Triple Frontier

Development

Rich Vreeland, known under the stage name Disasterpeace, composed the music for Triple Frontier. Ron Patane who edited the film was a fan of Disasterpeace's music, and had temped some of his music in the edit which he showcased it to J. C. Chandor, who was looking for a composer at that time. As his music felt apt for the film, they considered him to be a good fit for the project, which Vreeland was intrigued upon their request. In their earlier conversations, Vreeland discussed about using electric guitars in an orchestral way with more snare drums, toms, active rhythms and syncopation. Through the process, Vreeland refined the direction and incorporated more orchestra into the sound, such as brass, and multiple kinds of string textures, both traditional and unusual way, which worked well as it provided a sense of an optimism in the dark times and provided room for their characters to understand them emotionally and psychologically.

Guitars were considered essential for the score of Triple Frontier. For the thematic guitars, Vreeland sampled guitar sounds and blended it with DI guitar and modelling and various effects. Vreeland considered the Ennio Morricone influence to be natural, while doing a reverberant guitar melody to provide this feel, and also had a country-style guitar sound which he found having the right attitude for the film. The score had an ambient nature which relied on utilizing a diverse palette of string textures, sampling and recording several extended techniques as well as developing software approaches to make the sounds more diverse, playing with pitch and modulating with unorthodoxed textures.

Lars Ulrich of the Metallica provided the drums, kicks and toms for the score. Chandor, who has been a fan of the band, had met Ulrich in late 2018 to provide an unconventional drums sound that suited the narrative. Ulrich had contributed around 10–20 percent of the drums featured in the film, matching Vreeland's active and syncopated percussive sounds as a great counterpart. Vreeland added that Ulrich's low end sounds had glued some of the cues together making the score accessible. Vreeland went to the headquarters of Metallica in Los Angeles and recorded the drums within few days. The orchestral recording happened at the Capitol Studios in Hollywood. Vreeland revealed that much of the music was written even before watching the film so that the director and editor could assemble the score and edit the film, and much of the discussions happened remotely owing to the shooting locations. Some themes which he wrote for a part of the film ended up in another sequences while a few stayed intact to that scene.

Release

The soundtrack was released through Milan Records on March 8, 2019. A vinyl edition of the album was self-released by Vreeland in May 10, 2019.

Reception

Alex Hudson of Exclaim! wrote "Special credit goes to composer Disasterpeace, whom audiences may remember from the It Follows score. His eerie tones and sinister build-ups give the film a moodier tone than your average shoot-'em-up, and are a lovely complement for the gorgeous rainforests and spectacular Andean vistas." Jack Pooley of WhatCulture felt that "though the incidental musical score from Disasterpeace is rock solid" it was mellowed down by few odd choices of incidental music which led the film to be out of place. Dusty Wilson of The Spool wrote "the music was the one place where there was the most potential for subversion of expectations, as Disasterpeace (It Follows) was behind the design of the original score. His previous scores have shown a great skill at subtlety and unique choices of tone, but all of that is forsaken for what amounts to a very archetypal war-movie score. Not only that, but his services were used so rarely that pure silence more than likely has more screen time than his original works."

Additional music

The following songs are featured in the film, but not included in the soundtrack:

Personnel

Credits adapted from liner notes: