KT Tunstall interview: Composing for film behind the scenes

Listen to the colliding sonic atmospheres of the film Be As You Wish To Seem, and you’d never know that the renowned singer-songwriter KT Tunstall wrote the soundtrack. Some parts of the score are ominous and distressed, some parts are airy and meditative. The twisting contours of her electronic soundscape nowhere hints at a voice that is instantly recognizable to fans of Tiger Suit, KIN, and other chart-topping albums. That is just how KT prefers it to be.

“With my own music under my name as a solo artist, there are parameters that I sometimes wish weren’t there,” she says while meeting up at London’s Century Club.

“I love electronic dance music for instance. But it wouldn’t work to do a completely electronic KT Tunstall record. With film scoring, there’s no need for me to sound like me. I can sound like whatever the director is asking for and whatever I can present to the director. It doesn’t have to be anything to do with a guitar-playing singer-songwriter.”

Now working on a new KT Tunstall album, she took five days away to score Be As You Wish To Seem, a short film that premiered in London this month. The film follows the story of a young woman trying to break away from a stressful and addictive city life and find refuge on a farm. While she reconnects with a purer natural world, her transition does not appear to halt her slide toward a mental breakdown. The intensity of the film rests in its focus on one person’s emotional turmoil. There are no other characters and no dialogue to explain her emotions in words.