Anyone who has spent much time with Steve Albini's work as a musician knows he's more than capable of summoning bad karma when he feels like it, and filmmaker Travis Stevens felt it was high time he put that gift to good use by scoring a horror movie. Or at least that's what one might fairly presume led Stevens to approach Albini about scoring his 2019 film The Girl on the Third Floor, a particularly grim modern-day haunted house story. Whatever the reason, for the project Albini recruited cellist Alison Chesley (best known for her work as Helen Money) and bassist/baritone guitarist Tim Midyett (who has worked with Silkworm, Bottomless Pit, and Sunn O))), among others) to collaborate with him, and the 2020 album Music from the Film Girl on the Third Floor compiles the cues they wrote and recorded for the picture. A number of the pieces were composed by the trio before they had the opportunity to see any of the film, and they're minimalistic numbers, spare and with extensive use of dynamics and open space despite their song-informed structures, most notably the 18-minute "Irish," which includes contributions from folk musician Gaelynn Lea. The rest of the cues were written to accompany and counterpoint specific material in the film, and they often rely more on atonal drones and waves of sheer noise (such as "17 Arrow 43") or ominous silences (for example "Line 55").

1		17 Arrow 43
2		XVI Dry
3		Line 55
4		Irish
5		XVI Standard
6		Line 54
7		Sparky's Revenge
8		Bees
9		Line 62
10		Line 64
11		Line 70
12		Line 71

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