Discography
Music
Solo recordings and film and television scores. Forthcoming work, where announced, sits at the top.
Current release
Le Mans
2027 Directed by Esther Vaun Horizon Pictures Edition Mond Vinyl · CD · Digital 47 minutes
Lambert’s score for Le Mans, directed by Esther Vaun for Horizon Pictures, was released on Edition Mond on 22 October 2027, ahead of the film’s early-2028 release. It runs to forty-seven minutes across thirteen cues and a closing field recording, and is her second collaboration with Vaun after Eight Glances (2026).
The score is built around a small chamber ensemble: piano, cello, viola and a low woodwind line carried, on three of the cues, by bass clarinet. Field recordings made by Lambert across race week at the Circuit de la Sarthe, including engine wash heard from two fields beyond the Hunaudières straight at four in the morning, recur as discreet textural elements rather than as effects.
The album closes with a four-minute uncredited field recording, simply titled ‘Sarthe, 04:17’, in which the listener hears, distantly, a single car passing through the trees, and then nothing for ninety seconds, and then the first birds.
Released on 180-gram vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with photography by Lena Hoffmann, on CD digipak, and digitally. The vinyl edition is limited to three thousand copies on first pressing, with a five-hundred-copy clear-vinyl variant available exclusively through Rough Trade.
Tracklist
- 01 Daybook (Test Day) 3:42
- 02 Procession 4:15
- 03 The Pit Wall, Late Afternoon 3:08
- 04 Engine, Heard from Two Fields Away 5:21
- 05 Twenty-Four 2:54
- 06 The Hunaudières 4:02
- 07 Indianapolis (Three a.m.) 6:38
- 08 The Small Hours 3:11
- 09 Mulsanne, in Fog 4:27
- 10 First Light 2:48
- 11 Hour Twenty-Two 3:34
- 12 Crowd on the Track 2:33
- 13 Sarthe, 04:17 3:59
Thirty-second preview
Sleeve credits
- Composed by
- Iris Lambert
- Piano
- Iris Lambert
- Cello
- Marta Heřmánková
- Viola
- Charlotte Aubin
- Bass clarinet
- Léon Marchais
- Sleeve notes
- Olivia Laing
- Photography
- Lena Hoffmann
- Mastered by
- Jens Krause
- Released by
- Edition Mond, Berlin
Lambert has done with absence what most film composers attempt with presence. The score for Le Mans is the rarest kind of motorsport music. It does not sprint.
Iris Lambert appartient à cette génération discrète de
compositrices qui ont fait du silence un matériau. Le Mans en est la confirmation la plus complète.
Iris Lambert belongs to that discreet generation of composers who have made silence a material. Le Mans is the most complete confirmation of it.
Solo Recordings
Lambert’s first full-length solo album. Twelve pieces, forty-one minutes, for piano, cello, viola and intermittent electronics. Cellist Marta Heřmánková appears throughout. Released by Edition Mond on vinyl and digital; the first pressing of two thousand was reissued in 2024 after the Slack Water BAFTA nomination.
Field Notes collects pieces written between scoring assignments and never intended for film. Several began as discarded cues; others began at the piano in the small hours and were never intended for anyone.
Tracklist
- 01 Walking Notes 3:58
- 02 Stadtbahn 4:21
- 03 Twenty-Two, Reprise 2:47
- 04 The Long Light 5:12
- 05 Ullapool Sketch 3:36
- 06 Pour Hélène 4:08
- 07 Frampton Park Road 3:24
- 08 Letter from Crouch End 3:51
- 09 Three Hands 2:44
- 10 Steinway, Hackney 4:15
- 11 Edward, Reading 2:38
- 12 The Smaller Window 4:46
Thirty-second preview
Six pieces for solo piano, recorded over four days in March 2020 in the Hackney studio, on the upright, in the first week of the first lockdown. Released digitally on the small French imprint Maison; later issued as a limited 10-inch white-label vinyl run of 500 copies, signed by hand. Long out of print.
The opening piece, ‘Étage’, was written in the small hours of the night her father called to say her grandmother had died.
Tracklist
- 01 Étage 4:18
- 02 Bibliothèque 3:42
- 03 Garniture 2:51
- 04 Vingt-deux 4:09
- 05 Pluie, Crouch End 3:34
- 06 Maison de ma mère 3:26
Thirty-second preview
Film and Television
Original soundtracks released as standalone albums sit at the head of the list. Below them, the wider filmography.
Score for Mhairi Ross’s Slack Water, a feature about the last working family in a Hebridean fishing village. Eleven cues, thirty-four minutes, for piano, viola and a single field recording of a foghorn made by Lambert herself off Ullapool in fog so thick she could not see the boat she was standing on.
Released on Edition Mond as a vinyl LP in three sold-out pressings. BAFTA-nominated for Best Original Score.
Tracklist
- 01 The Last Boat 3:14
- 02 Slack 2:48
- 03 Foghorn (Ullapool, October) 4:02
- 04 The Family Concerned 3:36
- 05 The Hour Before 2:53
- 06 Off-Shore 3:21
- 07 Letter to a Daughter 3:08
- 08 Mhairi 2:44
- 09 Twenty-Two Fathoms 3:18
- 10 The Light at the End of the Pier 2:51
- 11 Returning 2:25
Thirty-second preview
Filmography
Documentary on Giacometti’s late portraits. The first Lambert/Vaun collaboration. Cannes Critics’ Week.
Domestic drama for BBC Films. Sundance premiere.
Feature documentary. The closing of the last commercial herring fishery in north-west Scotland.
Mother and adult daughter, Donegal. London Film Festival.
French-Belgian co-production. A retiring ballerina at the Opéra de Liège. The score, released privately on CD, is widely regarded as Lambert’s breakthrough.
Short fiction for France 3 / Arte. César nomination, Best Short Film Score.
Documentary. Picked up at Sheffield DocFest.
Feature debut. Irish drama. Galway Film Fleadh, Best First Feature.