Devonté Hynes, the man behind Lightspeed Champion and Blood Orange, will release the score to HBO Miniseries on October 2nd via Milan Records . The miniseries, titled We Are Who We Are, is a coming of age drama co-created and directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Suspiria) that debuted on September 14th.
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.
