Brian Eno is releasing his score for Netflix’s Top Boy next month to coincide with last instalment of the hit show.
The final season of the series – starring Ashley Waters, Kane ‘Kano’ Robinson, Simbi Ajikawo (aka Little Simz) and more – is set to be released on 7 September. Top Boy (Score From the Original Series) is slated for digital release on 1 September, with a vinyl and CD drop set for 29 September.
The forthcoming release will feature a pair of previously unheard tracks, entitled Cutting Room I and Cutting Room II, written for the show but never used in any episode of the series, which launched in 2011. Listen to Cutting Room 1 below. The album marks the first time any of Eno’s material from the show’s five seasons have been released – aside from two tracks included on Eno’s album, Film Music 1976 – 2020.
“From the beginning of Top Boy, I was given the freedom to work in the way I prefer,” explained Eno, discussing his work on the title in a press release. “Making music and atmospheres and then giving it to the film makers to use as they saw fit. I try to absorb the idea of what a piece is about and from that I produce a lot of music, and say, ‘Here it is. Use it as you wish.’
“If you’d been scoring it in the conventional Hollywood way, the temptation would be to up the excitement factor, up the danger factor, all the time. But Top Boy is really about children in a pretty bad situation. So I explored the internal world of the children, not just what’s happening to them in the external world. Quite a lot of the music was deliberately naive, it was sort of simple. The melodies were simple, not really sophisticated, or grown-up.”
@ashleywalters Go check out @Crack Magazine it’s out today #topboy #topboynetflix @reallittlesimz #kano #michaelward #behindthescenes #newmusic #fypシ #dushane ♬ original sound – ASHLEY WALTERS
Pre-save the album here and revisit our landmark Top Boy cover story.
