Along with Netflix’s November 24 global premiere of the venerable stop-motion studio’s charming musical holiday special comes Lakeshore Records’ original soundtrack release, featuring music by The Bookshop Band.
Joining tomorrow, November 24's global Netflix premiere of Aardman Animation’s charming, stop-motion musical holiday special, Robin Robin, is Lakeshore Records’ digital release of the Robin Robin—Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Featuring music by The Bookshop Band, AKA Ben Please and Beth Porter, the soundtrack features the duo’s evocative, lighthearted songs that are integral to the wondrous stop-motion world created by the multi award-winning and independent British production company behind Shaun the Sheep, Wallace and Gromit, and Chicken Run. The film’s directors, Dan Ojari and Mikey Please also co-wrote the songs. Presave the album here!
Have a listen to AWN’s exclusive post of “The Sneak Song,” to wet your appetite for what’s in store come tomorrow!
Robin Robin, the studio’s first original production done with Netflix, stars Bronte Carmichael (Christopher Robin), Adeel Akhtar (Enola Holmes), Golden Globe winner Gillian Anderson (The Crown) and Oscar nominee Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?).
The 30-minute special tells the tale of a small bird with a very big heart. After a shaky nativity of her own – her unhatched egg falls out of the nest and into a rubbish dumpster – she comes out of her shell, in more ways than one, and is adopted by a loving family of burglar mice. More beak and feathers than fur, tail and ears, more cluck and klutz than tip-toe and stealth, she is nonetheless beloved by her adopted family, a Dad Mouse and four siblings.
As she grows up, though, her differences make her something of a liability, especially when the family take her on furtive food raids to the houses of the humans (pronounced ‘Who-mans’) in the dead of night.
Neither fully bird, nor fully mouse, Robin embarks on a food heist of her own to prove herself worthy of her family and also, hopefully, to bring them back a Christmas sandwich. Along the way, she encounters a curmudgeonly magpie who has a house full of glittery things that he’s stolen and, as it turns out, an unlikely heart of gold. He has set that heart on stealing the sparkling star from the top of a local who-man family’s Christmas tree. And who better to help him than the eternally optimistic Robin herself. The adventure brings them face-to-terrifying-face with a menacing, yet very cool Cat, who has a warm place for birds and mice alike: her tummy.
Can they survive? Can they bring home the sandwich and the star? And, most of all, can Robin discover, and learn to love, who she really is, delighting her family and earning her wings in the process?
Notes Ben Please, “I'd been collaborating on shorter animations with my brother for the last 16 years, so when Mikey and Dan asked us to write the music for Robin Robin it felt like the dream culmination of that journey. It was a rare opportunity to properly explore and develop a weave of character’s musical themes over a longer form than we'd done before, with the strength and enthusiasm of Aardman's amazing team carrying us the whole way. I literally spent most of the last two years with Gillian whispering in my ear pretending to be an evil cat, so I count myself very lucky."
Added Dan Ojari & Mikey Please, “It was a huge pleasure to continue our long history of collaboration with the Bookshop Band on Robin Robin, our most ambitious project to date. Beth and Ben are tremendous talents, and we feel very lucky to have been able to work with them from the very early stages of development, so that story and music could feed back and forth and enrich each other. Their warm earthy melodies and folk-inspired instrumentation, with the orchestral backing, was the perfect fit for the world of Robin Robin. We’re excited about the soundtrack release so that listeners can close their eyes and be taken on a fabulous audio journey through that landscape, that is as grand and grounded as the film itself.”
Track List
- The Robin Robin Overture
- It's A Robin / Robin's Song (feat. Bronte Carmichael)
- The Sneak Song (feat. Adeel Akhtar, Bronte Carmichael, Amira Macey-Michael, Tom Pegler, Endeavour Clutterbuck, Megan Harris)
- Robin, No!
- The Most Amazing Sneak Ever / Lost In The Snow
- Magpie's Home
- A Crimcross Story / Things Make You Happy (feat. Richard E. Grant)
- Raised By Mice / The Star
- Dance Of The Sneaky Plum Birdies (feat. Richard E. Grant)
- Mice Don't Fly
- Cat Says Hello / The Purr-fect Place (feat. Gillian Anderson)
- Isn't This Wonderful? / The Wish
- A Mad Fools Dream
- Cat Attack!
- The Flight
- You're A Mouse
- The Finale Song / A Feast In The Burrow (feat. Adeel Akhtar, Bronte Carmichael, Richard E. Grant, Amira Macey-Michael, Tom Pegler, Endeavour Clutterbuck, Megan Harris)
- Robin's Song (Sing-along Version)
- The Sneak Song (Sing-along Version)
- Things Make You Happy (Sing-along Version)
- The Purr-fect Place (Sing-along Version)
- The Finale Song (Sing-along Version)
- Night Night Robin (feat. Jools Scott)
Source: Lakeshore Records
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
