nightwaves was A horror movie that met the unfortunate fate of lacking distribution and the eventual drying up of funding. I started working on it immediately after receiving the script, which was a really cozy yet appropriately scary siren-based horror story set in Brighton, UK. The style of music was my most challenging to emulate so far – the brief called for 80s Italian horror and tangerine dream.
My starting point stemmed from the realization that, like musicians from any age, film composers of the era I was to emulate were trying to emulate artists from the previous decade, so a sort of modernised (for the 80s) 70s light jazz, with 80s production techniques and some process oriented sound and techniques that became apparent later on.
The working sketch for the main theme.
I wanted to a fast arpeggio reminiscent of the beginning of Fratres by Arvo Pärt, which has been used in other films, but with a strong focus on overtones as a sort of counterpoint. Hydrophone-like synth on top became a placeholder that got stuck – it kind of works, despite its shrill quality. I recorded all of it with my computer keyboard as the input at the airport after working out the melody on the free airport lounge piano.
the result of Walking bass and letting the period appropriate synth decide where to go. The last work I finished before getting the message that the project was now on hold indefinitely. written far into my sketching phase, recording and finishing it took scarcely longer than the time it took to play it. I had a template mixing line for consistency, and impulse responses that worked for all the synths.
This was about the time when working on horror themes started to wear on me. the ambient nature of most of the other works I had made was more ambient or quirky than what registers as scary to me, but this Nyman copy melody line was just too creepy to work on for me. All the instruments are the Arturia modular V, except the guitars.
this section was used during fades when characters were talking, and then gets insistent when the characters begin driving. utilitarian more than innovative, but effective. Not a copy of anything in particular, though I’m sure one of the movie soundtracks I was steeping myself in at the time has a reminiscent chord line somewhere.
Ambient music for a movie that sometimes forgets that it’s a horror. A surprising amount of manual automation went in to making the “beats,” and the, hopefully evident, intention, is for a little more stumbling and organic an effect than if it was made with a preset.
Basti Aker 