Columbus experimental group Wandering Stars is a collaborative duo. Musicians Derek Christopher and Gregory Stokes have built a friendship and leveraged it into some of the best music coming out of the capital city. The two just don’t like to collaborate with each other, though. The group’s latest releases, Scene Darker, is a collaborative EP between Wandering Stars and Josh Hollar of Self-Titled Album that adapts six different films into a six-song EP. In order they are: The Deerhunter (1978), Bladerunner (1982), The Shining (1980), The Thing (1982), Apocalypse Now (1979), and The Elephant Man (1980). 

We’re greeted with a calming strike of the piano on “The Deerhunter,” which features Christopher and Hollar crooning – sometimes screaming – about the daming question of the movie: “Are we going to get out alive?” Lyrics and vocals throughout are handled by Christopher and Hollar on all of the tracks, except when Christopher doesn’t appear singing on the final track. The two also handled the artwork as well. Music, arrangements, and engineering were handled by both Christopher and Stokes.

Apart from other Wandering Stars releases where Christopher is typically staying in the same vocal range and not experimenting too heavily with different emotions, we see Derek step out of his typical range quite frequently over the project. This could be part in having his voice juxtaposed to Hollar’s but also isn’t to be confused with Christopher’s voice not having emotion on prior releases. More so, it has to do with the specific mood of an album. When you’re pulling from six different movies, you’re going to see – both naturally and unnaturally – a differing tone from track to track. We hear Christopher’s typical floating voice greeting us on “Blade Runner,” perhaps the highlight of the EP, helping the song build into Scene Darker’s most grandiose moment. While all of these tracks have a way of building to a grand moment before falling back down and apart, “Blade Runner” soars in achieving this deconstructionist angle.

Scene Darker by Wandering Stars

Overall, you can tell that all involved had a fun music-making experience. Hollar even does his best Colonel Kurtz impression to lead off “Apocalypse Now.” (Not going to lie, it made me chuckle quite a bit.) That’s what movie-fueled relationships are about: fun bonding moments where you can get into character and really become someone else. Having music as this outlet as well only – as evidenced by this EP – exemplifies this passion. The above anecdote is part of a whole dark turn on the EP: the run of “The Shining” through “Apocalypse Now.” All three – including “The Thing” – are horror movies in their own individual right. Although the creepy feelings are consistent throughout, Christopher, Hollar, and Stokes capture these separate sub-feelings quite justly. 

On its face, Scene Darker is a collaborative effort between Wandering Stars and Josh Hollar. If we look deeper past the surface and further into the six tracks, Scene Darker is also a collaborative effort between the three musicians and six different films. Without the movies, this music doesn’t exist. Without movies, Christopher and Hollar are never brought together to create music because of their love for a specific subset of movies. From the sounds that are sampled – such as the rolling and loading of a gun from The Deerhunter and exact cuts from The Elephant Man – it’s obvious there was time and spirit spilled into this collaboration.

The EP – as chaotic as the films being portrayed are – comes to a peaceful and serene conclusion with “The Elephant Man.” It’s the only track that doesn’t feature Christopher singing and more so showcases the musicianship of Stokes. Although he isn’t as present as Christopher is on this EP, the beautiful end moment is perhaps the truest testament to Stoke’s progression as an engineer over the past few years. It features some spliced clips from the movie, with the surreal moment when the main character says, “I just want to be a normal human being.” There’s a faint horn in the background, which almost sounds like a jazzy, faded elephant. It’s gracefully dancing behind the beat. It’s exactly how you would expect movie lovers to end a musical composition.