Know The Score: Col­in Stet­son on Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Prisoners

When Col­in Stet­son talks about late Ice­landic com­pos­er Jóhann Jóhanns­son, there’s a gid­dy admi­ra­tion expressed with every syl­la­ble. For Stet­son, a ver­sa­tile musi­cian capa­ble of switch­ing between the sax­o­phone and flute with­out even flinch­ing, briefly work­ing with Jóhanns­son remains one of the high­lights of his career.

Jóhanns­son, who died in Feb­ru­ary 2018 at the age of 48, left his mark on cin­e­ma with a diverse col­lec­tion of film scores includ­ing Mandy, Blade Run­ner 2049, Arrival and The The­o­ry of Every­thing. A self­less artist, he was a great believ­er that the best com­posers should know when to take a step back and let the film breathe. This was high­light­ed when Jóhanns­son per­suad­ed direc­tor Dar­ren Afron­sky to dis­card the Moth­er! score he had been work­ing on for over a year, hav­ing realised the scares would be more effec­tive with just silence.

“Jóhann was so self­less,” agrees Stet­son, who has writ­ten music for Ari Aster’s Hered­i­tary and the video game Red Dead Redemp­tion 2. ​“He didn’t like to cre­ate music that got in the way; it just need­ed to do its job and let the film think for itself. Every note he com­posed was like a chess play.”

He con­tin­ues: ​“Jóhann was con­stant­ly search­ing for new sounds. Every­thing was about dis­cov­er­ing a new way of com­pos­ing. I remem­ber work­ing with him in a Berlin stu­dio for 16 hours straight and he was absolute­ly rav­en­ous when it came to cre­at­ing sounds that stirred up some­thing vis­cer­al. But it was always about sewing those sounds into the pic­ture in a way that was subtle.”

Stetson’s favourite Jóhanns­son score is 2013’s Pris­on­ers, the first of sev­er­al col­lab­o­ra­tions with Cana­di­an direc­tor Denis Vil­leneuve. While it might not pos­sess the sheer inven­tion of Jóhannsson’s work in sci-fi, its com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing an atmos­phere of dread through dark min­i­mal­ist sound­scapes is some­thing Stet­son labels as ​“genius”.

“I often lis­ten to it with­out watch­ing the film as it stands alone so per­fect­ly,” he says. ​“It’s just such a three dimen­sion­al piece of music that repli­cates all the nuances and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties that human beings have. It isn’t just an opaque depic­tion of fear or doom, but it has this serene roman­tic qual­i­ty to it too. So much of the music is seduc­tive and sooth­ing. I can’t think of a score that real­ly match­es it.”

As a film, Pris­on­ers is an unre­lent­ing­ly bleak vision, with Hugh Jack­man play­ing a father will­ing to turn to tor­ture in the hunt for the per­son who might have kid­napped his daugh­ter. It’s a film about peo­ple bury­ing their demons beneath the sur­face and liv­ing par­al­lel lives, with noth­ing ever work­ing out quite the way it seems. This decep­tive jux­ta­po­si­tion is some­thing Jóhanns­son com­mu­ni­cates through seam­less­ly lay­er­ing elec­tron­i­ca with orches­tral music. In an inter­view pro­mot­ing Pris­on­ers, Jóhanns­son said he want­ed his music to be ​“detached” emo­tion­al­ly, much like Jackman’s cru­el yet sin­cere char­ac­ter Keller Dover, and the strings to sound chill­ing­ly cold.

One of the high­lights of the score, accord­ing to Stet­son, is ​‘The Keep­er’, a track that’s just as shiv­ery as the film’s frozen Penn­syl­van­ian set­ting, and a tes­ta­ment to Jóhanns­son ful­fill­ing his vision. ​“It has this huge sweep­ing bass sec­tion and those big bends that lead up to that colos­sal string sec­tion; you can feel the air mov­ing and the wind pump­ing out of the instru­ments. That sus­tained grad­ual growth of dis­so­nance in the back­ground, which builds and then goes into the fore­ground, is just so pow­er­ful. It will knock you off your feet.”

When Stet­son was work­ing with Aster on Hered­i­tary, he says he drew inspi­ra­tion from the Pris­on­ers sound­track and cred­its Jóhanns­son for help­ing him aban­don con­ven­tion and to realise that music should nev­er over­pow­er a genre film. ​“The two films share that feel­ing of hope­less­ness par­ents feel when they lose con­trol of their child. Ari told me Hered­i­tary was a char­ac­ter study in fam­i­ly grief. I want­ed to approach the score dif­fer­ent­ly to a typ­i­cal hor­ror by avoid­ing any tra­di­tion­al use of melody or theme. There need­ed to be no recog­nis­able instru­men­ta­tion or melod­ic the­mat­ic, as the hor­ror need­ed to be com­plete­ly unpredictable.

“Pris­on­ers was one of the only scores I real­ly could draw from for inspi­ra­tion, as Johann approached it with a very sim­i­lar kind of vision. There’s very lit­tle move­ment in Jóhann’s score. I don’t say that detri­men­tal­ly, but as a huge com­pli­ment, as he did exact­ly what was need­ed to colour the movie and not any­thing more. He lets silence do the job that the music can’t. Take the synths of The can­dle­light vig­il scene. They are so eerie and oth­er world­ly, but they nev­er over­pow­er the dra­ma itself. That takes tremen­dous dis­ci­pline as a composer.”

Hav­ing estab­lished him­self as a com­pos­er for film and tele­vi­sion, Stet­son is cur­rent­ly work­ing on a new solo album. But he says he con­tin­ues to read a lot of scripts and would love to return to the hor­ror genre. When­ev­er he scores some­thing new, he says his process involves writ­ing music while read­ing the script long before prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy begins. This, Stet­son believes, allows a musi­cian to more instinc­tu­al­ly cap­ture a film’s emo­tions. But fun­da­men­tal­ly he says his approach to com­pos­ing is ground­ed in the ethos he learned from his friend Jóhann.

“I’m a strong believ­er that you shouldn’t show up in the pic­ture. If your piece of music is over­whelm­ing­ly beau­ti­ful or scary, it takes away from the pic­ture. Pris­on­ers is amaz­ing because its score builds so slow­ly. When you hear an ele­gant string sec­tion come in, its beau­ty hits you so much hard­er as it’s tak­en a long time to get there. I like how Jóhann showed that even in this bleak ter­rain, where human beings do hor­ri­ble things to anoth­er, there’s still room for mag­ic. I’m not so sure Pris­on­ers is one of his scores peo­ple make a big fuss about, but it should be.”