Goat - The Gallows Pole: Original Score (2023)

GOAT return with ‘The Gallows Pole’, their second soundtrack album, following their score for the 2017 British independent horror film ‘Double Date’.

‘The Gallows Pole’ is a three-part Element Pictures production, written and directed by Shane Meadows that is being aired in the UK on BBC Two with all episodes available to watch BBC iPlayer.

This album includes five brand new tracks from the score and three existing tracks Shane Meadows selected from their back catalogue.
The themes and imagery of Benjamin Myers’ source novel seem to be the perfect fit for the band’s mystical, pagan aesthetic, having cultivated a mythology of anonymity from the outset around the band hailing from the remote village of Korpilombo in northern Sweden.

The series, based in rural 18th century Yorkshire, tells a fictionalised tale based on the true story of David Hartley and the Cragg Vale Coiners, which became the biggest fraud in British history.

The talismanic ‘Let It Burn’, finding favour with BBC 6Music listeners when originally released as a standalone single in 2018, opens the soundtrack. This track was one of the key inspirations to Meadows as he was producing the series, and closes each episode.

The first original track ‘Mind Is Like The Sky’ sets the scene with an enveloping drone, intimating intrigue and dread, across a langorous seven minutes. ‘Field Raga’ continues this tone, its strings and drones leading into a flutter of flute echoes. ‘Jazzman’ adds fingerpicked guitar to the mix, before opening up into a pastoral groove.

The album’s epic centrepiece is ‘The Gate Is Open (The Temple Lies Within)’, an easten-tinged raga that takes nine and a half minutes to unfold. ‘Vallåt’ then brings us back down, a soothing coda of hypnotic clanks and chimes.

Rather than writing to picture in the traditional way, GOAT approached the creative process differently, explaining that: “In the beginning, we would get inspiration just through reading the book, trying to get a sense of its vibration and then translate that into music, with passages from the book as a springboard for those jams.”

In line with his usual working practice, Shane Meadows used the source tracks and new score for inspiration when editing the series. Music is deeply embedded in his projects, going back to the classic sync soundtrack to ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ in 2004.

GOAT were already fans of Meadows’ work, in particular the various iterations of ‘ This Is England’, and understood the importance of music to him, noting that: “Music is a central part to everything he has done” and describing it as a “blessing” when they were approached about the project.

The project also provided ongoing inspiration for GOAT, resulting in even more music that did not make the cut but may form the basis of future releases. “Although it may seem an abstract or unorthodox way to work with film, a lot of interesting music came out of those sessions,” said the band.

The final two existing tracks are ‘Fill My Mouth’, released in 2021 as an extra track for the compilation ‘Headsoup’, and the live favourite ‘Gathering of Ancient Tribes’, taken from their second album ‘Commune’. Sometimes, the results are best heard (and seen). As GOAT themselves conclude, “music is never easily explained with words”. The score to ‘The Gallows Pole’ will be released digitally and on Bandcamp on 7 July, with a vinyl release to follow in 2024.