Thieves of the Wood (De bende van Jan de Lichte)
Added on Sunday, April 26, 2020 Posted by Philippe Mouchon
Milan Records presents the soundtrack album for the Belgian series Thieves of the Wood. The album contains the original music from the series composed by Hans Mullens and Michelino Bisceglia (Svínhunder).
Prestigious label Milan Records / Sony Classical launches music to Flanders' historical drama
Thieves of the Wood. The original series soundtrack was composed by Svínhunder (Michelino Bisceglia & Hans Mullens)
The series is currently internationally available on Netflix
Thieves of the Wood is a 10-part historical drama set in the Flemish region of Aalst mid-18th Century. Starring Matteo Simoni, the adventure series tells the story of Jan de Lichte, a gang leader who fought against the ones occupying Flanders at the time: the Austrians and the French. Driven by poverty and shortage, Jan and his entourage proceeded to robberies, raids and eventually murder...
Thieves of the Wood is based on the classic novel De Bende van Jan de Lichte by Louis-Paul Boon published in 1957. The story was adapted for the silver screen by Christophe Dirickx (Tabula Rasa, The Misfortunates) and Benjamin Sprengers (Hotel Beau Séjour, Patrick) and directed by Robin Pront (The Ardennes), Maarten Moerkerke (13 Commandments) en Pieter Van Hees (Waste Land, Left Bank). After its world premiere at Film Fest Gent, Netflix internationally distributed the series.
To musically accompany the story of this 'Flemish Robin Hood', composer duo Svínhunder (Hans Mullens & Michelino Bisceglia) immersed themselves entirely into the sound of the 18th Century and created a captivating score, without any digital samples, nor library sounds:
'Our starting point for the composition of this score was that we wanted to use instruments from the spirit of the age but presenting them in an unconventional way.'
In Svínhunder film composers Michelino Bisceglia and Hans Mullens musically challenge one another. They experiment by tweaking and sampling self-recorded sounds and blending soundscapes and strings to create an instrumental cinematic sound universe consisting of inventive themes and harmonies:
'Instruments such as a Hurdy-gurdy, dulcimer, grand piano, ancient drums and other percussion instruments were carefully sampled so that they could be used in different ways, for instance to obtain the recurring drone sounds and several other sound textures. Thanks to the creation of this particular sound database, we could integrate 'old' instruments into our score and keep the connection with the time period, but still obtain a contemporary sound.
On top of these textures, we added a 24-piece string ensemble and the most compelling themes are performed on Nickelharpa (Viola à chiavi d’amore) by Didier François.
The amount of content and the emotional evolution throughout the series determined that we had to develop new musical elements per episode, which resulted in a huge amount of music.'
CREDITS Original Series Soundtrack Thieves of the Wood
Original score by Svínhunder
Music orchestrated & conducted by Michel Bisceglia
Music mixed by Michel Bisceglia & Hans Mullens
Score Performed by: Hungarian Studio Orchestra
Concertmaster: Balázs Buitor
Solo Nickelharp: Didier François
Score recorded at: Tom Tom Studios (Budapest)
Music Supervision: Sonhouse
Score published by Milan Records / Sony Classical
Design OST cover: Onno Hesselinck
Michel Bisceglia and Hans Mullens have been soulmates for almost a lifetime. Going their own musical ways, they mostly understood and appreciated each other’s artistic adventures. They both composed and arranged soundtracks for films and other media.
Recently they joined again as ‘Svinhunder’, often like-minded, but also challenging one another. Svínhunder's bold, hybrid compositions form an instrumental trip into cinematic music: organic, edgy music full of dark tunes which spontaneously immerse the listener into an intriguing, mysterious world.
Hans Mullens has been a professional musician, composer, arranger, sound designer and music programmer for over 30 years. He is affiliated with the international sound production company Sonhouse and has completed dozens of assignments for the post-production of films (including 'Cafard', 2015 and 'Il était une fois, une fois', 2012), TV series (including the six-part Swiss TV 'Quartier des Bancs' series, 2017), documentaries, animated series and advertising spots. As a musician, Hans has performed with bands such as Buscemi, Arsenal or Guido Belcanto. He is currently touring with 'Placenta Plays Placebo'.
Michel (Michelino) Bisceglia has been professionally active since 1989 as a musician in the arts sector both in his home country Belgium and abroad. He has composed the soundtracks for multiple feature films. Some of these films were screened at the Cannes Film Festival and Venice International Film Festival. His soundtrack for the film 'Marina' (about the childhood memories of Rocco Granata) won a World Soundtrack Award in 2014. Bisceglia occasionally also arranges, orchestrates and conducts soundtracks for other film composers (such as 'Cafard' composed by Hans Helewaut (won the World Soundtrack Award 2016 for best Belgian Score or 'Racer and the Jailbird' composed by Raf Keunen for Michaël R. Roskam's film).
Michelino Bisceglia has worked with a large number of international orchestras. Such as the Brussels Philharmonic, Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música and The Japan Symfonia, for which he composed, arranged, orchestrated and conducted. In 2004 he formed his own symphonic orchestra: Prova Symfonica.
As a composer and conductor he recently released the album 'Orchestral Works 1', including his first concerto for Oboe and String Orchestra and his personal Adagio for Strings. The recordings features the highly acclaimed Brussels Chamber Orchestra, the fabulous oboe soloist Piet Van Bockstal and the AMK Choir.
Michelino Bisceglia is frequently the music director for live events such as ceremonies, corporate events, concert tours and musicals. For these events he is often asked to arrange the music of musicians or to compose new music especially for the events (Special Olympics, Nespresso, Volvo, Daikin, Katoen Natie, Renault, European Presidency).
Michelino Bisceglia is also known as a jazz pianist. As a solist and sideman he recorded dozens of records for famous labels like a.o. RCA Viktor, Blue Note, Enja. Bisceglia was nominated twice as best Belgian jazz musician of the year, and has performed on numerous international jazz festivals with his own jazz trio.
http://www.svinhunder.com/about.html