a brief snippet of Hynes’ twinkly piano keys, floating upon the surface of a lush layer of synths. “They think we’re weird” sighs a boy, watching a group of teens run into the sea. “Doesn’t that bother you?”replies the girl sat beside him. Watch the teaser below: