After 90 Films, Dale Cornelius Finally Made an Album for Himself!

There’s a version of Dale Cornelius that most people know without knowing his name. He’s the guy behind Mary & Max, behind five seasons of The Doctor Blake Mysteries, behind IMAX documentaries about coral reefs and deep space. Over 90 productions, 18 awards and nominations, two decades of writing music, he is one of Australia’s most decorated screen composers!

Now, he's entering a new territory. His latest album, "What Is Carried, What Is Left Behind?" is proof of his insane range and the calibre of musicianship!

The album opens with ‘In This Moment, What Matters Most?’ and the title alone tells you where Cornelius’s head was at when he composed this. The strings carry this soft insistence. Convincing opening, I must say. ‘What Is Carried, What Is Left Behind?’ the titlular track has one of the best origin stories I’ve come across in a while. Cornelius was walking past a cathedral in Montalcino, Italy, late at night, and he recorded a metal door moving in the wind on his phone. The song is mixed in Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio. At nearly seven minutes it takes its time, but it earns every second!

‘Innocence’ is three minutes and forty-six seconds and my personal favourite of the record. There’s something almost disarmingly simple about it after everything that came before. The strings feel unguarded in a way the earlier tracks don’t really allow themselves to be. Then there’s ‘A Whispered Dawn (Spencer’s Lullaby)’, and this is where the album transcends to something else entirely! In 1999, Cornelius’s son Spencer was born prematurely. During that terrifying stretch of uncertainty, he wrote a lullaby, which he never recorded. For twenty-six years it existed only as a handwritten manuscript, sitting upon Cornelius' desk while he went on to score dozens of productions, win awards, build a career. Now, finally, recorded for the first time alongside brand new material, in what Cornelius himself describes as “an act of reclamation.” It’s so tender and beautiful.

The second last song of the record is titled, ‘Under an Impersonal Sky There is Hope.’ What a beautiful title, firstly. Secondly, there’s more air in this one, more room to breathe paired with synthesizer layers. And lastly, we have the final song of the record, ‘Bloom’ which closes the album at just over three minutes. The Dolby Atmos mix is worth mentioning because for this particular record where so much of the meaning comes from place and memory and the physical experience of being somewhere, the spatial audio genuinely adds another layer. If you have access to it, listen to it that way!

This gorgeous album was made with Melbourne’s Eclective Strings, a group whose members include players from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and collaborators of everyone from Yo-Yo Ma to Sigur Rós. Executives from Deutsche Grammophon have already called it “truly beautiful.” A major London music supervisor described it as “truly stunning.” And none of it is surprising after you sit with this record for a while!

"What Is Carried, What Is Left Behind?" is an album for those who appreciate the modern classical, contemporary composition. So, don’t sleep on it.

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