Erika M. Anderson, known better as EMA, shared a new track called “Amnesia Haze,” one of the songs on the soundtrack for a new horror film aptly titled #Horror.
Though the movie was released in select theaters and on Video On Demand (VOD) on November 20, the soundtrack won’t be released until December 11. According to Consequence of Sound, EMA worked on the score, her first-ever film score, with Severiano Martinez and Carson Garhart. In a press release, EMA said, “Film work and scoring is fun for me because I get to make all this music that wouldn’t necessarily fit on an EMA record. ‘Amnesia Haze’ is so pop, so cinematic. I get to kind of step out of myself and play the part.”
“Amnesia Haze” is a synth-pop track that can stand on its own, despite the fact that it is part of a larger collection made for the film. It sounds vaguely influenced by late 1970s and 1980s horror movie music, like the scores more recently used in Maniac and It Follows. EMA’s whispery vocals add to the beauty and eerie quality of the song, which you can listen to below.
The film was directed by Tara Subkoff and features Chloë Sevigny, Balthazar Getty, Timothy Hutton and Orange Is The New Black costars Taryn Manning and Natasha Lyonne. The movie is allegedly inspired by true events and, as indicated by the hashtag in the title, deals with modern technology – more specifically, it deals with cyberbullying among a group of 12-year-old girls.
About the score, EMA said:
We worked really closely with Tara (Subkoff) on the music. She definitely always had an opinion on what she liked and what she didn’t. It was my first score, so I’m not sure if all composers end up spending weeks in a room with the director, but that’s how we did it.
Leif (Shackelford) and I kind of ended up dividing the work, with him doing all the string parts and me writing the main themes. We were going for something modern that also recalled classic horror genre music. I love the eeriness of the vocal synth samples and I think it gives the score a very uncanny vibe that matches the themes of the film.