Composer Benjamin Wallfisch has been a very busy guy lately. Over the past 18 months he’s composed the scores to Hidden Figures, A Cure for Wellness, Annabelle: Creation, IT, and Blade Runner 2049, and he worked with Hans Zimmer on some key pieces of the Dunkirk score. Working on just one or two of these films would be challenging enough, but that Wallfisch not only lent his talents to the aforementioned films but crafted unique, memorable scores for each one is mighty impressive.

Blade Runner 2049 may have been the most challenging of the bunch, as Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer boarded the project relatively later in the process when director Denis Villeneuve opted to part ways with the film’s original composer, Johann Johannsson. But Wallfisch and Zimmer were able to craft not just one of the best scores of the year, but one of the most thrilling sci-fi scores in recent memory. Their work on Blade Runner 2049 is dynamic, surprising, exciting, and deeply emotional, offering a wide range of soundscapes that track the journey of Ryan Gosling’s K.

So when I was offered the chance to speak with Wallfisch recently about his work on Blade Runner 2049, I jumped at it. During our discussion, Wallfisch revealed how he and Zimmer came onto the project through editor and friend Joe Walker and discussed how early discussions with Walker and Villeneuve shaped the entire idea for the score. Wallfisch also discussed the influence of Vangelis and trying to pay homage to his work on the original Blade Runner while crafting something different, and how the process of scoring Blade Runner 2049 was a lot of trial and error, with score for entire sequences removed from the film. Wallfisch also talked about the surprising origin of that memorable motorcycle rev.

Wallfisch is full of insight into the process that gave us this incredible score, and I do think fans of the film and its music will find it insightful. Read the full conversation below, and for even more from Wallfisch check out my interview with the composer about his work on It and A Cure for Wellness right here.

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Image via Alcon Entertainment / Warner Bros.

Now I’ve seen IT so I have to congratulate you on scaring the shit out of me. So thank you for that.

BENJAMIN WALLFISCH: (Laughs) It was a pleasure.

That movie is huge. It’s one of the biggest hits of the year. How does it feel to see a film like that explode?

WALLFISCH: It’s a joy and I’m just so happy to be part of something which connected with so many people. It’s one of those movies that I feel lucky to have been a part of.

Well, it’s a job well done. And it’s great to see a lot of people connecting to it. Moving into Blade Runner 2049, which I absolutely loved. I saw it twice in three days because I wanted to go back and see it in IMAX. Were you guys kind of involved in the IMAX of it at all and kind of the mixing of that part?

WALLFISCH: The incredible sound mixing team led by re-recording mixer Ron Bartlett was responsible for turning our 5.1 mixes into IMAX and Dolby Atmos. And, yeah, it was one of the best mixes I’ve ever attended. Just astonishing work from Ron and the whole team.

Yeah, it’s really incredible. And I know that you and Hans kind of came on somewhat late to this project. Another composer was working on it before. So how did this kind of come about for you? What was the call like that you got to work on Blade Runner?

WALLFISCH: Hans and I both know [editor] Joe Walker well and he reached out to Hans when they were making decisions to explore a different musical direction. Hans called me into the room and the four of us just started a conversation about our shared love of the original Blade Runner, and what this new version might need. We spoke at length about how Vangelis is so intertwined with the very fabric of the original movie, and how we could acknowledge that and still do something new that works for this story, 30 years on.

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Image via Alcon Entertainment / Warner Bros.

And we just went from there. It was a wonderful period of discovery with the filmmakers. Hans and I just finding themes and then suites were written and we just sort of jumped straight into it with no hesitation. There is something about how this film explores those almost impossible existential themes of ‘what is the human soul’, ‘what is consciousness’—the magnitude of those thoughts gave our early experiments a certain musical attitude—we had to keep it simple and ask questions more than provide answers. There needed to be a clarity and simplicity of approach to the material, in the context of a real complexity of sonic—always inspired by the incredible visual spectacle… and keeping the audience fully in the unfolding puzzle at all times, allowing K to follow his path in this ever expanding maze, and be a musical partner on that journey.

When you guys first came on, did you listen to any of what the previous composer had done or was it very much just starting from scratch?

WALLFISCH: We were starting from scratch. I’m a huge fan of Johann’s music, but we deliberately started with a completely blank slate. If there was a model, it was Vangelis, and finding a way to reinvent that musical attitude and approach so it felt right for this new story.

One of the things that I was struck by is that, I mean the score is incredible and it has this dynamism to it. Kind of melding sound design and score a bit, if that makes any sense. Were you guys kind of approaching it that way?

WALLFISCH: Denis’s filmmaking style is so vivid and has such powerful emotional impact just on a visual level that we found a more textural approach at times was the best way to be a partner to his approach. The cinematography of this movie alone is so visceral that sometimes you need to give the audience a moment to take things in musically. There were times where it would have been tempting to lay over a big melody over one of those breathtaking images, but we would have risked taking the audience out of that moment.

Having said that, we were able to use themes in this score, at carefully placed moments. There is a four note tune which you hear over the opening shots of the movie, that we call the ‘horse theme’ or ‘soul theme’. The melody takes on different guises, expands and contracts as the story unfolds and we hear it mainly when K makes a significant discovery. It’s no coincidence that this melody is built on just four notes, corresponding to the four acids in the DNA strand that is crucial to the story. The idea of complexity being built on immense simplicity. There’s a certain beauty and truth to that.

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Image via Alcon Entertainment / Warner Bros.

Another ‘theme’ is actually a chord progression, a set of processed piano chords which you hear over the opening titles which we called our ‘puzzle theme’. Whenever there’s another piece of the puzzle that propels K’s discoveries and sense of personal crisis, we hear those chords as a reminder that there’s a sense of fate to the maze he is in: that it will eventually come to an end and he will understand the truth. The acoustic piano was heavily processed using granular synthesis as a kind of analog to the idea of something natural being completely transformed, almost like a replicant.

We also had what we called the ‘creation theme’ which you hear first when we see the birth of the new model replicant in Wallace’s headquarters. You hear overdubbed double basses playing chords, very high in their range. It’s unnatural and very uncomfortable to play that high for a bass player, but it is also very beautiful and fragile. Again, further allusions to what we are seeing on screen. Something beautiful but at the same time totally unnatural. We hear this music again when Rachel appears towards the end of the movie.

It was important to place our main musical motifs and themes in ways which were both very structured but also with a sense of freedom—almost unpredictable. There’s a wonderful improvised feel to much of the original Vangelis score, and we wanted to somehow capture that spirit. And there were also discoveries we made where silence was the better option, for example, in the incredible walk through Las Vegas scene just before he meets Deckard. Originally that was quite heavily scored with very thick and expansive melodic approach. In the end what worked the best were just three immense bass drum hits, the sound of his footsteps, his breathing, the bees and eventually a distant piano. It just worked so much better to have that minimal approach, and also the unpredictability of those huge drums, keeping the audience slightly on edge, like K is on screen.

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Image via Alcon Entertainment / Warner Bros.

I guess you could say we were in the laboratory trying things and discovering what the film would accept. And the film rejected a lot. It rejected the orchestra outright. Whenever we tried anything orchestral it just didn’t work. Interestingly when we adapted the more melodic approach of the original Vangelis score, that didn’t really work either because the story’s so different. It’s a very personal story in so many ways and our melodies needed to fit with that in terms of their simplicity.

A lot of what we did had to be quite subliminal so when it becomes huge it can truly scale up to what was required and the audience could feel the full impact of that, for example in the fight scene in the Las Vegas penthouse and of course the final Sea Wall sequence at the end of the movie. That was a perfect example of when Hans comes along and just completely changed something and improved it beyond recognition. That scene was originally scored with a full-on action cue, which after about three iterations we realized wasn’t going to work. We knew where we were going because the moment where Luv is killed by K, that section of music was from an early suite which the filmmakers themselves placed and which stayed there throughout the whole process. But getting there in a way that made the whole sequence feel like a true climax to the story was very tricky. And when Hans suggested that the whole 10 minute scene should have a singular, melodic approach, with our main Horse Theme as the central element, that’s when the music just felt glued to what was on the screen. Moments like that are one of the reasons I love collaborating with Hans - there are these sparks of inspiration that come at you full force and things just fall into place as a result.

I was going to ask, I know you’ve been working with Hans for a long time and he’s been your mentor, but what is it like co-composing a score? Especially working on a film this big and then also Hans is on tour in the middle of it, which I’m sure is crazy.

WALLFISCH: This score would be totally different without Hans’ involvement, there’s no question. His influence both in terms of the core material - the ‘Mesa’ theme for example, the scale of the sonic production and the overall musical attitudes, it’s very, very strong. Sure, he was on tour for much of the process, but we were in very close contact and exchanging ideas throughout. Working with Hans is like walking into a whirlwind of ideas that challenge you, surprise you, inspire you and make you investigate. He has a way of inviting filmmakers into a kind of band situation where any idea is allowed. It’s that kind of space. He’s said to me - when you’re in a band, in a way it’s not so much about how you play it’s about how you listen. And that goes both ways for us when we work together - like discovering the diamonds in the rough. So we have a shorthand now after all these years of working together - it’s a conversation that is endlessly fascinating, very challenging but we’re always both after the same thing; which in this case was a score which helps tell this powerful, complex and visually huge story in such a way that just allowed the audience to connect with it on a personal level.

I have to know, whose idea was it to use the motorcycle or engine revs? Because that was amazing.

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Image via Alcon Entertainment / Warner Bros.

WALLFISCH: (Laughs) Ah. That’s actually Denis’ idea. We called it a motorcycle after we made it. It’s actually a crazy process of sound distortion. We started out with a male choir which we heavily saturated, granulated, put through a filter LFO, octavers, and then fed all that to a pitch altering module with a random LFO moving the pitch all over the place in an unpredictable way. It’s part of the sonic anarchy in the score. Something Denis said from the very beginning was the score needed to have a punk attitude. He reminded us of that in almost every meeting. So this motorcycle sound was definitely a strong allusion to that.

Well it’s great. It’s really unsettling and kind of like pounding. I mean that’s one of the things that I really like about this score is I knew that you guys were going to be drawing possibly from Vangelis and kind of making it sound a little bit like that. But it’s incredibly versatile. It turns hypnotic and then it’s pulsating and then it’s haunting. And it’s deeply emotional. Was that a conscious decision to not just kind of do the Vangelis thing all the way through or was a lot of that a surprise?

WALLFISCH: I guess it was about finding a way to ensure that the Vangelis Blade Runner sound was at the heart of the score, in its DNA, but most importantly do something new—this score is a sibling of the original I guess. Just the cinematography and editing alone required a range of different musical approaches—from the central ‘horse theme’ the rhythmic pulsing drums, always in asymmetrical rhythms, the tenderness of Joi’s theme—the incredible visual power and rhythm of the cut led so many of the choices we made. K’s journey, where he almost is forced to become more human as he uncovers the truth allowed us to always have a point of focus even as the sound worlds of the score shifted and evolved.

In terms of theme, was there one particular theme that was hardest to pin down, or was there one kind of sticking point you guys spent a lot of time trying to hammer out and then you had kind of a eureka moment on?

WALLFISCH: Well, I think one of the hardest scenes to crack for sure was the climax of the film, the Sea Wall sequence. It was just like throwing away everything you know about action scoring and inventing something completely new. That was the task there because the film ultimately rejected the ‘classic’ action cue approach you would hear in so many other films. That moment in the score needed to feel like a catharsis, and almost with a sense of fate. It plays out in such a way that the two movies are finally allowed to connect in the scene that follows, so I guess what was important was almost a sense of musical inevitability. A kind of emotional truth—something simple and as elemental as the huge waves crashing all around them. It took a long time to figure that sequence out, but when we did, it kind of made the rest of the score make sense—the logic of it.

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Image via Alcon Entertainment / Warner Bros.

The whole process was one of discovery, and within just a few days of collaborating we already had around 15 minutes of music written away from picture, much of which stayed in the movie untouched. That’s what’s so inspiring about working with such a visionary director as Denis—his whole way of working just allows you to become your best self whilst challenging your own safety zones. I’ve personally never done a score with no orchestra - that’s my safety zone - but nonetheless I found co-scoring this film almost only with synthesizers a very fluent experience because there was always this powerful clarity of approach and immense generosity of spirit from Denis guiding us all every step of the way. He’s a true genius and one of the warmest people you’ll ever meet.

As you said before, there was a scene that had score in it and the score was taken out. And that’s another one of the things I was struck by is that the score is—I mean I loved the score and I definitely felt its prominence. But then there are these really big scenes that you would expect score to be in and there’s no score in it at all, and it works so well.

WALLFISCH: Right

How was it finding that balance? Did that only happen once where you wrote score and it was pulled out or was it just kind of a process each time?

WALLFISCH: It happened a couple of times—certainly the walk through Vegas and also the beautiful scene towards the beginning of the movie where Joi comes out into the rain. In the end we found that just the sound of the rain and the gentle announcements emanating from a loudspeaker far away somewhere did enough to set the emotional tone for that scene, with just a few piano notes coming in and out to connect the two characters, almost like children discovering something for the first time.

The other moments where the movie moves away from score and leans more heavily on other elements I think were carefully planned early on; for example that whole sequence in Las Vegas where you don’t hear any score for about 15 minutes but instead we have classic Elvis and Sinatra songs. So when the score comes back it has to do so with real purpose. Moments like that allowed us to almost make a rhythm of silence in the overall score’s structure. Where if you zoom out and see that big-scale ‘macro’ structure of where cues come and go, and then zoom in to moments in the score itself where that same structure is heard on a much smaller scale. And of course being led by the incredible rhythm of Joe’s cut. Especially with such a huge canvass that this film has, being led by that internal rhythm Joe created cut was very important.

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Image via Alcon Entertainment / Warner Bros.

Obviously it was a herculean undertaking, but you worked on IT and Annabelle and Dunkirk and A Cure for Wellness. Was it difficult juggling all of these this year or was a lot of that work done —did they kind of go in a row or were there some you were working on simultaneously?

WALLFISCH: I’ve been very lucky this year in that as well as there being these incredible movies that kind of flowed from one to another, there were also three movies I’ve worked on in previous years that came out in 2017: A Cure For Wellness, Bitter Harvest and Mully. I remember feeling like I didn’t want to stop writing as soon as I finished IT—there was so much great creative energy from that project, so the opportunity to embrace a completely different sound world immediately after immediately after with Blade Runner 2049 was just really rewarding.

Do you already know what you’re doing next? Are you looking for something that’s not orchestral?

WALLFISCH: There are a few very exciting projects up in the air at the moment and we are just figuring out the scheduling at the moment. I’m working on a really interesting film right now for my friend Kristoffer Nyholm called Keepers, which we’ll be finishing in the next couple of weeks. And then my wonderful and very patient wife is giving birth to our first baby!

Oh, congrats!

WALLFISCH: Thank you, yeah.

Yeah I know Gore’s in talks for Gambit so I’m selfishly hoping you guys get back together again because you know I love that Cure for Wellness score so much.

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Image via Alcon Entertainment / Warner Bros.

WALLFISCH: Well, Gore’s such a visionary filmmaker. I mean I feel very lucky to work with directors like him. These are just genius people, artists who are just constantly inspiring and, yeah, I think Gambit in Gore’s hands would be absolutely amazing. No question.

I know you’ve been busy this year, but was kind of curious as a working composer, are there any scores you’ve heard this year from other movies that you found particularly notable or great or the kind of stuff you spark to or that really excited you?

WALLFISCH: Wow. I have to be honest and say I’ve hardly been to the cinema.

It’s fair given the amount of movies you worked on.

WALLFISCH: I’m in the studio 24/7 and the sad truth is I normally end up watching all the movies I’ve missed at the end of the year with my screeners (laughs). But I love the theater and can’t wait to catch up. I feel like we’re going through a really exciting time in filmmaking. New brilliant filmmakers coming up and doing exciting things. And established filmmakers breaking all kinds of molds… the cinematic explosion of television, the inevitable disruptive nature of virtual reality coming up. It’s an exciting time to be a composer. And I think it’s a time in our craft where things are exploding and it’s ok to be totally experimental, as long as you are ‘on story’ as Hans always says. More than ever if you have a voice and an attitude where anarchy’s okay alongside beauty and classical orchestra is okay alongside a CS-80, it kind of feels like we are at a time where being an adventurer is almost a requirement of the job.

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Image via Benjamin Ealovega