Electroacoustic composer claire rousay (US) presents her new album, ‘The Bloody Lady’, featuring the reimagined score she wrote for Viktor Kubal’s 1980 eponymous animated film. Kubal (1923-1997), a pioneering Slovak animator, is considered one of the most influential animation filmmakers of the 20th century.
Known as a singular artist who challenges conventions in experimental and ambient music forms, rousay crafted the score in her home studio immediately after moving to LA over the course of 2023.
The inaugural performance, a screening of the film accompanied by rousay performing the score live, took place at Videodroom / Film Fest Gent 2023 in Ghent, Belgium. The project has since been developed into an 11-track album with alternating themes that evoke the film’s atmosphere while standing on its own as a distinct sonic work.
Based on the lurid folk tale of Elisabeth Bathory (1560–1614), the trippy Slovak animated film ‘The Bloody Lady’ follows the story of a Slovak noblewoman. Accused of murdering hundreds of girls and women. Her murderous motive: hoping to remain eternally young, she allegedly bathed in their blood. The film begins like a classic Disney fairy tale, but it soon takes a dark turn toward tragedy.
Central to both the film and rousay’s score is the heart and its rhythmic pulse. “The actions surrounding the heart are pivotal in the film, and, along with its heartbeat, they formed the initial pulse of the score’, the American musician says. Much like the story itself, her compositions are whimsical, with subtle hints of looming menace. As this underlying tension lingers in the background, the score incorporates everyday sounds and nature recordings to evoke an ethereal yet unsettling atmosphere. To create these emotive textures, rousay primarily relied on a blend of granular VST synths, piano, pitched-down violin, and an array of field recordings.
