Jonas Munk: Searching for Bill

As Manual, Danish musician Jonas Munk has released over a dozen albums of sunkissed, melodic ambient art with dreampop elements. Under other names he’s pushed some related angles even further. That he would be willing and able to do a movie score should be no surprise to anyone, as his music already has soundtracked the movies of listeners’ imagination.

Searching for Bill is an American road trip film by a Danish director. Munk’s music has always toyed with the oceans, but here you expect it to be more earthbound, and in a way it is. It isn’t quite a country/roots album, but it is at times rooted in that direction by guitar that evokes the West (in a Morriconne-esque Western-film way) and by snippets of radio station sounds that bring road trips across the U.S. to mind. At the same time, the music drifts in a way that’s typical of Munk — that is, a pretty way that also generates ample space and mystery within its sound.