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London-based Samuel Bohn has been described as a 'one to watch' in the film scoring industry. His music is best known for its emotive intensity and engaging melodies, which create impactful and moving film scores. As an award-winning composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist, Bohn has successfully merged his admiration for moving pictures with his musical prowess.
Bohn's music has featured on film campaigns, such as the Academy-award winning The Theory of Everything (2014), Sebastian Lelio's Disobedience (2017), and David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet (2020), obtaining multiple awards in the process.
More recently, Bohn's score for Ravi Chopra's Cognition (2020) won him a handful of international awards and plaudits, including Best Score at the New York Movie Awards, and Best Soundtrack at the Bucharest Film Festival.
Bohn's further soundtrack work has seen him collaborate with John Jencks on The Hippopotamus (2017), an adaptation of Stephen Fry's best selling novel. He also composed the music for the 2021 BBC One series The Cleaner, starring Helena Bonham-Carter, Greg Davies and David Mitchell, directed by Tom Marshall.
Adding to this extensive body of work, 2022 sees the release of Bohn's debut album, Metanoia. This is defined as "a transformative change of heart, especially a spiritual conversion," which sums up the unexpected personal journey Bohn experienced during the recording process.
Initially, Bohn wrote all of the orchestral music over an exhaustive three months in 2018, "I had that impulsive drive to get it out there." Bohn removed himself from thinking of music as an "equation" and tapped into a more instinct-led approach.
Thinking that the project would be wrapped up shortly after recording, Bohn could not let the project go. He returned to it intermittently over three years, re-writing and re-recording to match his changing emotional state, fitting for a self-described "perfectionist". However, he realised it would never be complete if he was always chasing the ideal connection to the present, "It's something you have to bring to an end, rather than trying to find a way for it to represent who you are now. It became more of a journey in itself, rather than about one specific moment."
Throughout the album process, Bohn significantly changed many of the tracks, "A lot of the orchestral pieces were dissected, removing string parts from full arrangements and replacing them with synths, or stripping a piece back to just brass and building the sound design around it." This leads to a familiar essence present throughout the album, even when the instruments or sentiments are distinctly different.
Produced by Ben Ziapour and mixed by Grammy winner Alex Evans, Bohn also called upon vocalists Eckoes, Matty Barclay and Alyusha, who further deepen the textures and personal resonance of the album. With the orchestral parts recorded at the legendary RAK Studios, and the guitars, pianos and synths added at Bohn's London studio, Metanoia became much more complex than he had originally imagined.
The twelve-track album opens with 'Sometimes', a spoken-word piece of reflective nostalgia performed by Rosie Sheehy. The following track, aptly named 'In Emotion', continues the sentimental theme by integrating audio from old family VHS tapes. From here, the album embarks on an emotional voyage of heartache, sorrow and finally, comfort.
'Forever A Child' was recorded only twice, and Bohn chose the first take for the album. He recalls "visible emotions" by the recording musicians, and describes the pieces as "embodying emotion of the whole process", as it portrays a visceral reaction to love and loss.
A turning point is track ten, 'Repair'. This is a transitional moment with the culmination of a multitude of emotions, leading to a personal rebirth. The tone is immediately more optimistic than previously.
The album finishes with a piece of its namesake, where we come to a place of bittersweet self-acceptance. The sounds of static bring us back to the earlier nostalgic pieces, and bring the listener full circle on the spiritual journey undertaken.
Metanoia is a culmination of Bohn's impressive composition career, removing the element of moving picture and relying wholeheartedly on the music itself.
