As promised in the previous post, here’s a great featurette showing how composer team Asche & Spencer created the beautiful and hypnotic soundtrack to Monster’s Ball. The multiple composer team created a classic ambient and highly atmospheric score - a real favourite of mine.
Following on from my post about ten inspirational moments in film scoring, I decided to follow it up with a second imaginatively titled installment. I enjoyed going through my mental list of key film music moments and if nothing else, it’s a therapeutic way for me to make them a bit more tangible. As before, these aren’t necessarily critically acclaimed or “the best” scores - just soundtracks that I love which provided me with inspiration and that I think are worth listening to. For this post, I’ve also added short audio clips from the soundtracks - they’re only about a minute long to give you an idea, but hopefully they help illustrate the music:
The Insider (1999)
Director: Michael Mann
Composer: Lisa Gerrard/Pieter Bourke/Gustavo Santaolalla
Get it from Amazon
Gustavo Santaolalla : Iguazu
Although the majority of this film’s score was actually provided by Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke, it was Gustavo Santoalla’s eternally haunting track Iguazu that completely sold this film to me. It sits so perfectly with the desperate and paranoid tone of conspiracy and cover-up that it sends chills up my spine every time I hear it. To be honest, you could put Iguazu over an episode of Hollyoaks and it would make it seem epic but it’s used here to such mesmerising and ominous effect. In some ways I could just have easily picked Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s Babel, as that film also featured Iguazu along with several other Santaolalla tracks and is a more eclectic collection of tracks (plus it’s also another great film), but The Insider got to me first.
Monster’s Ball (1999)
Director: Marc Forster
Composer: Asche & Spencer
Get it from Amazon
Asche & Spencer : Opening Title
If Asche & Spencer sounds like the name of a brand of consultants or designers, that’s because, in a way they are. Actually, more a collaborative team of audio artists, Thad Spencer (Mark Asche left the firm many years ago) leads a team of composers who come from a background of producing music for advertising. While on paper this might sound like a cold and clinical choice, it actually works beautifully and organically. The creative team produced a haunting ethereal score, consisting largely of piano and sustained delayed guitar drones and swells. The result is a rich and evocative ambient and textural score that really emphasises the gaps between the notes and like the film itself, is contemplative and considered (there’s a great feature on the making of this score that I’ll post soon). Another of their scores in a similar tone to this one is Stay (2005) and also Mark Isham’s beautiful and subtle Crash (also from 2005).
Syriana (2005)
Director: Stephen Gaghan
Composer: Alexandre Desplat
Get it from Amazon
Alexandre Desplat: Driving In Geneva
A mixture of solo minimalist piano, deep pulsing synths, marcato strings and ethnic flavoured percussions combine to give the score a sense of desperate urgency. Again, a score that works well with its eerie electronic-tinged minimalism subtly highlighting the film’s storyline of political corruption and terrorism within the oil industry. Having scored a multitude of films in his home country of France, Alexandre Desplat has also shown his diversity over a range of higher profile international features including Hostage and Firewall.
The Player (1992)
Director: Robert Altman
Composer: Thomas Newman
Get it from Amazon
Thomas Newman : Funeral Shark
A tough choice with Thomas Newman; he’s written so many great scores and in doing so has kind of defined a certain type of piano sound that’s immediately recognisable. His piano voicings are strangely unique; usually soft, simple and muted but often approaching melodies from a skewed, leftfield perspective. I almost chose American Beauty but that’s probably had enough coverage already so I went for his score to Robert Altman’s fantastic The Player instead. Refreshing, sly, discordant but still fresh sounding, The Player uses similar percussive elements that he also used in his theme to Six Feet Under. Other excellent Newman scores (but veering more towards his trademark piano sound) include Road To Perdition, The Shawshank Redemption (though I think the film itself is overrated), The Green Mile, and Meet Joe Black.
The Bourne Identity (2002)
Director: Doug Liman
Composer: John Powell
Get it from Amazon
John Powell’s score to Doug Liman’s 2002 spy thriller combines contemporary electronica and percussion with orchestral instrumentation to create an instantly identifiable score. The simple repetitive string ostinato of the main theme, although hardly anything new or experimental, has gone on to almost define a certain type of genre in the same way as Thomas Newman’s piano style (see above). That type of tense repetitive string line is cropping up everywhere these days (I can even hear its influence in the next room in the BBC’s Survivors as I’m typing this…) Another Media Ventures protégé, Powell went on to successfully score the two Bourne sequels, as well as another favourite of mine, the sensitive and fittingly emotional soundtrack to Paul Greengrass’ 9/11 feature United 93.
28 Days Later (2002)
Director: Danny Boyle
Composer: John Murphy
Get it from Amazon
John Murphy : In The House, In A Heartbeat
John Murphy’s tense, claustrophobic and mounting score is centred on the cyclic, slow-building mix of ominous guitars, bass and piano of “In The House, In A heartbeat” that builds to a cloud of minor-key melodic rage. The darkness and impending danger of the music perfectly fits the film’s apocalyptic story of a handful of survivors from a viral outbreak fighting against the infected victims. You still hear it all over the place on film trailers and TV promos. Murphy has also contributed memorable music to some other films that I think work well including (surprisingly) Miami Vice and (with Underworld) Sunshine.
Training Day (2001)
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Composer: Mark Mancina
Get it from Amazon
Mark Mancina : Money
Another dark, atmospheric, almost ambient score. Ominous like the approach of nearing thunder or a heartbeat pulse, Mancina’s score adds layers of minimalist atmosphere to the brooding sense of foreboding of Denzel Washington’s cop gone bad. Nicely underplayed with some occasional modern electronic percussive textures that you might have come to expect from a former composer of the Media Ventures stable.
Dirty Harry (1975)
Director: Don Siegel
Composer: Lalo Schifrin
Get it from Amazon
Lalo Schifrin : Scorpio’s Theme
As I mentioned in my previous inspirations post, I love the jazz and funk inspired scores of the great 70s cop/heist movies (like The Taking Of Pelham 123) and this one’s no exception. Lalo Schifrin’s iconic score of crisp breakbeat style drums, wah wah guitar, Fender Rhodes and fuzz bass conjures up the electric cool of downtown San Francisco as well as sounding influenced by the electric jazz experiments of the era (e.g. Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew). Other great scores in a similar style are Dave Grusin’s Three Days Of The Condor, Dominic Frontiere’s Brannigan, Charles Bernstein’s Gator, Don Costa’s The Soul Of Nigger Charley, Quincy Jones’ Smackwater Jack, Isaac Hayes’ genre-defining Shaft plus of course all the classic Italian Giallo scores from the 70s. Big guns indeed.
Red Dragon (2002)
Director: Brett Ratner
Composer: Danny Elfman
Get it from Amazon
Danny Elfman : Main Titles
On Red Dragon, Elfman got to channel some of his love of Bernard Herrmann’s work with Hitchcock into a score that’s full of weight and gravitas. I’m not really a massive Elfman fan, but I do generally like his music and you can always tell when you’re hearing an Elfman score. Certainly his big superhero scores do the job with just the right balance of bombast and camp. He plays this one pretty straight though, with no room for playfulness or lightness. I love the way some of the cues have a feeling of a heavy weight being dragged along before the low brass comes crashing in like a relentless killer. I also really enjoyed his heavily percussive score to the Planet Of The Apes remake (though the film was botched).
The Hours (2002)
Director: Stephen Daldry
Composer: Philip Glass
Get it from Amazon
Philip Glass’ music tends to invoke a love/hate reaction in many listeners. Much of his music relies on building repeated motifs and rhythms, which slowly and subtly grab the listener’s attention. Here it produces a lulling and hypnotic effect which works perfectly with the film’s often dark and melancholy subject matter. Personally, I think this score is one of his best and is the perfect soundtrack for rainy Sunday afternoons. Also worth checking is his score to Koyanisqaatsi, although its repetitive minimalism is probably best experienced in conjunction with the dazzling visuals of the film.
Looking back over my selections, it’s apparent that I seem to have mainly picked fairly modern scores, but that may be more to do with me having started scoring music in around the same time-frame. If there seems to be a lack of the ‘classic’ composers (Williams, Goldsmith, Steiner, Korngold, Rozsa etc.) it’s certainly not because I don’t enjoy them or appreciate their work; I’ve listened to, and love the music of all of them, but these scores are ones that really resonate with me on a particular level.
OK, this video has been around for a while now but it’s still a beautiful clip. Directed by Spike Jonze as an intro to Lakai’s skateboarding movie “Fully Flared”, it features the M83 track “Lower your eyelids to die with the sun” from their excellent album “Before the dawn heals us”. If you like cinematic visuals with atmospheric music, check it out.
Here’s a post about 10 films which were massively influential on my decision to write music for moving images. I could easily have picked another 50 films, and some of these might seem a bit obvious, but they’re all classic examples of what inspired me (and continue to inspire me) to write music for visuals. So, not in any order at all:
The Taking Of Pelham 123 (1974)
Director: Joseph Sargent
Composer: David Shire
Get it from Amazon
David Shire: Main Title
Massively funky & gritty 70’s score with an unbelievably dirty low-end in the horns and fat bass ostinatos. One of my all time favourites. Aiming for a sound that was “New York jazz-oriented, hard edged”, Shire ended up basing the score on the twelve tone method which gave the sound a kind of organised chaos without a definite tonal centre. Basically, a dirty funk score that just tears it up. There’s something about the vibe and music of movies from this period that I’ll always love: The French Connection, Serpico, Dirty Harry, Capricorn One etc. I guess it also started me off on my quest for collecting blaxploitation soundtracks and rare funk/library music. A hugely underrated composer, I also love and highly recommend Shire’s haunting, melancholy, slightly discordant piano-based score for Coppola’s excellent The Conversation starring Gene Hackman (1974).
Memento (2000)
Director: Christopher Nolan
Composer: David Julyan
Get it from Amazon
David Julyan: Memento Main Theme
Proof that every so often, independent cinema can come up with a modern classic on a shoestring budget (well, $5m, but that’s allegedly peanuts by industry standards). David Julyan’s score to Memento is a fitting combination of glitchy nervous sound effects and slow haunting melancholic strings (which became a recurring sound in much of his successive work on other films with Chris Nolan, eg The Prestige, Insomnia etc.) For a while it seemed to be almost de facto for independent directors to cite this score as an influence in what they were looking for when on the lookout for a composer. In fact it still crops up as a musical inspiration on many film job briefs to this day, the sign of a highly effective score.
Naked (1993)
Director: Mike Leigh
Composer: Andrew Dickson
Andrew Dickson: Naked Title Music
Still my favourite Mike Leigh film, Naked is, let’s be frank, a fairly bleak tale. Dark, brutal and unsettling but bristling with amazing fast-paced dialogue and stellar performances from David Thewlis and Katrin Cartlidge (much of the final dialogue was improvised in character during rehearsals). The music by Andrew Dickson, an English composer and longtime musical associate of Leigh’s (scoring Meantime, High Hopes, Secrets and Lies and Vera Drake) is seemingly impossible to track down. Lots of mournful and desolate violins, cellos and harp, it’s a beautiful and dark companion to the stark and uncompromising subject matter.
Solaris (2002)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Composer: Cliff Martinez
Get it from Amazon
Cliff Martinez: Is That What Everybody Wants
Perfectly matching the understated visuals and narrative of the film, Cliff Martinez’ score is an exercise in pure artistic synchronicity. Using Javanese gamelan, celesta, muted steel drums and slow shifting tone colors along with more traditional strings and horns, the score perfectly captures the remoteness and subtle poignancy of the film’s narrative. A bit of a departure from the former drummer for Lydia Lunch/Captain Beefheart/Red Hot Chili Peppers. It’s a beautiful and sublime piece of work and like the score for Memento above, still a touchstone soundtrack for indie directors looking to appropriate some of that ambient existential angst for their own projects.
Assault On Precinct 13 (1976) / Halloween (1978) / The Thing (1982) / Escape From New York (1981)
Director: John Carpenter
Composer: John Carpenter (Ennio Morricone for The Thing)
Get it from Amazon
John Carpenter: Assault On Precinct 13 (Main Title)
I love John Carpenter - but I’m not even sure why - his films are often extremely patchy in quality (apart from Halloween which is definitive) but I think it’s just the overall atmosphere and auteur spirit of them. I have distinct memories of watching his films on VHS when I was a kid and there’s just something very moody about his opening credit sequences that take me right back to being 13 again. It’s that whole minimal atmopsherics thing (which was actually largely due to budget and time constraints at the time) that gives me the chills. I couldn’t really pick one film in particular, but the scores for the above four are probably my favourites. Maybe Escape From New York for consistency, big warm vintage synths and lyrics like “…stab a priest with a fork, and you’ll spend your vacation in New York”.
Blade Runner (1982)
Director: Ridley Scott
Composer: Vangelis
Get it from Amazon
Vangelis: Fading Away
I suppose it’s a bit of an obvious contender but this score is just so damned evocative and lush. And I’m not a particularly big Vangelis fan either (a bit too new-age for me sometimes). But as with the John Carpenter scores above, it could be the powerful childhood memories attached to watching the film that trigger things in me. Either way it’s another great example of music matching the visuals perfectly. So much so that I tracked down several other versions of this score, just so I could get all the extra tracks that you don’t get on the original release version (the Amazon box set link above is excellent and contains 3 CDs with 36 tracks).
The Shining (1980) / 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Composer: Various Artists
Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind: Rocky Mountains
It was a toss up between these two Kubrick masterpieces. In the end I went for The Shining, but both are equally fantastic combinations of image and music. Stanley Kubrick had a tendency to not use one specific composer but rather just the individual pieces of music that fit the film, regardless of who wrote it. Using a mix of experimental electronic Moog soundscapes and modernist classical music, The Shining features artists including Wendy Carlos, Rachel Elkind, Kryzysztof Penderecki, Gyorgi Ligeti and Bela Bartok to create a deathlessly iconic soundtrack and movie. There’s a continuous unsettling air of dread and disturbing atmosphere throughout the entire film, from the initial flyover of the Rocky Mountains to Jack’s gradual breakdown into insanity through to the (literally) chilling finale. It’s one of those films that are just inseparable from the soundtrack.
Pi: Faith In Chaos (1998)
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Composer: Clint Mansell
Get it from Amazon
Clint Mansell: 2 Pi R
Another pivotal moment (for me at least) in modern independent cinema, Aronofsky’s moody and atmospheric film probably has a few holes in the mathematical technicalities (”A paranoid mathematician searches for a key number that will unlock the universal patterns found in nature”) but is full of beautiful grainy noir visuals, conspiracies and Clint Mansell’s hard edged distinctive electronic music (Mansell was frontman with late 80s alt/techno/industrial band Pop Will Eat Itself and has gone on to become a highly regarded modern film composer). Also, another good example of a successful director/composer partnership (Mansell went on to score Aronofsky’s Requiem For A Dream and The Fountain).
Ghost Dog (1999)
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Composer: RZA
Get it from Amazon
RZA: Ghost Dog Main Titles
When RZA nails it, he really does nail it. Although much of his work can be a bit patchy, on Ghost Dog he gets it right from the off (and some of the Afro Samurai soundtrack is also pretty cool). Those ghostly lo-fi hip hop beats and spectral string samples are his trademark sound and put here to stellar use against Jarmusch’s existential story of modern-day assassins and Japanese mythology. The opening titles set the subdued tone perfectly for the rest of the movie - I suppose I definitely have a pull towards films where not much appears to be happening on the surface. Also, I’ve been listening fervently to hip hop for over 20 years now and it’s always been a perfect genre for cinematic imagery and wordplay - yet it still amazes me that even today, there are a few who refuse to even acknowledge it as a valid musical form, especially other film composers who would prefer it to be all quill and manuscript still. Do wake me up when you’ve caught up.
The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2007)
Director: Andrew Dominik
Composer: Nick Cave and Warren Ellis
Get it from Amazon
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis: Falling
After a short period of being generally uninspired by recent films and scores, this beautiful elegiac and atmospheric film brought it all back home again. Again, it’s one of those films where large sections just drift by with not much apparently happening, but the camera is allowed to linger on the actors’ faces and stunning photography. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis provide a haunting and intimate close-sounding score of piano, violin and guitar. Brad Pitt was on fine form in the film but I’d say the show was completely stolen by Casey Affleck who was mesmerising as Robert Ford and rightly nominated for several awards. One of the best films I’ve seen in a long time.
OK, that’ll do for now. Obviously, the above 10 are just an arbitrary selection of some of my favourites, so here’s a few more that could have been contenders:
Monster’s Ball : Asche & Spencer
The Hours/Koyaanisqatsi : Philip Glass
The Player/American Beauty : Thomas Newman
Syriana : Alexandre Desplat:
Alien/Capricorn One : Jerry Goldsmith
Red Dragon : Danny Elfman
Taxi Driver/Psycho : Bernard Herrmann
Thunderball/You Only Live Twice : John Barry
Amelie : Yann Tiersen
Get Carter : Roy Budd
Lawrence Of Arabia : Maurice Jarre
Paris, Texas : Ry Cooder
Three Days Of The Condor - Dave Grusin
The Usual Suspects - John Ottman
My good mate Mr Bennett has just announced some upcoming gigs for November through to January in Bristol and Brighton. If you’re a fan of songwriters like Leonard Cohen, Dylan, Lou Reed or JJ Cale I reckon Mr B will be right up yer alley. Dutch magazine “OOR” probably sum up the nation’s favourite displaced Canadian best with their concise review: “Wow!”
Regular listeners at thebluemask.com will know I’ve had the pleasure of working with Mr B on many occasions (some of which you can find in my shop - there’s a free mp3 download in there too) and hopefully we’ll be having some new tracks up for yer listening pleasure real soon.
For those unfamiliar with Mr Bennett’s dulcet tones, check out this collection of short preview clips below or follow the links to Mr B’s online worlds where you can get the full skinny, albums, mugs with his face on, faces with his mug on etc.
www.mrbennett.com
www.myspace.com/planetbennett
If you’re in the Bristol or Brighton areas on these dates, I’d highly recommend checking out a slice of the Bennett pie. Mr B never fails to produce the goods. I’m definitely going to be there for a helping at the Brighton date. Tell him TBM sent you and get a free strange look:
Nov 2 - Sunday Night Music Project
www.barbs3.co.uk
Monthly acoustic night feat Mr B
Bar BS3 2EA (7pm)
Nov 3 - Mr B supports Eugene McGuinness
The Louisiana,
Bristol (8pm)
www.thelouisiana.net
Dec 14 - The Hanbury Ballroom,
Brighton (supporting The Mountain Firework Company)
www.thehanburyclub.com
Jan 18 (2009) - The Folk House,
Bristol Acoustic Music Night
www.bristolfolkhouse.co.uk
This is the trailer for the new Watchmen movie coming out in 2009 but with a track of mine in place of the Smashing Pumpkins track that’s on the original. I was working on a new track that coincidentally seemed to fit the atmosphere and drama of the film’s trailer so I tried it with the visuals. With a bit of sympathetic editing of the music, it seemed to fit pretty well. I’d be interested to hear comments.
You can buy the track Scorpio as an mp3 download from my shop.
The movie looks promising from the trailer but I’m gonna hold off judgement until the film’s out next year. I gave up counting on trailers as a guide to the actual film a long time ago; if you can’t get at least 1 minute of good content out of a film for a trailer, it’s gotta be an absolute dog of a film.
Update: If you want to embed Youtube videos on your site, but always force them to play at higher quality (audio and visuals), simply add the following tag to the end of your Youtube embed code: &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 and voila! Hi quality playback with audio now in stereo.
BBC documentary in 6 parts about Harry Partch, an ‘idiosyncratic’ composer and instrument maker who devised his own microtonal musical scales:
I’ve just released a new low cost downloadable royalty-free collection of music aimed at film and documentary makers. Royalty-Free Film & Documentary Music Vol. 1: Piano & Atmospheric Beds (snappy title!) is a collection of specially composed dark piano and atmospheric ambient soundscapes ideal for film and visuals that need a suitably dark musical background. The album is 45 minutes long and can be bought from my download shop:
Royalty-Free Film & Documentary Music Vol. 1: Piano & Atmospheres
Purchase of the album download grants the user a license to use the music in any film, documentary or other visual project without the need for any further payment. So once you’ve bought this, you can use it in as many of your film and documentary projects as you like, whether it’s for festivals, trailers, or broadcast.
The idea was to provide film and documentary makers with something that hopefully has more of an atmospheric or cinematic feel to it than stock library music but to keep it good quality at a reasonable price. Listen to some preview clips below:
I expect there’ll be more volumes to come in future. I’ve got some ideas for themes but I’ll wait and see what I can fit in around other projects.
Edit: A further 20% off the price until the end of November - get it now for just £19.99!
I’ve just been made aware of a website that has taken complete sections of code and content from my own website without even bothering to change the layout. It’s actually a verbatim copy of my content right down to my list of influences and favourites. The only thing changed is my name to hers.
I’ve decided to remove the name and website of the guilty party as she’s now removed my stolen content which was my main issue (though I do have saved copies of the site in case it comes to light again). An apology would have been nice rather than the lies I was given but there you go. And I will be keeping an eye out - if I catch her doing anything like that again, I guarantee this will become a legal matter.
This isn’t the first time it’s happened. A few months back there was a French composer who did exactly the same thing, stealing the complete layout and content of my website. As soon as my solicitor began threatening legal action he took it straight down.
To be honest I’m getting a bit pissed off with people stealing from the hard work I put in to this website. I’ve got better things to do than monitoring the web to see who’s passing themselves off as me today. Like writing music. The next time I find any kind of copyright infringement on any of my work, it’s going straight to litigation.
This sort of copyright plagiarism is unfortunately rife these days. I know of several other musicians who’ve experienced similar situations to a more extreme degree, with people stealing their actual music and trying to claim it as their own. There are steps you can take if you’ve experienced copyright or IP infringement. Here’s a couple of useful sites or get in touch and I’ll see if I can offer any advice:
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/what-do-you-do-when-someone-steals-your-content/
Writer Harlan Ellison draws some parallels about (not) working for free that many media composers will be familiar with.
