THE HERO

DANIEL PEMBERTON THE BRITISH COMPOSER FINDS ALL THE RIGHT NOTES…

Alot of people think film music has to be big orchestras and big melodies,’ says ace composer Daniel Pemberton. ‘But it can be so many different things.’ From writing themes for Love Island and Peep Show to scoring The Counsellor, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Michael Mann’s upcoming Ferrari, Pemberton, 45, has proved this time and again. Now that’s music to our ears…

You started composing for TV, including the first season of C4’s Peep Show and that popping sound between scenes, right? Here’s an interesting fact: a lot of that was recorded down a well in Majorca! I was on a family holiday. And there was a well in the back of the garden. A big stone well that had a crazy echo. If I find a cool sound, I’m always trying to catch it. And so I recorded all these noises all down a well! That became the basis of the Peep Show sound.

Is it true you started working out of your bedroom? I’m still kind of working that way. I mean, one of the things I’m most proud of in my career is the fact that… I’ve gone to America [to work] but I still do everything in my flat in London. I write on a very, very messy desk. And it’s the same desk that I wrote a bunch of TV shows. Great British Menu was written in the same way that Spider-Verse was written!

What do you see as your big break? Was it Ridley Scott’s The Counsellor? The Counsellor was a really big one, because it was the first time I had been seen, so to speak, by

Hollywood. And then straight after that, I had two movies. I had The Man from U.N.C.L.E with Guy Ritchie and Steve Jobs with Danny Boyle. Both very different kinds of movies and different approaches. But both really important moments. And Danny as a director is probably the most focused and detailed on music. And he instilled a spirit of freedom and creativity that’s been really powerful for me throughout my career.

How did it feel creating the music for Into the Spider-Verse? Now and again, you work on a film and you’re like, ‘This is really, really special.’ And I remember working on Spider-Verse thinking, ‘This is so groundbreaking. This is going to blow people’s minds.’ And when it came out, the weird thing is, it didn’t blow up. Everyone now thinks that movie was huge. But when it came out, it was a slow burn. With the second film… we all felt under so much pressure to really deliver and expand on what the first film did.

‘GREAT BRITISH MENU WAS WRITTEN IN THE SAME WAY AS SPIDER-VERSE ’

How do you feel about completing the trilogy now with Beyond the Spider-Verse? It’s almost like Alien and Aliens. Or Terminator and Terminator 2. Both those movies’ sequels took the idea from the first one and expanded it to such a big universe. Now the trouble with both Alien and Terminator is the third ones were rubbish. So I’ve got to make sure it doesn’t happen in this case!

You’ve also just composed the score for Michael Mann’s upcoming Ferrari. I came on incredibly late. And I got asked to score the racing scenes, because Michael wasn’t happy with how they were working. I wrote a lot of high-energy strings, above the car engines, and then low textures underneath, so they would fit in the score. Michael loved it. And he’s like, ‘Oh, my God, you totally transformed the sequences. Could you score the rest of the movie?’ I did the whole movie in a week!

Who are your favourite composers working now? Right now, there are two composers who I’d call my nemeses, because their stuff’s fucking great: Ludwig Göransson [Oppenheimer and The Mandalorian] and Nicholas Britell. He did Succession, he does Barry Jenkins’ films. They’re both friends of mine. And they’re both annoyingly good.

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