They were movie peers, then collaborators and friends, then briefly estranged, but The Hateful Eight has Quentin Tarantino and Ennio Morricone back in cahoots. The epic Western isn’t out for several weeks, but its Morricone-penned score will be landing with us on Friday. To wet your whistle, here’s a sampler of three of its key tracks. Click on the YouTube link below to hear, in chronological order, Red Rock, Overture and Neve (‘Snow’).
The Italian composer, now 87 and still going strong, has lent Tarantino’s ensemble Western the formidable ear that once captured the sounds of Sergio Leone’s old West. He and QT recently regrouped at London’s Abbey Road Studios, with cast members Walton Goggins and Kurt Russell (pictured below) in attendance, for a live recording of the score that’s in keeping with Tarantino’s resolutely old-school approach to this film. Roadshow release, live pressings… The Hateful Eight will make us party like it’s 1959.
Morricone – pictured exclusively with his director below - conducted the Czech National Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road and has since picked up a Golden Globe nomination for his troubles. His isn’t the only music on the record, though. In true Tarantino style, there are thumping, anachronistic cues from The White Stripes, Roy Orbison and American singer-songwriter David Hess.
The Hateful Eight, Morricone’s first Western score since Buddy Goes West in 1981, is set roughly a decade after the American Civil War and finds the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen holed up in a stagecoach waypoint when a massive snowstorm hits the area. Soon, a bounty hunter (Russell) transporting a female prisoner (Jennifer Jason Leigh) across the country starts to wonder if they’ll actually make it out alive...
The Hateful Eight soundtrack is out this Friday on Decca. The movie itself will be in cinemas on January 8. Check out the trailer [here](http://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/new-trailer-quentin-tarantino-hateful-eight/
) for refresher.