Eli Keszler

Tip!  *Red Vinyl * Eli Keszler’s score for Dasha Nekrasova’s notorious award-winning debut feature film ‘The Scary of Sixty-First’. Nekrasova's work is a thriller centred on two young women who unknowingly move into a Manhattan apartment that used to belong to Jeffrey Epstein. The psychosexual drama is steeped in Giallo, with a touch of DePalma and Polanski. Premiering at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, it took home their prestigious ‘Best First Feature’ award.

Eli Keszler’s score meets at the confluence between the visceral electro-acoustic Giallo style and brooding acoustic drones, which feature his abstract and textural percussion playing he has explored in
his solo music. All of this working together to evoke the very haunts of the film’s Uptown locations.

Keszler has released music on LuckyMe, Empty Editions, ESP Disk and PAN. His album ‘Stadium’ released on Shelter Press was awarded Boomkat’s 2018 ‘Album Of The Year’ and Pitchfork claimed his most
recent album ‘Icons’ (2021) as ‘strangely wonderful’. Frequent collaborator to Oneohtrix Point Never, Laurel Halo, Skrillex and Rashad Becker – Keszler’s has shown and performed at The Lincoln Center,
Victoria & Albert Museum, MoMA PS1, and The Barbican. He has worked across music, film and art with exhibitions at the South London Gallery, MIT List Center and collaborations with Turner Prize-winning
artist Laure Prouvost and Kevin Beasley.
His other film work includes contributions to Daniel Lopatin's score for the Safdie Brother’s acclaimed, Uncut Gems.

Speaking about the score Keszler said…
“The score was built around the ‘pentagram melody’ as we called it, a seven-note symmetrical pattern that formed the sign found on the tarot card, a repeated motif of dread and premonition found in the
film. In the Scary Theme and later in Tarot Theme three variations occur, where each tonal triangle is introduced individually, followed by it playing in counterpoint to each other to complete the symbol.  I wrote the score keeping in mind what I saw as the two layers of the film. The physical reality of the story which I depicted through humor and the surreal - emphasizing the stories nonsensical quality. And  secondly through the dream/horror space that blurs the line between fact, fiction and cathartic violence.”