The director of Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck says a companion soundtrack will include all the previously unreleased music featured in the film, plus a dozen additional tracks by the late Nirvana frontman when it’s released in conjunction with the home-video version of the film in early November.
Filmmaker Brett Morgen says new material on the yet-untitled album will include “audio montages that Kurt Cobain created” and recordings of the artist talking in between the musical tracks, including “a sketch comedy routine featuring Kurt voicing all of the characters.”
Morgen put together the album while researching Montage of Heck, which involved immersing himself in more than 200 hours of recordings on 107 unmarked cassette tapes that Cobain left behind. After airing on HBO in May, the critically acclaimed film begins a theatrical run on Friday.
Although Universal Music Group, which is releasing the companion album, ultimately will determine the contents and track order of the album, Morgen says the compilation he turned in to the label “is curated to feel as though one were sitting in Kurt’s living room watching him create over the course of an afternoon.”
The song demos range “from thrash to ragtime and everything in between,” says the director, though he notes, “Most of it is in a space that will be familiar to Nirvana fans.”