Nick Cave and Warren Ellis Bring 'Lighter Touch' to 'The Road'

Despite the stark tone of his post-apocolyptic film 'The Road,' director John Hillcoat thought the soundtrack needed a lighter touch. Odd then, perhaps, to think of Nick Cave (pictured) and Warren Ellis as the men for the job.

"We talked about the fear stuff, which is something these guys can do in a nanosecond, with their eyes closed, because they are very adventurous with sound, disturbing sounds.," Hillcoat told BBC 6 Music. "Yet, there's the beauty and the lightness as a counterpoint, which was also needed."

The soundtrack is the third by the Bad Seeds and Grinderman pair having previously worked together on the scores for 'The Proposition' and 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.'

The pair don't work in the usual style of soundtrack composers, preferring to watch a scene then go into the studio to write music to match rather than follow a "click track" to sync music and sound.

The film follows a father and son as they journey across a desolated world 10 years after an unnamed global disaster has destroyed civilisation. Although a bleak subject matter, Cave and Ellis's subtle, raw and emotional soundtrack has been lauded for picking out the chinks of sunlight in the story.

"We didn't want a big, orchestrated, heavy soundtrack," said Hillcoat. "It would weigh the movie down. It needed to be almost slight, dare I say it."

Hillcoat, an Australian who lives in Brighton, first heard about The Road when Cave -- a fellow Australian Brightonian -- gave him an unpublished manuscript of Cormac McCarthy's book in June 2006.

Ellis and Cave are keeping quiet about future film projects, but last September Ellis revealed that the second Grinderman album had already been completed.