Sean Tinnion still has a trace of an English accent but the 25 year old composer is now firmly entrenched in the WA music scene. The WA Academy of Performing Arts graduate will release his debut album this week, an instrumental album written in a cinematic style for lovers of the film music genre.
Since migrating to Australia 13 years ago Tinnion has built a career as a respected WA film composer. His music provides the soundtrack to the recent SBS documentary Is Australia Racist? produced by Joined Up Films and hosted by Ray Martin. In 2013 he won Outstanding Music Composition from the WA Screen Academy Award for the period drama All That Matters. Recent projects include the scores for the SBS 3-part series Secrets Of Our Cities and the SBS feature documentary Apex Gang: Behind The Headlines.
Now his music is coming out from behind the screen and standing alone in an independent album titled Timeless.
“I have been writing music for films and documentaries for the past eight years and I decided that I wanted to create an album consisting of this music style for people to listen to without the influence of the screen,” Tinnion explained.
The result is an album of lush scoring and expansive melodies evoking vast cinematic landscapes. Tinnion composed and produced the album himself using instrumental sounds generated electronically through Virtual Instrument software.
Tinnion’s focus is on emotive music and so the album is wistfully mellow. Eternal Soul features instrumental solos breathing soft sighs over a wide horizon of slow moving string chords. Lost Love and Timeless are built using similar ideas. The electronically synthesized sounds create a luxuriant movie sound world although the constant wash of reverb can get a bit heavy.
Secret Garden has an exotic flavour with instrumentation including gongs and eastern stringed instruments. Into the Greenwood is more pastoral with a flute call and percussive rhythms evoking dancing sprites. One of the strongest compositions on the album is Gone But Not Goodbye where Tinnion reveals a good ear for melody with a long arching cello melody over a richly harmonised piano accompaniment.
Listen to the title track from Timeless
“I tended to imagine what kind of a movie or production the current track I was working on would fit well in and I just let my imagination do the work. Each piece I wrote had a different work process behind it and a different story to tell. I have written this music with movies in mind, but I feel that anybody who likes to listen to melodic/emotive music would enjoy this album.”
Limited CD copies of Timeless are available from https://www.seantinnionmusic.com/music or can be downloaded from Spotify/iTunes etc from November 14th.
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