Matthew Herbert

The Wonder is Sebastián Lelio's 2022 film set in the Irish Midlands in 1862, thirteen years after the Great Famine. Florence Pugh plays Lib Wright, an English nurse sent to watch over an eleven-year-old girl who claims to have eaten nothing for four months. Matthew Herbert wrote the score, continuing a working friendship with Lelio that began with A Fantastic Woman and continued with Disobedience. Netflix Music released it digitally in November 2022. A few weeks later it won the award for best music at the British Independent Film Awards. The vinyl edition followed on 31 March 2023 on Accidental, with The Vinyl Factory pressing a special edition of its own.

Herbert explained his approach to The Vinyl Factory in a 2023 interview. He received the dailies during the shoot and had a palette of sounds ready before filming ended, so Lelio's first cut used almost only his music. He thought about the strong wind on set and about the invisible and the divine. He wanted sounds of air passing through things, not a violin being scraped or a synthesiser being played. He started from an accordion that he altered, then assembled instruments driven by organs and harmoniums. He commissioned recordings of the scaffolding around the set, dragged, blown through and struck. These produce the tolling bell heard at the opening, which returns as a motif. He also sampled 18th-century Irish instruments and slowed, twisted and processed them until they could no longer be recognised. In his words, "in The Wonder, the score is a character" (The Vinyl Factory, 2023). The credits list the London Contemporary Orchestra under Hugh Brunt, with production and sound design by Hugh Jones. Fifteen cues run from the opening Calling to the six-minute Reunion and the closing Credits. Near the end comes a Burning Remix of Fiesta, a piece credited to Herbert's big band.

This is the Vinyl Factory special edition of the Accidental LP, pressed on 200-gram vinyl on the EMI 1400 press at Hayes and wrapped in a VF belly band. It comes with a hand-numbered certificate naming the press and its operator, in an edition of 100 copies.