MRH :    Because music labels often regard soundtrack albums as niche products, the production costs of CDs mandate that the film itself should be (ideally) quite prominent or have a strong recognition factor among genre fans. The fact your score exists online means those old prejudices and traditional distribution headaches are minimal, and the music can basically stand on its own. Since Frostbite has debuted as an MP3 album from MovieScore Media, what has been the response to your work?

AL : You are right about the CD process being a rather costly affair, and what Mikael Carlsson from MovieScore Media has done is a great idea. Many of these scores might not otherwise have been commercially available, so it's a great opportunity for the composers and also for the film music fans. I have had great feedback and really good reviews from all over the world, so with digital distribution, geographical distances are really not a problem anymore. There is, however, a very limited Frostbite CD release available at the Frostbite website (www.frostbiten.se).

MRH :    I wonder if you could briefly describe the scores you composed for prior films: John Howe: There and Back Again (2004), a documentary on one of the top illustrators of Tolkien books; Med ret til at dræbe (2003), a documentary series made for Danish TV; and Omveje til frihed (2002).

AL : The film about John Howe was done by the people behind Frostbite and is a one-hour documentary about the famous illustrator John Howe. He talks about his work on the Lord of the Rings books as illustrator and on the films as art director, his illustrations, and his interest in the medieval period. In many ways he lives in a world of fantasy and magic, so I composed a score that reflected that.

Med Ret til at Dræbe / With a Right To Kill was a two-hour documentary on the Danish resistance during World War II, which won the prize for Best Documentary in Denmark the year it came out. This particular score was a mixture of sound design, electronics, a lot of percussion and acoustic guitar. Omveje til Frihed / Detour to Freedom was another documentary I did some years ago -- a very ambient score with a piano theme and big synth pads.

MRH :    Do you find your work on diverse documentaries was an important training ground for tackling fiction genres?

AL : Well, yes and no. Yes, because every time you compose for something you get better and more experienced; not only in terms of music, but also in dealing with the filmmakers, finding new ways of doing things, etc. And no, because I think that composing for documentaries is very different from composing for feature films.

In documentaries, you will often find that the music cannot get too dramatic or too over the top, while at the same time it has to remain very much in the background all the time. Also, there is almost always a narrator or somebody else speaking all the time, and the music must not interfere with that. It's a good exercise, though, but you can't really compare it to scoring feature films.

MRH :    And finally, are there any plans to release your prior work, and are you working on a new film at the moment?

AL : I don't think any of my older scores will be released commercially -- so you will have to wait for something new.

I have a couple of projects lined up for this year. I can't tell you much about them at this time, as they are still in pre-production, but I can say that once again I will be dealing with the darker side of things....