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Apocalypse: The Doll Chronicles (Original Soundtrack) | Music Album
Release date: July 14th, 2021 – NOW AVAILABLE!
The album has over a million streams on Spotify alone! Thank you!
Apocalypse: The Doll Chronicles (Original Soundtrack) is AvailableNOW! The soundtrack to the award-winning short film is now available on most, popular streaming services and online download stores. Here are some links where you can listen to it or get it:
Your favorite store or service not listed above? The album is most likely available on it, so be sure to search for it. Thanks.
“Franco Esteve has delivered on the titles promise in the aptly titled track, Apocalypse. Unsettling and thought provoking, Apocalypse is an exploration in dissonance and contrast that weaves and twirls as it moves towards its sudden conclusion. A piece worthy of our current uncertain times.” – Nagamag Music Magazine Review, July 2021
“the haunting melodies and atmospheres will hold your attention scrupulously as it gradually magnifies in darkness and urgency… Hauntingly atmospheric and staggering in its scope, “Apocalypse: The Doll Chronicles (Original Soundtrack)” is here to assert itself as deeply compelling evidence for the gargantuan artistic value of Franco Esteve’s scoring work.” – Jamsphere Music Magazine Review, August 2021
“suitably dark and delicious, epic and expansive, perfect to drive a film about a woman living on the edge of reality and being chased across a desolate and dystopian landscape by the darkness and trauma of her own past.” – Dancing About Architecture Review, August 2021
“8 out of 10: Interesting soundtrack to an interesting film… Franco Esteve presents a fantastic sound spectacle on the soundtrack… an interesting musical companion, behind which there is not only a fantastic composer, but also an artist who is fantastic with different timbres , acoustic paintings come to life… Franco Esteve proves to be a sound tinkerer who has the right feel for appealing musical accompaniments” – She Wolf, German Music Magazine, September 2021 (in German)
About the album
The Apocalypse, The Doll Chronicles (Original Soundtrack), like the film, is the soundtrack that never was, made manifest. Most of it was originally composed around 2014, during the original planning and filming period. A lot of the film footage was lost to dead hard drives back then, and the music and album ended up in limbo. Some of it was lost and found, other pieces simply sat there. Once a lot of the footage was found and restored, Franco diligently worked on the music that would be included in this new, rebuilt, refocused version of the film. The new version was re-edited as more of a thought, a conceptual music driven, experimental film more in line with The Doll Chronicles concept.
The story of the film follows Doll, a woman on the edge of reality, as she explores what seems like a desolate, post-apocalyptic landscape, chased by a darkness and a past trauma she must confront to find her future. While creating the original score, as I thought about the transition of this character from the apocalypse in the sky, in her trauma, in her mind, I thought of the inner screams we carry during trying times and how their wail is no different to air raid alarms, which were the perfect metaphor for her apocalypse in every sense. So I used the voice of the strings – cellos, violas, and violins – to create and overlay these wails into a musical landscape that communicated the story, the journey, but also the landscape, both beautiful and desolate. The film’s score is a mix of orchestral and experimental, ambient music to convey the different elements of her journey.
As the reworked version of the short film, restored from the limited, recovered footage, only includes three main musical pieces, I decided to rescue some of those original concepts I composed for the original version of the film and include those conceptual recordings in the album as bonus tracks. From those bonus tracks you can get a bit of an idea as to how I originally envisioned both the film and the music, and I think listeners will really enjoy them both as they are and as what they were originally meant to be, despite the fact that they would have been reworked and redone before being used in that original version of the short film.
As I’ve mentioned many times before, composing music for me is a process of exploration, full of places to visit and explore and express, and The Doll Chronicles short films really opens up that process in an interesting way. I hope everyone enjoys the music and the film, as much as I enjoyed creating it. Enjoy! 🙂
“The Space Between”, the film’s driving, ambient wonder, was selected by Spotify for their Ambient Film Scores editorial playlist, now on its 143rd week on the playlist (song 37):
“Franco Esteve has delivered on the titles promise in the aptly titled track, Apocalypse. Unsettling and thought provoking, Apocalypse is an exploration in dissonance and contrast that weaves and twirls as it moves towards its sudden conclusion. A piece worthy of our current uncertain times.” – Nagamag Music Magazine Review, July 2021
“the haunting melodies and atmospheres will hold your attention scrupulously as it gradually magnifies in darkness and urgency… Franco is an exceptional composer and musician, and it is easy to recognize his abilities and proficiency, as he breaks down the barrier between the entertainer and the entertained… Hauntingly atmospheric and staggering in its scope, “Apocalypse: The Doll Chronicles (Original Soundtrack)” is here to assert itself as deeply compelling evidence for the gargantuan artistic value of Franco Esteve’s scoring work.” – Jamsphere Music Magazine, August 2021
About the soundtrack: “suitably dark and delicious, epic and expansive, perfect to drive a film about a woman living on the edge of reality and being chased across a desolate and dystopian landscape by the darkness and trauma of her own past.”- Dancing About Architecture Review, August 2021
About the bonus tracks: “Perhaps because the music in these newly restored concepts is less directly tied to the final storyline, they reveal themselves to be more adventurous and experimental… it is here that the music seems broader in its scope, heightened in its anticipation, deeper, darker, more decayed, more…well, just more!“- Dancing About Architecture Review, August 2021
She Wolf, German language Music Magazine reviewed the album and said (in German):
“8 out of 10: Interesting soundtrack to an interesting film… Franco Esteve presents a fantastic sound spectacle on the soundtrack… an interesting musical companion, behind which there is not only a fantastic composer, but also an artist who is fantastic with different timbres , acoustic paintings come to life… Franco Esteve proves to be a sound tinkerer who has the right feel for appealing musical accompaniments” – She Wolf, German Music Magazine, September 2021 (in German)
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If you haven’t watched the film, you can watch the trailer below or head over to Vimeo or YouTube to watch it:
After a number of awards and accolades in festivals around the world, the film has been released publicly on YouTube:
Enjoy the trailer and the film above or watch it on YouTube here.
You can find out more about The Doll Chronicles series of short films on Franco Esteve’s Film Page right here or you can visit The Doll Chronicles website here. Find out more about Franco Esteve here and about his music here. Want to know more about his films? Go here!
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Listen & chill to my new, relaxing & meditative New Age-style, Ambient track, Dimensional Drift, from the Mallorca 360 Season 4 Soundtrack, available on most, popular streaming platforms & online shops.
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