A24 Music Releases 'Problemista (Original Score)' By Robert Ouyang Rusli
The film is in limited theaters now and is expanding everywhere on March 22.
By: Michael Major Mar. 15, 2024
Robert Ouyang Rusli releases Problemista (Original Score), out today digitally and available on 2xLP gatefold vinyl via A24 Music. The rising New York film composer and acclaimed solo recording artist has created an eclectic score to match the strange, fairytale-like world of writer-director Julio Torres' heartfelt and hilarious feature film debut.
A24's Problemista is a surrealist-comedy about an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador, struggling to bring his unusual ideas to life in New York City. As time on his work visa runs out, a job assisting an erratic art-world outcast becomes his only hope to stay in the country and realize his dream.
The film features an excellent cast, including Julio Torres, Tilda Swinton, RZA (Wu-Tang Clan), Greta Lee, Catalina Saavedra, James Scully, and narration by Isabella Rossellini. Problemista has already drawn widespread acclaim and is now playing in select cities, expanding everywhere on March 22.
Rusli's delightfully inventive score was the most ambitious project the young composer has ever worked on, lasting a full year and delivering fifty-three eclectic tracks. Moving between bubbling, whimsical melodies to propulsive classical minimalism, the score features orchestral arrangements that combine synthesizers with a live choir. Sounds from the surreal world of the film bleed into the music: ominous clocks ticking, 56k dial-up modems shrieking, filing cabinets, and keyboards creating rhythmic backdrops for the bureaucratic nightmares of the American immigration system.
Everything in Problemista's surreal world can be personified, and the score is no different. It's a colorful living creature in the film. Acting like a Greek chorus that urges on the film's characters, the score's choir sings and chants in an invented language formed from deconstructed words that describe their deepest desires and fears. Problemista's score features contributions from many heavyweight artists in New York's experimental music scene like Ches Smith, Randall Dunn, yuniya edi kwon, Holland Andrews, and more. The entire music team, from the musicians to the mixers, is based in New York—the city that provides the chaotic, pulsing backdrop to the film.
Robert Ouyang Rusli is an Asian American film composer & artist based in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to scoring Problemista, they composed the music for the film Bruiser on Hulu and the Gotham Award and Independent Spirit nominated film Test Pattern, as well as many other films including the short films Bambirak and Rest Stop, which won Jury Awards for International Fiction and US Fiction at Sundance. They are the recipient of the Van Lier Fellowship for Music Composition, ASCAP Jimmy Van Heusen Award, Pioneer Works Music Residency, and BAFTA USA Breakthrough Fellowship.
Under their solo moniker OHYUNG, they produce genre-shifting music that moves between ambient, experimental pop, and distorted noise. Their most recent record imagine naked! is a collection of ambient soundscapes was described by The Quietus as a “masterful selection of muscular, shuddering, trembling ambient excursions” and was hailed by NPR Music as one of the best 50 albums of 2022.
Robert Ouyang Rusli Problemista (Original Score)
March 15 via A24 Music
01 Alejandro's Tower
02 Overture
03 Smart Phones for Cabbage Patch Kids
04 Backup Disconnected!
05 Meet Elizabeth
06 Evil Whisper
07 Dolores' Worry
08 The Hourglass Room 1
09 Do You Know Filemaker Pro?
10 The Hourglass Room 2
11 Khalil's Office
12 Bureaucractic Limbo
13 This is Craigslist
14 Elizabeth Mania
15 I Sponsor You
16 They Hate My Eggs
17 Bobby and Elizabeth
18 13 Eggs
19 Filemaker Pro Scare
20 Alejandro Vs Craigslist
21 Can I Ask You a Question About Your Hair?
22 Bureaucratic Limbo (Reprise)
23 Bingham
24 Blue Egg on Yellow Satin
25 Broken Hourglass
26 Not Enough Money, Not Enough Eggs
27 Need Subletter Immediately
28 I Have To Go
29 Dear Dahlia
30 Painting Rush
31 Is that your Dream?
32 Elizabeth in Maine
33 Unsynced Databases
34 The Hydra
35 Debit Card
36 I Stand with Bank of America
37 Cleaning Boy Kink
38 Who Makes the Decisions?
39 We Want The Eggs
40 Alejandro Vs Elizabeth
41 Roosevelt Island Tram
42 The Egg is Alone in Manhattan
43 All or Nothing
44 The Thorn that Protects the Rose
45 Dolores on the Phone
46 Elizabeth's Voicemail
47 Hasbro Confrontation
48 Alejandro's Victory
49 Monument to Possibilities
50 Bibo
51 Welcome to the Future
52 My Little Problems (Finale)
53 Huele a Fraude (feat. OHYUNG & STEFA*)
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