Mojo - The Music Magazine

Andrew Male presents the director's cut of his interview with born again soundtrack maestro, Clint Mansell.

How did you hook up with Duncan Jones aka Zowie Bowie?
When we were doing the Fountain we met with David Bowie a few times because Darren had pitched him with the idea of getting involved in the score and maybe writing a song for the end credits. The song would have been part of the score, and his voice would have been peppered through the film, so it wouldn't be just the song at the end; the idea would be that it grew out of piece I'd written for the film. But it didn't really work out.

At the same time I did some gigs with my old band, Pop Will Eat Itself, as a ten-year reformation, and Duncan knew one of my friends and came down to one of the shows. Then last year I got a call from my agent that said this guy Duncan Jones has been in touch about a film and I said, Duncan Jones, I know that name. They didn't think they'd have much chance of getting me because I'm supposedly so me sort of Hollywood player but I loved the script, I knew it would bring something good out of me. We talked about the general themes of being alone, being in a long-distance love affair, the overtones of regret and fear and this melancholy loneliness and dream state of wishing for something that's out of reach.

I mean, if somebody called me to do the music for Pirates Of The Caribbean 4 you know what that score needs to be, and whilst I may be able to make a passable attempt at it I don't think that would be my strong suit. I'm more excited about finding something I relate to in a film that brings something out of me and trying to find the true voice of that film. That approach wouldn't be right for every film but a film like Duncan's or Darren's that are thoughtful and lyrical and emotional can take that extra layer.

How did the success of The Wrestler affect your career. Was your agent suddenly fielding a lot more calls?
To be honest, it's very steady. Touch wood, I'm not going short of work but it's finding something worthwhile, the right thing for me and for them. Last year I actually quit a film because they came to me and said, this is the darkest film, ancient Rome, Sodom and Gomorrah, everyone going to hell. I'm going, great! They test it one time and they go, Oh my God, this is the darkest film ever! Everybody's going to hell, nobody's saved, we've got to make it lighter!

But if I was the guy for the first film why would I be the guy for the lite version? It makes a joke of the whole selection process of being a composer. I've done films where it's been a miserable experience for me and for the people I was working with and now I think life's too short. So I'm more picky now, but there still comes one every once in a while where it's, OK, I do need to pay the bills, let's get in the mindset.

Your 2006 soundtrack for The Fountain was a real leap forward...
After Requiem For A Dream in 2000, the idea was that Darren was going to go straight into The Fountain, but it took so long to get it together that I had to go off and learn my trade, if you like. Just dealing with the studios and deadlines and working with orchestras, just finding my feet, and it was fundamental to what I did with The Fountain that I'd had that experience. If The Fountain had come on the back of Requiem the score would have been totally different because I wouldn't have been able to expand in that way.

At what stage do you start working on the film?
With Darren it's the very first draft of the first idea. For his next film we've started already. With Duncan I worked from a director's cut but generally I like to be involved as early as possible to get underneath the skin of the film, absorb it and start to understand it. The way I write is very much like jamming really. I just sit with the film, watch it on my laptop with a guitar and just find the natural rhythm of the scenes, the themes of the film.

There's a gap in your career between the end of PWEI and your meeting with Darren Aronofsky. What were you up to then? You'd moved to New York but what was going on?
A very, very dark place. I'm a bit of a melancholic person anyway, a bit downbeat, and being in a band and reasonably successful it's a constant high and suddenly you don't have that anymore and I didn't know what to do with myself. Richard [March] from the band went straight into Bentley Rhythm Ace and they did really well and his transition was seamless, but I didn't have that and I didn't really know what to do. I couldn't really write, had nothing to write about and was totally unfocused and lost. I met Darren within about five months of moving to New York but they were five very long months. I was kinda broke and when you hit the winter in New York with not much money it's a pretty tough place to make it. The internet hadn't really happened then either. I mean, I live in Los Angeles now and I may as well be living in England because you get all the newspapers on line, the football, I'm just slightly displaced. But when I moved to New York in 1996 it was like the other side of the world. You wrote *letters to people. I was always happier back in Stourbridge so it was a bit of a culture shock. You've never been so alone as when you're surrounded by so many people. I had no idea where life was going. It was a very fortuitous meeting with Darren, but even while we were doing [Aronofsky's 1998 breakthrough film] Pi I was still a little bit lost, which may have helped what I was doing with the music for the film. There were similarities with the main character...

A man squirreled away with his wires and computers, just working on his own...
[Laughs] Well that was very much what it was like. And then when we did Requiem For A Dream I'd moved to New Orleans and again what the characters were going through sort of mirrored my experience - not the drugs part, but this idea of being *consumed.

What else were you drawing on? What musical influences?
At the time it was probably Ennio Morricone and John Carpenter, because they were so accessible and familiar from a lot of hip-hop sampling. Their work gave me a toe in the water because I thought I could emulate that to a degree. Drum'n'bass was also happening and I was messing with drum'n'bass ideas and thinking, 'I'm a charlatan, I'm not a drum'n'bass guy', but you include something like that and it becomes part of the soundtrack, it works. The secret of doing something is actually trying and having a go. In Pop Will Eat Itself I was writing maybe three songs a year, now I'll probably write four albums worth of music a year but you're being given influences by the film which really helps.

What do you think you've learned during your ten years as a film composer?
Believe in yourself, listen to the people you're working with and turn up every day and work hard. It's not easy, it's hard. If it was easy everyone would be doing it. But what I've really learned is that if I be myself and follow my gut instinct I can do something I think is worthwhile for somebody. That doesn't mean it will be the biggest film on the planet. I think I'm more successful at following and reacting to the muse of the film and bring that out of myself.

Who are the film composers you admire?
I like Philip Glass, Yann Tiersen and I heard this girl the other day, not a soundtrack composer, a girl called Soap & Skin and she's really good - classical piano with this droney Nico voice - and she's only 18. Pretty vibrant stuff. And I've been re-listening to Buzzcocks' *A Different Kind Of Tension. I like the way they keep the riff going but the progression keeps changing behind the riff, which is very much a filmic thing, and I'd never really noticed it before.

Do you still keep in touch with the rest of Pop Will Eat Itself?
Yeah, I still see them quite a lot. Adam still lives in Stourbridge so I still see him when I go back home and Richard and Graham still live in Birmingham and Fuzz is in Shropshire so we still try to get together.

You're playing the Union Chapel in July... What have you got planned for that?
A couple of years ago I won two World Soundtrack Awards in Ghent in Belgium and one of the things they ask you to do is come back the following year and perform some of your music. Usually what composers do is prepare a half-hour performance of their greatest hits and I didn't really want to do that. I'd always wanted to perform with a live band, probably in the way that Godspeed You! Black Emperor perform, neoclassical or something. So I thought maybe I could put together a nine-piece band and we could rehearse arrangements of my music that would come across live.

The biggest problem was financing it but it's something I want to do so we did this show in October last year in Belgium - Pi, Requiem, The Fountain, the Wrestler - and basically it's a string quartet called The Sonus Quartet from Los Angeles plus guitar, piano, bass, drums and keyboards, and it worked really well. This is the same band, pretty much, that recorded the Moon score, a really good band.

Maybe it will be confusing to people who might know me from Pop Will Eat Itself, and to people who know me just from the film scores, but as a live experience I hope it's interesting, emotional and exciting enough to hold the attention.

Final question: can you tell us is your next project with Darren Aronofsky is?
Well, I'm under strict orders... Darren is not unreasonably cautious and you're never quite sure until he calls you from the set so... no, no.

Interview by: Andrew Male