Sqürl is the musical outfit featuring legendary indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch alongside Carter Logan, a co-producer on Jarmusch’s recent movies. After releasing a series of soundtracks and EPs, the duo have just unveiled their first proper full-length studio album, Silver Haze.
Music has been an integral part of Jarmusch’s movies throughout his career, starting with his groundbreaking ’80s films Stranger Than Paradise and Down By Law, and continuing in the ’90s with Dead Man and Ghost Dog. For his recent films (Only Lovers Left Alive, Paterson, The Dead Don’t Die), he and Logan have teamed up to compose the scores.
Now, the pair have unveiled Silver Haze, a guest-filled album that was just released via Sacred Bones Records. Among the notable contributors are Marc Ribot, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Anika.
Consequence caught up with Jarmusch and Logan to discuss the new album, along with its various guest musicians. During the conversation, the pair also talked about their process of scoring movies, as well as the film scores and composers who’ve inspired them throughout the years.
Read our interview with Sqürl’s Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan, followed by a full stream of Silver Haze via the Apple Music and Spotify players below. Pick up Silver Haze on vinyl at this location.
While you’ve released EPs and soundtracks before, Silver Haze is Sqürl’s debut full-length album. What led you to release a proper studio LP this time around?
Jim Jarmusch: Well, we don’t have a master plan. We do things as they come. We had gathered a lot of material that we thought could shape into an album. Honestly, we could have made a whole album of just songs with lyrics or a whole album of instrumentals… We had a break in our filming schedules. We’ve been kind of waiting to do an album or at least a new EP. And then the real great factor was having [producer] Randall Dunn available and interested in collaborating. All the timing worked out and that closed the deal.
Carter Logan: Everything coalesced around this sort of moment where a lot of these songs were born of some guitar tracks that Jim recorded on his own in his small studio in upstate New York, and he had just given them to me. And I’d been in conversation with Randall Dunn for some years about doing something together, and he had the availability because of everybody’s schedules during the pandemic kind of getting scrambled and rearranged. So, I started doing some [tracks] in my home studio, as well, and then handed them off to Randall to just really evaluate whether or not he saw this as a record or something else that we might do together. He said, “There’s a record here. I can hear it. And I’ve got some ideas, let’s start working on it.”
