Nala Sinephro – The Smashing Machine (OST)
Nala Sinephro, the London based Caribbean-Belgian producer, composer, and musician, has recorded her debut film soundtrack. It is for the movie “The Smashing Machine” which features Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson. The Benny Safdie-directed movie tells the story of the successful UFC wrestler Mark Kerr. It premiered last month at the Venice Film Festival and won Silver for Best Director. Nala, known for her signature modulated synth and harp playing, still gets me with her 2021 LP “Space 1.8” and her mind-blowing “Space 8” track from that particular album. The spacy, hauntingly beautiful, meditative aura continues here on the first pair of songs from the soundtrack album. “Dawn” and “Grand Prix”, which is also the first single, both excel with smooth and warm synth and sax, the latter also echoing some sort of oriental touch too. It’s the title track where you can actually imagine a real fight because of its very fierce and severe drum work, courtesy of Morgan Simpson and Natcyet Wakili who were playing live to a fighting sequence of the film.
Elsewhere on the album, which was composed, arranged, produced, and mixed by Nala, there are her regular bandmates James Mollison (sax), Nubya Garcia (sax, flute), Sheila Maurice-Grey (trombone), Lyle Barton (Rhodes, synth), Mark Mollison (guitar), Dwayne Kilvington (synth bass) plus strings played by the London-based collective Orchestrate. After the alarming fight during the title track, the tune winds down again and offers a whole new world of reassurance and ease. Sax, harp, and piano continue for the short and tender “The High” and “Mark” has this ethereal quality which has become sort of a trademark for Nala’s music. And “KO” drizzles with gentle warmth. The album ends with “Mark II” and “Dawn II” and even though you would think that her music wouldn’t fit for a movie about a wrestler, she manages to tickle the more vulnerable themes and topics of the story. Nala currently has four shows coming up, see below.
10/28 Berlin – Kammermusiksaal
11/04 Paris – La Seine Musicale
11/07 London – Royal Festival Hall
11/08 Bristol – Beacon Hall
