Waxwork Records is proud to present the Us Original Motion Picture Soundtrack featuring a score by composer Michael Abels. Us, released in March 2019, is an original nightmare written, directed and produced by Academy Award®-winning visionary Jordan Peele (Get Out). Set in present-day Santa Cruz on the iconic Northern California coastline, the film, starring Oscar® winner Lupita Nyong’o and Black Panther’s Winston Duke, pits an ordinary American family against a terrifying and uncanny opponent: doppelgängers of themselves.
Abels featured a 30 person choir, a third of them children, in the “Anthem,” and implemented Eastern European instruments, violins, percussion, and a virtual instrument called a Propanium drum. “It makes this trashy metal sound, but you can also play melodies on it,” Abels said. “The Propanium drum has a sound that’s both otherworldly but not electronic or like science fiction. It’s a sound you can’t quite put your finger on, which is why it works well in this film.”
Also included on the soundtrack is the 1995 hip-hop hit “I Got 5 On It” by Luniz and the stand-out track “I Like That” by Janelle Monáe. Abels also helped with a new arrangement of the Luniz hit, which is featured on the soundtrack as the ‘Tethered Mix from Us’.
Waxwork presents the soundtrack and score as a deluxe double LP featuring 180-gram "The Untethering” Red, Brass, and White split colored vinyl. The album artwork was created by illustrator Edward Kinsella. The interactive packaging includes die-cut inner gatefold jackets that require customers to use scissors to cut through family-member portraits to reveal their tethered doppelgängers lurking in the shadows on the printed inner sleeves housed within. More deluxe items include a die-cut mirror board back cover, a heavyweight 11”x11” art print, and an exclusive essay by UCLA Professor, scholar, and activist Shana L. Redmond Ph.D., author of Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora
