Wilmington musician scores soundtrack for major upcoming sports documentary

A Wilmington composer with a history of winning accolades for his music will soon see his latest project go in front of a worldwide audience.

Nicolay, a Grammy-nominated, Dutch-born producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has lived in Wilmington since 2006 (his birth name is Matthijs Rook), scored the soundtrack for upcoming ESPN "30 for 30" documentary "False Positive."

The film, from director Ismail Al-Amin, premieres June 11. It screened in April at the Full Frame Documentary Festival in Durham.

"False Positive" is about former Olympic athlete and one-time 400 meter dash world record holder Butch Reynolds, who in 1990 was given a two-year ban by the International Amateur Athletic Federation for what was later determined to be a false postive test for steroids. The ban caused Reynolds to miss the 1992 Summer Olymic Games.

In the trailer for "False Positive," Nicolay's signature, pulsing synthesizers like the ones heard on his "City Lights" albums are featured.

Nicolay is one half of the electro/soul duo The Foreign Exchange. The other half is Nicolay's longtime musical partner, Raleigh-based vocalist and songwriter Phonte Coleman. In 2010, "Daykeeper," a song from 2008 album "Leave It All Behind," scored a Grammy nomination for Best Urban/Alternative Performance.

In 2022, Nicolay landed a spot on former President Barack Obama's annual summer playlist.

In a press release, Nicolay said his work on "False Positive," which began in 2021, intially came about from director Al-Amin being a fan of his work.

"Ismail booked The Foreign Exchange for an event in Akron, Ohio years ago," Nicolay said. "Hewas keen on creating a decidedly soulful score, but with a European twist, as the sport of track and field traditionally is very popular there and a lot of the crucial action in the film takes place overseas."

"There's quite literally a little bit of everything in this score," he added. "While I was working on some initial sketches for the film, I came upon the idea of mirroring all of the different stages of Butch's life and career with the evolution of my own music over the years. So in the early stages of the documentary, themusic is largely beat-driven and optimistic, mirroring the sound and feel of my own early years. As the situation gets more complicated and inevitably darker and more emotional, so does the music."

The "False Positive" soundtrack will see Nicolay reunited with Phonte Coleman, also of North Carolina hip-hop icons Little Brother, for a new song.

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In April, Nicolay released a new song, "Roll Up (I Can't Lose My High)" with Creative Theory. It's taken from an upoming solo album, Nicolay's fourth, titled "Terra Firma," due out this summer.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Nicolay scores soundtrack for ESPN 30 for 30 doc 'False Positive'