Hal Hartley is best known as a filmmaker. But since the start of his career in the late 1980s he has made most of the music for his own films. In the beginning, his approach was simply to record himself on electric guitar as he watched scenes play out on the editing machine. Considering this to be more sound design than music composition, he chose not to credit himself on screen as composer. But these cues were published under the pseudonym, Ned Rifle. His first two features, The Unbelievable Truth (1989) and Trust (1990), also featured songs by Jim Coleman and Hub Moore and the Great Outdoors. Philip Reed played electric guitar on Trust, improvising on cues written by Hartley. Beginning with his third feature film, Simple Men (1992), Hartley began working with music producer, Jeffrey Taylor. Still crediting himself onscreen as Ned Rifle, the music was considerably more fleshed out with the benefit of Taylor’s production. Taylor and he would collaborate on two more films, Amateur (1994) and Flirt (1996). In 1996 he produced The Ryful Album, collaborating on original songs with Hub Moore, Jim Coleman, and Lydia Kavanagh, another artist who had previously contributed songs to his films. They were joined in this by drummer, Bill Dobrow. Some of the songs from these sessions first appeared in Hartley’s 1998 feature film, Henry Fool, scored by Hartley and Coleman and the first time Hartley credited himself using his own name. Read more at halhartley.com