Animal Collective are scoring the new film Crestone, a documentary about SoundCloud rappers in the desert. Here’s the official synopsis: “Set in the desert of Crestone, Colorado over the course of eight days, Crestone follows a group of SoundCloud rappers who live in solitude, growing weed and making music for the internet. When an old friend arrives to make a movie, reality and fiction begin to blur.”

Animal Collective have released two visual albums, ODDSAC in 2010 and Tangerine Reef in 2018, and in 2012 they wrote and released music for visual artist and ODDSAC collaborator Danny Perez’s Guggenheim Museum installation Transverse Temporal Gyrus. Crestone, though, is technically their first official film score. This is what the band’s Brian “Geologist” Weitz and Josh “Deakin” Dibb had to say about the experience:

Living in the Sonoran Desert in the early 00’s had a long-lasting and profound effect on me, especially after multiple years in New York City. Since then I’ve had a vague idea for a sound that would reflect that experience, but no project ever led me to it. The images, sounds, stories, and structures created and documented in “Crestone” finally did. Many thanks to Marnie, her crew, Dead God, the land, and as always, my brother Josh for the inspiration and opportunity to work on this project. – Brian

I met Marnie when I lived in New Orleans for a brief time in 2015 and we quickly became friends. When she approached me about scoring “Crestone” I was really excited about it. It felt really natural to ask Brian to team up on this project since we had already been collaborating on a handful of things as a duo in the previous year or so. Having wanted to score a movie for many years, this was an ideal first project to explore the process. For me, the initial phase of developing the ideas for this was just to pull up a scene and sit down at my piano and improvise to the energy I interpreted. In many cases this initial pass was recorded and used for the final composition. This process of using the images, characters, editing and practical sound as a sort of sheet music to play to was really freeing and inspiring. – Josh

Watch the trailer for Crestone below.

Crestone is out 2/16 on PVOD. The score is out the same day via Domino Soundtracks. Pre-order it here.