In Short Scores, Eye on Sound playfully pushes at the boundaries of film music. We asked a new generation of musicians and composers to create new mini film scores to accompany a short piece of film of their choice from Eye’s collection. Palmbomen II chose Panoramic View of Windsor Castle (1899).
By Thijs Havens24 September 2021
I’m Kai, also known as Palmbomen and Palmbomen II. I often compose for films, but mostly I make my own records and perform them. I also make videos, mainly for my own music, and I like the interaction between these, which I find interesting.
I think it’s a nice shot, with a lot of depth and a great reveal, round the bend the train is driving along. I love travelling by train, so it was fun to capture this feeling in this work. Also, this is one of the longer pieces – there were some that are just 30 seconds, but I prefer to compose for something longer.
The sensation of riding in the train, the sense of depth and that you can see a building or village in the distance and you approach this and it gets bigger and bigger.
When I’m composing, I like to have the images playing in the background, then I’ll make a few pieces with that feel. I don’t necessarily compose to the images, I make the compositions quickly and record them on tape. So then I have a few options and I choose one that feels good, and then cut it down until it fits the clip. I found it really difficult that it is so short because I like to compose a ‘transition’ in a piece of music; I chose this one because at the end of the day it fitted best.
Every three weeks, we will add a new clip accompanied by fresh new music to the Short Scores collection, which will therefore keep growing.
