Werwulf (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

For his latest collaboration with Robert Eggers, Robin Carolan plunges into the brutal, superstitious world of medieval England with Werwulf. Drawing on the sounds, rituals and beliefs of the period, Carolan creates a score that is at once gritty and folksy, surreal and otherworldly.

Hurdy-gurdies, the cymbalum and other archaic instruments are reimagined through unconventional playing techniques and electronic manipulation. Everyday farming tools, including axes, cleavers and scythes, were played against wood and bone to create uncanny percussive sounds, while bells and clay jugs became the source of strange drones. Together these sounds evoke the agricultural rhythms of the time while conjuring the unseen forces that shaped its beliefs.

Strings are central to the score’s unsettling atmosphere, shifting between wind and creaking trees. Carolan experimented with a string quintet in a session he called the “Ghost Meditations,” electronically manipulating the recordings until they took on a spectral quality. He also drew on experimental instrument makers Fron Reilly and Bart Hopkin, whose adaptations of archaic instruments offered new ways to reimagine period sounds. Among the score’s collaborators are violinist Daniel Pioro, who helped with the more experimental ideas for strings, string player Laura Cannell with her extensive knowledge of medieval music, longtime friend Jack Bevan, from the band Foals, who contributed folk percussion, and Antonina Nowacka, whose voice brings a celestial quality to the instrumentals.

The soundtrack also features “Wynter Waxeth,” an original song performed by Ethel Cain in Middle English. What began as a discussion about using her voice as a texture within the score soon developed into a fully fleshed out song. Medieval music, prayers and strange ambient recordings were exchanged and with Eggers’ help, Cain mastered the Middle English pronunciation, bringing an earthy, feral, haunted beauty to the score.

Carolan’s inspirations extended beyond music into art, literature and the physical spaces of medieval England. The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel, Lucas Cranach’s The Werewolf or the Cannibal, and English Medieval Graffiti informed his thinking, while medieval churches offered a chance to absorb their atmosphere first hand. Another important influence was Tōru Takemitsu’s score for Onimaru, an obscure 1980s Japanese adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

Werwulf is an exercise in world building, capturing not only the environment of the period but also the psychology of a society shaped by superstition, faith and the unknown. Designed to unnerve and disorient, the score reaches for something emotionally overwhelming, reflecting what Carolan sees as one of Eggers’ most devastating works.