Liars have written and recorded the soundtrack to Jeremy Phillips’ upcoming directorial debut 1/1. And while the last Liars record, last year’s TFCF, was the first to feature Angus Andrew as the band’s sole member, the soundtrack, which was made shortly after Liars’ 2014 album Mess, contains the last recordings done with Aaron Hemphill before his amicable departure.

The film, starring Lindsey Shaw (Pretty Little Liars), Judd Nelson (The Breakfast Club) and Dendrie Taylor (Star Trek: Generations), “submerges the viewer into the mind of Lissa, a 20-year-old girl in rural Pennsylvania and her struggles with sex, drugs, love and loss.” Liars decided to join the project after reading the script, which Andrew describes as “very heavy” and “very intense.” And instead of giving them musical direction, director Jeremy Phillips gave abstract descriptions of the emotional cues he was going for — “imagine you have a 100-piece puzzle but you have 1000 pieces,” “the character is submerged in water at 4AM,” “an alarm clock won’t stop ringing.”

“This was the perfect thing for us to hear, that allowed us to explore that feeling,” Andrew says. “At this point we still haven’t seen the film, we were going off the script and a few sample scenes. These descriptions were really helpful for us, and even though they were abstract, they allowed a lot of interpretation.” Hemphill adds, “We tried to find ways to take it off the grid. We would watch it, read the script and try to get a feel for the plot development and then base the music off of our memory.”

Phillips ended up editing and changing the film to better match the music, and he also directed the video for “Liquorice,” the first song we’re hearing from Liars’ soundtrack. Edited by Jen Harrington, it’s a series of largely static images, its rapid cuts matching the energy of Liars’ synth-punk assault. Watch and listen below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “No Now Not Your Face”
02 “Cottagevej”
03 “Caused By The Glitch”
04 “Helsingor Lane”
05 “Lesson In Threes”
06 “Telepathic Interrogation”
07 “Gesta Danorum”
08 “Caused By The Pitch”
09 “The Jelling Ship”
10 “Shitraver”
11 “Drastic Tactic”
12 “Liquorice”
13 “Nøkke”
14 “The Finger Plan”
15 “Beyond”

1/1 hits theaters 7/17, and Liars’ soundtrack is out 7/20 on Mute. Pre-order it here.

CREDIT: Scott Witter