Screen Music Awards: Deadloch, Ivy and Bean soundtracks triumph
Amanda Brown’s soundtrack for the Amazon Prime Video series Deadloch was among the winners at the annual Screen Music Awards on Thursday night.
The soundtrack to a murder mystery centred on the discovery of a dead, naked man on a Tasmanian beach was among the winners at the annual Screen Music Awards on Thursday night.
Amanda Brown’s work on the black comedy Deadloch – an Amazon Prime Video series created by Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan – was awarded best music for a TV series or serial.
Brown is a decorated composer and multi-instrumentalist, yet for her, working on the eight-part series contained several firsts.
“It was a much bigger job for a composer than usual, because the brief right from the get-go was to have a choral vocal score,” Brown told The Australian. “I’d never written for choir before, and I’d never done a vocal score.”
The learning curve for Deadloch was steep, but evidently she was up to the task.
“I’ve had really lovely feedback about the music,” said Brown. “It’s been universally loved, and I’ve been receiving emails from people all over the world about it. People are saying they’re obsessed with it, asking about where they can listen to it – and they can’t, because Amazon didn’t approve releasing a soundtrack.”
On that count, perhaps notching a Screen Music Award might help change some minds within the walls of the streaming giant.
“It is disappointing because people really loved it, and it’s not like it costs a lot to release anything digitally these days,” said Brown. “Most production companies and networks have no problem with allowing (soundtrack releases), so this is the exception rather than the rule.”
For the Sydney-based composer and former Go-Betweens band member, her home studio is a welcoming, comfortable space that also happens to be the bedroom of her son, Nelson.
He’s now 31 and has moved out, but her work as a library assistant meant that she had access to the latest and greatest in children’s literature while he was growing up. Today, it is somehow fitting that the space where she once read bedtime stories to Nelson has been transformed into a room where she is tasked with matching her creativity to stories seen on screens around the world.
“There’s so much fault to be found with humans, particularly right now, but storytelling is possibly our greatest saving grace,” she said.
“If we’re going to learn anything as a species, that’s the vehicle by which we’re going to do it.
Also at the Screen Music Awards, held in Melbourne on Thursday night, composer Michael Yezerski’s work on the Netflix series Ivy + Bean triumphed in two categories: best television theme and the best music for children’s programming.
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