PAUL HARTNOLL | INTERVIEW
As half of sibling duo Orbital, Paul Hartnoll has brought a cinematic depth to techno music for 30 years. No surprise, then, that he’s branched into soundtrack work – specifically Concrete Plans, a gritty thriller set in the Welsh mountains. Carl Marsh found out more.
When you were asked to create the score for Concrete Plans [pictured below], did director Will Jewell give you some remit as to how he wanted his vision set to music, or free rein?
Apart from the mood direction, which is the key really, stylistically Will left me to my own devices. The only steer he gave me was whispering the word “guitar, guitar…” now and then. So I wrote it with fake guitar here and there, and recorded a friend of mine, Andy Britten – a great virtuoso guitar player who I’ve used before – at the end to keep the costs down. That real injection of freshness right at the end was great for Will and me.
But apart from that, Will just said – do what it is that you do, that’s why I’m asking you to do it. He got me on board at least a year before it was even starting to get made – we’d meet, have a coffee or beer and chat about hopefully getting the film off the ground.
Did you get to see rough cuts as the film was being made to help you with scoring respective scenes?
Will was sending me daily rushes now and then to get me into the spirit of it, because I’d read the script at least a year before and it had had a couple of revisions over the year. So it was fascinating to watch it develop. I did do a couple of grand gesture sort of themes early on, like the pastoral guitar – I did that to some of the opening sequences and then cut it to fit the film.
With the film, how many music tracks did you create?
I can tell you exactly! I’ve been sat around working all of this out, as I was about to send it to my publisher, so I’ve got documents of it in front of me, and it’s about 26. I say “about” because there were a couple of ones chucked in, but yeah, around 26 bits of music.
It might be somewhat selfish of me, but a big fan of Orbital I anticipate the movie more knowing you’re involved. Still, the film is quite dark at times, and you capture that atmosphere remarkably well – how hard was it to set music to scenes?
I would agree [laughs]. For me writing scores, if there’s a choice of two people on screen – someone angry and someone scared – I’ll always score the scared. I’ll consistently score the fear because the angry person is there to get you as an audience member fired up – get you scared. So if you score the fear, then you’re playing into what your director is – I presume, anyway; this is why I watch films – trying to get the audience to feel.
I always score sadness as well: if there’s a hint of sadness in a scene, I will gravitate towards it. In the past, I’ve done that and the director has said, “no, don’t do that – what are you doing?” And I’ve said, “I’m scoring the sadness of that character”. And he’d tell me he wanted it to be scary to match this thing.
It’s just different approaches – it all depends on who you get to direct it as to what you do. I always felt like Ennio Morricone did that. He scored sadness in a lot of spaghetti western films, as they’re quite gruesome, but there’s a sadness to it. A whole family is about to die by Lee Van Cleef’s hand, or something like that. And it’s not fear: he makes it feel really sad, so you start crying. That’s my approach. It just adds a sort of tenderness to it.
Concrete Plans is out now on all digital platforms via Signature Entertainment. Info: here
words CARL MARSH