Nick Cave & Warren Ellis is a legendary collaboration from Victoria, Australia. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis have been playing together for more than fifteen years, with The Bad Seeds, Grinderman and Dirty Three. More recently, they've been collaborating on soundtracks for films such as The Proposition (2005) and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) as well as Gisliörn Gardarsson's acrobatic theatrical productions of Woyzeck (2005), Metamorphosis (2006), and The Road (2009). The Cave & Ellis collaboration began in earnest with the soundtrack for The Proposition, much as the film itself sprang from director John Hillcoat's conviction that Nick could score a mean Western if he could only find the right script. ...show more

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis is a legendary collaboration from Victoria, Australia. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis have been playing together for more than fifteen years, with The Bad Seeds, Grinderman and Dirty Three. More recently, they've been collaborating on soundtracks for films such as The Proposition (2005) and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) as well as Gisliörn Gardarsson's acrobatic theatrical productions of Woyzeck (2005), Metamorphosis (2006), and The Road (2009). The Cave & Ellis collaboration began in earnest with the soundtrack for The Proposition, much as the film itself sprang from director John Hillcoat's conviction that Nick could score a mean Western if he could only find the right script.

Once the idea took hold, he supposed Nick might write the script too. Nick supposed, in turn, that Warren would recognise the note of impossible longing he sought for his story. Warren heard it alright: he heard the buzzing heat haze of the Australian outback as well, the tolling horizon and the tinkling presence of dread. His heat-shimmer samples and harsh, windblown, crow-lonely violin gave the images a searing immediacy: they give the story a timeless ring.

Film's prescriptive method, writing to order - although Cave and Ellis use loops rather than cues - cleared a new creative space. In 2006, they began work on the soundtrack for Andrew Dominik's adaptation of Ron Hansen's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Although wide landscapes and brutal violence once again play a part in the drama, the main action is interior and almost entirely unspoken. Jesse is keenly aware of the danger foretold in the title but keeps his irksome enemy close. ...show less