William Ryan Fritch - Freeland (Original Soundtrack)

William Ryan Fritch's original soundtrack for the award-winning film Freeland.

Directors Mario Furloni and Kate McLean created a captivating film about a woman named Devi (Krisha Fairchild), who has been breeding legendary pot strains for decades, farming by day and getting stoned by night, fully expecting to live out her days on the remote homestead she built herself. But when cannabis is legalized, the fragile balance of her whole idyllic life is thrown into disarray. Forced to confront the rapidly changing realities of the weed industry, she fights to go legal in an increasingly hostile landscape that is threatening her whole livelihood.

This score was a labor of love, with Fritch working closely with the directors for over two years while the script was still being written in order to find the right musical identity for the film. The time certainly seems worth it, as it produced perhaps the most original and otherworldly music he has ever created. If you've paid attention to Fritch’s output over the last year with the releases 'The Letdown' and 'At Once, There Was No Horizon', the Freeland OST’s radical exploration of horns, percussion, woodwinds and tape will be a welcome next chapter.

Film critics have lauded Freeland’s score with Variety saying, "William Ryan Fritch’s ethereal score invaluably contributes to a tale that feels texturally just right.” This music does indeed evoke the film's striking redwood covered landscape in the emerald triangle. Its sound is a damp, dank and mossy thing steeped in the mood and physical majesty of the beautiful, yet severe topography of its Northern Californian setting. With waterlogged horns, splintering clacks and wheezing reeds that at time evoke hints of Tom Waits, Moondog, Colin Stetson, and Yair Elazar Glotman at their most guttural and coarse, Freeland’s soundtrack is a bold and satisfying sensory feast.

A portion of the proceeds from this album will go to organizations who are helping smaller cannabis farmers overcome legal obstacles and also to assist the many growers unable to carry insurance that were devastated by the 2020 California wildfires.

1. Devi’s Last Deal
2. Bygones
3. Cited
4. Threshing Floor
5. Siren Call of the Land
6. Outed
7. Dropped
8. What You’ve Built
9. Gnawing Away
10. The Old Commune
11. Husk
12. Outmoded
13. Submersion
14. Resurface