Interview: The Outwaters composer Salem Belladonna makes delicious creepy pop

Robbie Banfitch’s new film The Outwaters is nothing short of chaos incarnate. Streaming now on Screambox, the found-footage flick bends the mind in how it approaches the genre’s usual tricks and carves out something visceral, emotional even. So it seems appropriate composer Salem Belladonna‘s contributions lean into the macabre with a distinctly theatrical edge.

With the eponymous theme, there’s something primal, almost Gregorian in the way voices tangle and splinter off one another. The skin-pricking piece is brutally eerie and beautiful in equal measure. Typical in her work, Belladonna allows herself to “really sink into the feeling [and] experience that they want to create,” she tells B-Sides & Badlands. In this case, it was Banfitch desire to create something totally animalistic and unhinged, so she brings that sense to a cinematic production. “I knew that the opening had to be massive, spacious, and powerful like the mountains — full choir and open chords,” she explains. “I also wanted to create a strong sense of dichotomy to mirror the film’s split personality. I did this very literally by opening the piece with a major (happy) first chord, followed immediately by the minor (dark) version of the same chord; and the piece itself is split into two extremely different sections. The whole piece is interwoven with sounds and textures that recreate a similar effect in me as the film itself does.”

Even more, Belladonna approached the theme as a requiem, of sorts, tugging the listener into the eye of a gruesome, deranged storm. The voices rise and fall, almost angelic before switching into minor chords to become somewhat demonic. A requiem, in essence, is “a piece performed in remembrance of the dead, often at funerals,” she says. Rather than something ethereal and lilting, she nosedives into “an ominous, doom-y, even fatalistic experience.” Belladonna first discovered Gregorian chanting when she was a kid and immediately “fell in love with the voices and the rich, strange, powerful, even magical, feelings that the music created in me.”

Conversely, her other contribution, the lyrically-driven “Danse Macabre,” is a twisted, unwieldy dark-pop song with sinewy, ghost-like rhythms and Belladonna’s voice coursing in its center. It might lie at the other end of musical extremes from the theme, yet its pairing is complementary. “Despite the extreme differences between the two pieces, I didn’t really run into any problems with their compatibility,” she offers. “I feel like this is because, even though they’re totally different genres, they both came from the exact same space. I lock into the vibe I want to create; from there, I just pick which brushes I want to paint with.”

Originally from North Carolina, Belladonna was the daughter of rocker parents, so her initial musical diet consisted of ’80s metal, grunge and post-grunge, and early ’00s pop. Those first songs — “Creep” by Radiohead, “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden, and “Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down — struck a deep chord and have lingered with her decades later. It also helps that Ozzy Osbourne and Queensrÿche soothed her to sleep. Her tastes evolved and expanded from there, eventually leading her to folk and country music, namely artists like Dan Tyminski and Patty Loveless. “The sounds of my earliest years created a beautiful haze of dark, cloudy, sparkly, mysterious, sludgy, and yet delicious expressions of human experience, from joy to suffering,” she reflects. “I still draw a lot of the music and soundscapes that I create from this place.”

Music aside, life was somewhat idyllic. She’d spend countless days outside in the “beautiful southern forests, swimming in lakes, eating honeysuckles, exploration and adventures,” she says. A hyper-creative youngster, she turned to writing, drawing comics, role-playing adventures and performing for her friends, which was “really more just me forcing my friends to listen to me play instruments while they were visiting me… the ones that stuck around are real ones.” Hobbies, from watching horror movies to video games and crafting, she was always inquisitive, seeking out any manner of expression. “I’m a pretty mean crochet-er,” she quickly adds. Of course, she underwent her share of difficult times and used her creative prowess to “channel difficult emotions into art.” As such, her work became a salve and funneled directly into her growth as a human being, owed also to her “incredible parents and talented younger sister.”

Belladonna also digested plenty of horror scores, of course, and notes Pan’s Labyrinth as the impetus for her entire composing career. “I saw it way too young and was so enchanted by that gorgeous theme that as soon as the movie ended, I went right over to the piano and wouldn’t leave until I figured out how to play it for myself.” This experience lead her to explore countless other scores, including Donnie Darko, Repo! The Genetic Opera, MirrorMask, and Philip Glass’ work in Candyman.

In her own musical works, especially her song “Escape,” Belladonna has an infatuation with what she dubs “creepy pop.” Silky vines of percussive elements worm together with other sounds, from glass shattering to strings, and her voice remains unwavering yet fragile. Creating such dark music, she says, “allows me to process and interact with some of the yuckier aspects of life that most of us would rather not look at, in a way that can still feel beautiful, empowering, and maybe even healing. Plus, I’m just a sucker for a good minor key, horror vibes, a pretty melody, and the trance — like digestibility of pop.”

Creating a good hook or a spooky vibe is far more than creative outlet, it’s a balm for dealing with life. In a single word, she describes music’s influence on her as “sublimation. This is when a person who is experiencing strong, difficult, and potentially harmful feelings [and] impulses instead channels that ‘destructive’ or ‘chaotic’ energy into something constructive and healing,” she explains. “This is why there is a stereotype that great suffering is the source of great art. It often can be, since creating is a powerful form of sublimation, but art doesn’t always have to come from pain and tragedy. I also make art to celebrate, and to express gratitude, joy, and wonder for the world.”

At its core, art can be healing. In writing “Escape,” she used her diagnosis with Crohn’s disease as the emotional center and allowed herself to feel whatever she was feeling in the moment. She also received news of a potential cancer diagnosis; fortunately, she was cancer free. But it was her endurance through such a grueling time that led to an expert piece of music. “During that time I found myself spiraling into coping mechanisms both helpful and hurtful,” she says. “Writing ‘Escape’ became my way of sublimating my terror and hopelessness into something that ended up becoming a deep source of power for me.”

“We all know how amazing it feels to have a good cry to a sad song that hits just right,” she adds. “We can all tap into sublimation, whether we are making the art, or simply enjoying it.”

With The Outwaters in her back pocket, Belladonna plans to continue her musical foraging in the coming months. In fact, she has a few tracks for the soundtrack on Banfitch’s forthcoming Tinsman Road, expected to debut at the Unnamed Footage Festival in March. Additionally, she has solo work in the pipeline, including songs in the vein of “Danse Macabre” and “Escape. “In the complete opposite direction, I also have a few folk-y originals that I’m excited to share,” she teases.

Listen to The Outwaters official soundtrack below.

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