“The Crossing” is the soundtrack to a film by Joe
Taylor that hasn’t been made yet. I’ve linked to the Indiegogo page below in
case you’re interested in the film, which is a “dark western tale of desertion,
betrayal, and retribution set in 1865 America.” I’d check that out.
“The Crossing: Official Motion Picture Soundtrack”
by Howard Stelzer captures that “dark western tale of desertion, betrayal, and
retribution set in 1865 America,” playing unbroken like the vast stretches of
wasteland and desert in the American West. Composed with an eye toward
windswept vistas, “The Crossing” soundtrack lives and breathes, giving
definition to the setting and making it as much of a character as the leads.
You can taste the dry dust on your tongue, smell the open air, and see the
smatterings of cloud formations flitting across the intense blue sky.
Ambient by necessity, the score serves as a backdrop
to the action (none of which, admittedly, I’ve seen), and there’s blood at the
edges of the synthetic string (I’m guessing) arrangements. There’s death in the
hills and in the desert, the terrain wild and untamed and daunting to the weary
pioneer and the fugitive alike. Stelzer captures this tone effortlessly,
hovering high above the action like an omnipresent entity observing but
unable/unwilling to intervene. It all plays out in the end, like it’s supposed
to happen. The film may be finite, but the land and the sky endures.
--Ryan