Lee Ranaldo has reworked his score for The System, Dutch filmmaker Joris Postema‘s documentary about three climate activists, and the new version is out today as a digital download via Bandcamp. Black and coloured vinyl follows on October 2nd through Silver Current Records, with pre-orders open now.
The music first appeared in 2025 in a considerably more filmic edit, released as The System (Original Film Music) through Riva Media Records. Ranaldo has since resequenced the material down to fifteen tracks and added two pieces written and recorded for the film but held back from that version: Something Beautiful to Live For and The Conference. The label describes the result as a return to drone-improv form.
Ranaldo’s guitar carries the film’s two moods. Opener Tajikistan (Nice to Meet You) works a rhythmic Lower Manhattan grime; by the closing Cool Water, a high lonesome standard, each unhurried note trails off into long-tail reverb while layers of shifting vocal harmony pull the thing skyward.
The cast around him is substantial. Cellist Leila Bordreuil, a longstanding duo partner, appears alongside filmmaker and musician Jim Jarmusch, Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase, guitarist Yonatan Gat, drummer Balázs Pándi, Raül Refree — who co-produced Ranaldo’s 2017 album Electric Trim — guitarist Avishag Cohen Rodrigues and Marc Urselli. Their contributions surface across the ritualistic thrum of Berlin Blockade, the overtones of Bergelmir and the cavernous acoustic strumming of Instruments of Violence.
Silver Current is run out of Oakland by Ethan P. Miller (Howlin Rain, Heron Oblivion and Feral Ohms), a label built on handmade, limited-edition oddities, which makes it a reasonable home for a record that behaves as both film score and hallucinatory instrumental guitar album. Ranaldo has been heading this way anyway: Early New York Silver, his 2025 duo album with Michael Vallera on Amish Records, mined similar slow-building guitar ambience.
The System (October 2nd, 2026) Silver Current Records
THE SYSTEM Track Listing:
Side 1
- Tajikistan (Nice to Meet You)
- Pippi Sailing (Cimbalom)
- No More Slogans
- Berlin Blockade
- Bergelmir
- Something Beautiful to Live For *
Side 2 - The Conference *
- An Exploding Dandelion
- Telefoongesprek Henk
- Both Ends of the Spectrum
- Instruments of Violence
- A Just Collapse
- Tadzio Wild Congress
- The Cusp of the Change
- Cool Water
- previously unreleased