Félicia Atkinson Reinvents a Cult Horror Score for New Album

Félicia Atkinson has a new album on the way. Long a fan of Georges Franju’s cult horror movie Les Yeux Sans Visage, the French composer decided to reinvent the score wholesale—originally for the Belgian cultural center Viernulvier’s Videodroom series, and now on record. A track from Sans Visage, “Les Yeux II,” is out today as a single. Listen to that below, ahead of the record’s release on June 26.

Sans Visage, which follows Atkinson’s solo records Space as an Instrument and Promenades, is a 34-minute cut of her full 90-minute score. “Through the music, I decided to bring back [the characters’] empowerment despite what they endure,” she said in a press release, alluding to the film’s villain, a surgeon who becomes obsessed with performing a facial skin graft on his daughter. Atkinson dedicates the record to the French rape survivor Gisèle Pelicot. The “trial happened while I was in the process of composing the music,” Atkinson added. “I kept thinking of her strength and her decision to share her trial in order to reverse the shame.”

Last month, Atkinson released Reflections Vol. 3: Water Poems, a collaboration with Christina Vantzou.