All photos are stills from the film.When Amsterdam filmmaker Sam de Jong began picking tracks to accompany his newest work, Prince, he knew immediately that he wanted fellow Netherland native Kai Hugo, aka Palmbomen, to be involved. After asking to use a few of his tracks for the film, Jong ended up hopping on a flight to Los Angeles to work one-on-one with the synth-driven X-Files loving producer, whose unorthodox methods of recording are reminiscent of the 1980s themed score of “New Beat-Synthetic-Cool-Analog-Disco-Pop.” Portraying the struggle of a young protagonist trying to find his place as a man, the soundtrack to Prince serves as a character itself, ranging from moments of hellishness to profound clarity. From original non-vocal scoring to the use of artists like XEX, Vita Noctis, DJ Bert & Eagle and Spectral Display, Palmbomen created a transformative musical experience that simultaneously places us in the essence of 1980s in a contemporary landscape.We spoke with director Sam de Jong and Michel Mulders of Spectral Display to discuss the usage of sound and music within the film and why the grittiness of analog sounds so much better than digital.Noisey: How did Palmbomen become the go-to guy?
Sam de Jong: While writing I was listening to his album. I had a few of his tracks written in the film, then I contacted him to use those tracks and he said, “Well, you know, I’m two years ahead of that and I don’t really like those songs anymore but I’m happy to collaborate.” So I went out to LA and he has his tape recorder setup, whenever he changed keyboards he had to switch like 10 wires. It’s a super inefficient way of working, but a fun way of working. I really like the analog texture of the synthetic, it’s electronic but at the same time it has this analog grittiness to it. The film is synthetic and about pop culture but it’s also with non-actors and some raw real life in there, and the soundtrack touched upon that.What was the best part about working with him?
Sam: What I liked about working with Palmbomen and him being a super crate digger and super well known with all this exotic and unfamiliar music to me. The film really offers aside from being an emotive experience, it’s also offers a finely picked selection of awesome tracks, which is on it’s own a cool album. It’s also an autonomous element within the movie which could live it’s own life.So Michel, what did you think about the way your song was used in the film?
Michel Mulders: It really is a love song. It reflects the atmosphere of the moment, the love that people are longing for and searching for, it matches really well.de Jong: What was the story of the song for you Michel, when you wrote it?Mulders: The story of the song, well it’s cryptic, you can imagine yourself what it’s about. But of course, the muscle is the heart muscle. It’s a dance, it’s a struggle, being in love.I got a sense that some songs and tones were almost used as individual soundtracks to characters. Is that accurate? You first hear the Spectral Display song when the main character’s mother is dancing.
de Jong: It starts out as film music related to him falling in love, but once he’s inside his mother’s house it transitions from film music to diegetic music, music the characters are listening to. The mother is listening to it because she’s heartbroken and heartsick. It’s a song from the 80s and if you take a look at the chronology of the movie, that’s when she would’ve met his father. This could have been a song that they actually had fallen in love to. It transitions from being a more positive love song to a more melodramatic love song. But later on you hear it again when she’s found love.Do you like that manipulation of expectations? He’s walking down the street and when he sees this young woman he’s blown away. Then he comes into his apartment feeling warm and happy, then his mother turns around and you see the tears running down her face. I just felt awful.
de Jong: We have this rule that when you’re writing a screenplay that every scene needs to change from positive to negative, or negative to positive, and constantly trying to change the values of the movie. But actually, I didn’t expect it to work that well. It is a good way to mess around with expectations; therefore you start to interact with the movie more as a viewer.Continued below.Watch the latest episode of Vice Talks Film with Prince director Sam de Jong.Prince is taking place modern day. So Michel, what was the vibe and culture of the music scene around when that song came out in your city? Time and place kinda feel?
Mulders: I was a bit ahead of my time back then, it was the punk age and experimental…that was the time I was experimenting with a lot of keyboards and synthesizers. The same as people are using now, going back to the vintage stuff, the Moog synthesizer and the rhythm boxes and the equipment we used to use. They’re inventing them again, like I did in their time. We have all this digital equipment, and sometimes this analog stuff comes back and people say “Oh my god!” It makes a different sounding music.Why does the type of this music fit so well with this film?
de Jong: The movie is a lot about pop culture, consumerism, the certain aesthetic value of that. The way people crave it. But it’s also a critique of that culture. The electronic music from that has that synthetic value as well, but at the same time these are issues that probably came up in the 80s. People link the 80s to that very liberal theme, growing up in a very liberal world, having ideals or not having ideals. The 80s were an confusing era.In regards to morality or consumerism?
de Jong: Morality and consumerism. The 80s were deranged. People had all these liberties all of a sudden and all the freedom in the world, the Less Than Zero sort of themes that came from that period, I think electronic music works very well for that whole idiom. It would be the obvious choice to use hip-hop, but that would’ve dictated a constriction on the characters in the film. I wanted the film to be it’s own little environment, it’s own microscopic world. I think the idiosyncrasies of the tracks used in the movie really helped with creating its own little universe.The tracks definitely were used very deliberately. The track “Stock” was used in the beginning of the film and the end of the film. The song almost served as bookends. It went from youthful innocence to some dark weird clear headspace… what was the thought behind that?
de Jong: I like that because of the lessons you’ve learned throughout the film you perceive the music differently. The same thing happens with “It Takes A Muscle To Fall In Love.” It comes back two times, but you start hearing different things because you grow more familiar with the characters, the subject, as you grow into the film you grow into the music and it allows you to reflect on, like you say, you realize that while watching the movie. You realize what you’re going through too.What actually is the arc of Ayoub’s journey? I know it’s not exactly a musical question, but it’s an important part of understanding how the score and the film work together.
de Jong: For me, the film makes an empty capitalistic statement. He pursues a material dream of being very affluent, he thinks by chasing that dream and rocking a certain swagger he will find happiness and find the love of his life, but the road to that goal actually brings him further and further away from what he really needs inside and that’s to be loved. He’s confused about dealing with that, finding love, he’s too young to realize that this material dream we’re being presented of having fast cars and looking a certain way, it’s easy to perceive that as a journey to happiness. But eventually he finds out, just in time before drifting into very dark territories, he get’s that choice whether to kill or not to kill, and he choses not to kill. Therefore he chooses not to set out on a life of crime and spiritual shallowness, but he chooses to be there for his family.A lot of the ambient sounds and natural sounds: bird chirping, car alarms, crickets, dogs barking, the thunder, all seemed to add to the soundtrack in a very musical way. Was that intended?
de Jong: It really had to be this feverish, sort of surreal realism, in a way. There are no other people in the streets. The world is made up with characters important to the protagonist, and that allowed us to create a world with realistic sounds, but the way they reappear they become different themes. The theme of the thunder adds to the threat and danger of things exploding and hitting the fan. This was all in the script and something extensively talked about with the sound designer. You’re also always looking for actions so you can base your film around a certain rhythm. All those actions really help to stress the characters moods and they become a part of the soundscape.What did you think about the use of Andrea Bocelli’s “Con Te Partirò” at a funeral scene?
Mulders: It’s effective. It’s emotional.de Jong: This is music the actually characters’ picked. There’s this incredible important moment where it’s a funeral so they have to pick a song. They are not very culturally educated people, so you stumble upon the top ten of funeral hits and Andrea Bocelli is an obvious pick. It’s funny in a way because it is so tacky, but I like the emotional schizophrenia in that scene. First you start to giggle a bit because it’s such a tacky song and it’s apparently what Ayoub picked. It’s Italian and so emotional. But you see the characters taking it seriously, so you want to laugh but at the same time you’re really moved and it has emotional power. It’s a nice beat to the ending to the final sequence, then on to the last act.Derek Scancarelli also enjoys Andrea Bocelli. Follow him on Twitter.VICE Benelux partnered with 100% Halal to co-produce Prince.
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Sam de Jong: While writing I was listening to his album. I had a few of his tracks written in the film, then I contacted him to use those tracks and he said, “Well, you know, I’m two years ahead of that and I don’t really like those songs anymore but I’m happy to collaborate.” So I went out to LA and he has his tape recorder setup, whenever he changed keyboards he had to switch like 10 wires. It’s a super inefficient way of working, but a fun way of working. I really like the analog texture of the synthetic, it’s electronic but at the same time it has this analog grittiness to it. The film is synthetic and about pop culture but it’s also with non-actors and some raw real life in there, and the soundtrack touched upon that.What was the best part about working with him?
Sam: What I liked about working with Palmbomen and him being a super crate digger and super well known with all this exotic and unfamiliar music to me. The film really offers aside from being an emotive experience, it’s also offers a finely picked selection of awesome tracks, which is on it’s own a cool album. It’s also an autonomous element within the movie which could live it’s own life.
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Michel Mulders: It really is a love song. It reflects the atmosphere of the moment, the love that people are longing for and searching for, it matches really well.de Jong: What was the story of the song for you Michel, when you wrote it?Mulders: The story of the song, well it’s cryptic, you can imagine yourself what it’s about. But of course, the muscle is the heart muscle. It’s a dance, it’s a struggle, being in love.I got a sense that some songs and tones were almost used as individual soundtracks to characters. Is that accurate? You first hear the Spectral Display song when the main character’s mother is dancing.
de Jong: It starts out as film music related to him falling in love, but once he’s inside his mother’s house it transitions from film music to diegetic music, music the characters are listening to. The mother is listening to it because she’s heartbroken and heartsick. It’s a song from the 80s and if you take a look at the chronology of the movie, that’s when she would’ve met his father. This could have been a song that they actually had fallen in love to. It transitions from being a more positive love song to a more melodramatic love song. But later on you hear it again when she’s found love.Do you like that manipulation of expectations? He’s walking down the street and when he sees this young woman he’s blown away. Then he comes into his apartment feeling warm and happy, then his mother turns around and you see the tears running down her face. I just felt awful.
de Jong: We have this rule that when you’re writing a screenplay that every scene needs to change from positive to negative, or negative to positive, and constantly trying to change the values of the movie. But actually, I didn’t expect it to work that well. It is a good way to mess around with expectations; therefore you start to interact with the movie more as a viewer.
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Mulders: I was a bit ahead of my time back then, it was the punk age and experimental…that was the time I was experimenting with a lot of keyboards and synthesizers. The same as people are using now, going back to the vintage stuff, the Moog synthesizer and the rhythm boxes and the equipment we used to use. They’re inventing them again, like I did in their time. We have all this digital equipment, and sometimes this analog stuff comes back and people say “Oh my god!” It makes a different sounding music.Why does the type of this music fit so well with this film?
de Jong: The movie is a lot about pop culture, consumerism, the certain aesthetic value of that. The way people crave it. But it’s also a critique of that culture. The electronic music from that has that synthetic value as well, but at the same time these are issues that probably came up in the 80s. People link the 80s to that very liberal theme, growing up in a very liberal world, having ideals or not having ideals. The 80s were an confusing era.In regards to morality or consumerism?
de Jong: Morality and consumerism. The 80s were deranged. People had all these liberties all of a sudden and all the freedom in the world, the Less Than Zero sort of themes that came from that period, I think electronic music works very well for that whole idiom. It would be the obvious choice to use hip-hop, but that would’ve dictated a constriction on the characters in the film. I wanted the film to be it’s own little environment, it’s own microscopic world. I think the idiosyncrasies of the tracks used in the movie really helped with creating its own little universe.
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de Jong: I like that because of the lessons you’ve learned throughout the film you perceive the music differently. The same thing happens with “It Takes A Muscle To Fall In Love.” It comes back two times, but you start hearing different things because you grow more familiar with the characters, the subject, as you grow into the film you grow into the music and it allows you to reflect on, like you say, you realize that while watching the movie. You realize what you’re going through too.What actually is the arc of Ayoub’s journey? I know it’s not exactly a musical question, but it’s an important part of understanding how the score and the film work together.
de Jong: For me, the film makes an empty capitalistic statement. He pursues a material dream of being very affluent, he thinks by chasing that dream and rocking a certain swagger he will find happiness and find the love of his life, but the road to that goal actually brings him further and further away from what he really needs inside and that’s to be loved. He’s confused about dealing with that, finding love, he’s too young to realize that this material dream we’re being presented of having fast cars and looking a certain way, it’s easy to perceive that as a journey to happiness. But eventually he finds out, just in time before drifting into very dark territories, he get’s that choice whether to kill or not to kill, and he choses not to kill. Therefore he chooses not to set out on a life of crime and spiritual shallowness, but he chooses to be there for his family.
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de Jong: It really had to be this feverish, sort of surreal realism, in a way. There are no other people in the streets. The world is made up with characters important to the protagonist, and that allowed us to create a world with realistic sounds, but the way they reappear they become different themes. The theme of the thunder adds to the threat and danger of things exploding and hitting the fan. This was all in the script and something extensively talked about with the sound designer. You’re also always looking for actions so you can base your film around a certain rhythm. All those actions really help to stress the characters moods and they become a part of the soundscape.What did you think about the use of Andrea Bocelli’s “Con Te Partirò” at a funeral scene?
Mulders: It’s effective. It’s emotional.de Jong: This is music the actually characters’ picked. There’s this incredible important moment where it’s a funeral so they have to pick a song. They are not very culturally educated people, so you stumble upon the top ten of funeral hits and Andrea Bocelli is an obvious pick. It’s funny in a way because it is so tacky, but I like the emotional schizophrenia in that scene. First you start to giggle a bit because it’s such a tacky song and it’s apparently what Ayoub picked. It’s Italian and so emotional. But you see the characters taking it seriously, so you want to laugh but at the same time you’re really moved and it has emotional power. It’s a nice beat to the ending to the final sequence, then on to the last act.Derek Scancarelli also enjoys Andrea Bocelli. Follow him on Twitter.VICE Benelux partnered with 100% Halal to co-produce Prince.