Wildcat, the latest from filmmaker Khalil Joseph, is a meditation on a town in Oklahoma and the “little-known African-American rodeo subculture” that exists there. Joseph’s black-and-white imagery is astounding, from the adolescent boy wearing shutter shades perched atop a horse to the girl in a bridal gown standing on deserted bleaches, and the film doesn’t require any additional context about the town of Grayson in order to appreciate. But the real reason you care is the music, composed by one Steven Ellison, also known as Flying Lotus.
All cascading harps and quietly percolating guitars, the score recalls more than anything the composer/producer’s interstitial work on 2010’s Cosmogramma. It’s minimal, and has none of the low end-heavy percussion work FlyLo is known for, but anything more than this would intrude on Joseph’s magnificent stillness.
Flying Lotus and Khalil Joseph previously collaborated on Until the Quiet Comes, a similarly beautiful film created to promote FlyLo’s latest album of the same name. See more of Joseph’s work at What Matters Most.
