Rock Star Scores

When considering Film Scores, most people are immediately drawn to the big names, Ennio Morricone, John Williams and maybe even Danny Elfman.

However it appears that more recently musicians and in particular rock musicians are being given the opportunity to work with films and in particular on the scores themselves. In certain cases it appears as though musicians are becoming more respected for their work on film scores than on their more traditional back catalogue.

It is becoming increasingly usual for musicians who already have a record contract and work to do to make time for the opportunity to score a film. This is not a new concept, Tangerine Dream have scored over 20 films in the last 35 years and we cannot forget (as much as we would like to) how well publicised Badly Drawn Boy’s score for About A Boy was. However it is more recently that this has been happening regularly.

Recently Trent Reznor announced that he was going to be working with Atticus Ross once again to provide the score for the American version of the Stieg Larsson phenomenon The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo directed by David Fincher. This looks to be the beginning of a relationship between Fincher and Reznor following the huge amount of acclaim Reznor has garnered following his soundtrack for Fincher’s latest movie and award magnet The Social Network. After marvelling at the use of music in The Social Network the emergence of a friendship between two very creative minds from different mediums.
This revelation only becomes marvellous when you consider: Who better than the creative force behind Nine Inch Nails to create the music to follow isolated hacker Lisbeth Salander?

Slightly less recently, Tron: Legacy was unleashed into our multiplexes with a huge amount of emphasis on the SOUNDTRACK BY DAFT PUNK. For of all that films misgivings, the fact that El Duderino was in the wrong movie and Michael Sheen’s Aladdin Sane haircut the one thing that has emerged universally acclaimed is the score. Daft Punk who since the late 1990′s have been merging music with technology seem to have been the perfect selection for creating the atmosphere for a world within a computer game.

Clint Mansell is the most extraordinary example of how an individual initially known for his work with a mediocre Indie band, can continue to create music to accompany films that will be remembered and praised long after people have forgotten Pop Will Eat Itself. Mansell’s work, in particular with Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler) is sublime, with Mansell’s work enhancing Aronofsky’s incredible and often paranoid visions. Mansell has worked on every one of Aronofsky’s films and it is so easy to see why, Mansell makes music that can make your skin itch just listening to it or make washing up look grandiose. Lux Aeterna from Requiem for a Dream and Death is the Road to Awe designed for The Fountain are incredible pieces of music on their own. Mansell has worked with other directors, most successfully with David Bowie’s son Duncan Jones on his Directorial debut Moon which was largely applauded for it’s score. Mansell was going to work with Jones on his new Sci Fi film Source Code, but this fell through due to Mansell’s duties on scoring Aronofsky’s Black Swan. On the matter Jones has said “Darren and I need to agree to some kind of divorce settlement to see which of us gets Clint on weekends.”

When not being guitarist for Radiohead, Johnny Greenwood has received substantial praise for his work scoring films. Most recently the BBC Concert Orchestra’s “composer-in-residence” worked on Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. Greenwood’s score seems to bring the barren Californian landscape alive, the deserts seem to rise and fall with his music, the drills dig in time with the orchestra and as the oil pours from the ground Greenwood’s score bursts into life. Cruelly neglected by the Academy due to it’s use of pre-existing material such as the piece Convergence from Greenwood’s earlier scoring project Bodysong.

On the horizon The Chemical Brothers are booked to score the Joe Wright (Sense and Sensibility, Atonement, The Soloist) directed film Hanna, the tale of a girl trained and taught by her ex-CIA father and then released with a mission into deepest darkest Finland. Atonement, it is not. However the very idea that The Chemical Brothers are at this moment creating a kinetic and jarring score to accompany some, probably mental, fight scene should make you drool with excitement. Most exciting is the idea that the most creative and innovative members of both the music and film industries are beginning to work together to create such incredible results.

Words: Joshua Hammond