There’s a quiet intensity to Kinkajous’ score for Bahman with an H, the new short film by Sam Motazedi. Rather than accompanying the film with cues or fragments, the London-based duo — Benoit Parmentier and Adrien Cau — composed a continuous, 18-minute piece that slowly unfolds like a breath held in suspension. It’s ambient jazz reimagined through modular synthesis, piano, saxophone, and percussion — music that resists resolution and mirrors the film’s blurred perception of reality.
Structured in loosely defined chapters named in Farsi, the composition explores emotional terrain through restraint: sparse saxophone lines, rippling keys, shifting electronics. As the protagonist Bahman spirals inward, the music bends with him—stretched, fractured, and looped. Brief moments of light dissolve into ambiguity, never settling into triumph or despair.
Instead of guiding the viewer’s interpretation, Kinkajous’ score traps us within Bahman’s contradictions. It reflects his unraveling with Shepard tones, uneasy harmonies, and dissonant strings—painting a world that’s dreamlike and unstable, just shy of clarity. Influences like Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, and Jon Hassell hover in the atmosphere, but Kinkajous speak in their own voice: restrained, searching, and deeply attuned to emotional nuance.
Bahman with an H stands as both film score and standalone sonic narrative—a rare feat that lingers well beyond the screen.
