Soundtracking With Edith Bowman

We're discussing the music of a little gem of an Indie film today called It Is In Us All in the company of its director Antonia Campbell-Hughes and composer Tom Furse of The Horrors fame. Set in Donegal, It Is In Us All tells the story of Hamish, a Londoner who returns to his ancestral home of Donegal, and is drawn into the world of a boy who nearly kills him in a car crash. You can watch it right now on Curzon home cinema. Special thanks to Tom, who went to great and inconvenient lengths to provide us with cues from his score. Big ups!

We're really excited about our latest guest on Soundtracking, who has made an absolutely sensational film which you can watch right now on Netflix Romain Gavras's Athena explores, in electrifying fashion, the chaos that erupts in the eponymous French estate in the wake of a brutal killing. It really is jaw-dropping from the very opening scene, which is a work of art as and of itself. Athena is scored by Gener8ion, which is Romain's collaborative creative project with his friend, Benoit Heitz, aka Serkin, and we'll pepper plenty of the music throughout the conversation. 

It's been over three decades since the original graphic novel was published, but 2022 is the year that finally sees Neil Gaiman's seminal comic book series The Sandman translated to the screen. To try and explain the premise and scope of the Netflix fantasy series in a sentence or two would, frankly, be futile - and an insult to the epic dimensions of Neil's imagination, and the work of the team that helped realise his vision for television. So you'll have to settle for one of said team instead - composer David Buckley - whose score is as complex, nuanced and varied as the narrative itself.

It's another of those episodes we enjoy so much on Soundtracking, in which Edith gets to speak to both a director and a composer about a film they've worked on together On this occasion, it's Tom George and Daniel Pemberton, discussing Daniel's score for Tom's debut feature, See How They Run Starring Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, Ruth Wilson, Reece Shearsmith, Harris Dickinson, and David Oyelowo, See How They Run is a comedy whodunnit set in 50s London, which is in cinemas now. 

Our latest guest on Soundtracking is a composer with a hugely diverse body of work - ranging from Big and Se7en to Ed Wood and Silence Of The Lambs. Howard Shore has collaborated with Martin Scorsese on numerous occasions, and famously scored Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings and Hobbit trilogies. He has also provided musical accompaniment to 16 of David Cronenberg's films, including his latest, Crimes Of The Future, which is what he joined Edith to discuss.

As regular listeners to the podcast know, we love it when we get to speak to directors and their composers at the same time, which is what we're doing with Emma Holly Jones and Amelia Warner in our latest episode. Emma enlisted Amelia for her debut feature film, Mr Malcolm's List, a period rom-com about two friends who plot revenge on the eponymous suitor for rejecting one of them as a bride. 

We have a composer for you today who has been on our wish-list for a very long time. Benjamin Wallfisch has built up strong relationships in the industry, perhaps most notably with our old friend Hans Zimmer, with whom he has collaborated on several projects including Blade Runner 2049. Benjamin's latest outing is on Ron Howard's Thirteen Lives, which tells the miraculous true story of the boys and the football coach who were rescued from a Thai cave having been trapped by flooding.

We're such a fan of the movies of our latest guest on Soundtracking, the wonderful Jordan Peele. Following the critical and commercial success of Get Out and Us, Jordan goes fully widescreen with his sci-fi epic Nope, which sees ranch-owning siblings Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer try to capture footage of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. We shall say no more than that ... As with Jordan's previous two movies, Nope is scored by Michael Abels, and we share plenty of his music from the film too.

Our latest guests on soundtracking are partners in both a personal and creative sense, whose latest collaboration sees them bring us the utterly wild Bullet Train. Husband and wife team of director David Leitch and producer Kelly McCormick have a lot of fun with a great cast to tell the story of a motley crew of rogues, who all mysteriously find themselves on the same Japanese train. We're not gonna lie, the results are bonkers - in a very entertaining way. As well as featuring an array of truly brilliant needle drops, Bullet Train is very deftly scored by Dominic Lewis.

Something a little different for you on our latest episode of Soundtracking, as Edith speaks to Baillie Walsh. Baillie is the director of the extraordinary virtual concert, ABBA Voyage, though to call it a virtual concert really doesn't begin to describe quite how spectacular it is. Made in conjunction with the band, it features incredible life sized avatars - or ABBAtars - a mind-blowing light show and sensational live band, and is a full-blown assault on the senses in the best possible way.  As a show, it also raises questions about the future of gigs - and how big tours can be more sustainable.

We love the episodes of Soundtracking where we speak to both the director of the film and their composer, which is exactly what we're doing today Charlotte Colbert and Clint Mansell have combined to great effect on She Will, Charlotte's unsettling little gem of a movie in which an ageing film star heads to retreat in the Scottish countryside and encounters mysterious forces emerging from the land ... 

Not one, not two, but three utterly joyous guests for you on this week's episode of Soundtracking, all of whom are interpreting the work of a couple of very different types of genius. First, we bring you Barney Douglas and Felix White, who have formed a doubles pairing extraordinaire on McEnroe, a documentary which Barney directed and Felix scored about the legendary tennis champ. It's Wimbledon meets Michael Mann's Heat, and they've absolutely aced it. Then we have a first-time movie director who's been wowing theatre audiences for years - the delightful Carrie Cracknell - on her Netflix adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion. 

We have such a treat for you this week, as the genius that is - and we don't throw that word around lightly - Taika Waititi returns to Soundtracking to discuss Thor: Love & Thunder.  Expect music from Guns 'n' Roses, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Michael Giacchino and, um, The Muppets, as duetted by Edith and Taika.

So thrilled to be welcoming Natalie Holt back to Soundtracking - a composer who's doing great things, most recently in providing the score for Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney +. Here she tells Edith about adding to the legendary musical landscape of the franchise, and meeting the man who's behind much of it, her idol John Williams.

Our guest this week is visionary filmmaker Baz Luhrmann, who Edith has been a huge fan of for many years. He always takes you on a journey with his storytelling, both visually and through the maverick nature of the way he uses music and sound. You might have even heard last week's guest, Lykke Li, referencing his Romeo & Juliet as a really seminal film for her.  His latest film is the glorious, colourful and immersive Elvis, his interpretation of the life of the one and Elvis Presley - The King - who is played perfectly by Austin Butler.

Our latest guests on Soundtracking have combined to great effect on an audiovisual album that specifically set out to challenge the conventions of the traditional music video. Lykke Li enlisted the services of experimental filmmaker Theo Lindquist to shoot a series of one minute loops, which accompany the songs on her latest album EYEYE. The results are utterly hypnotic, beautiful and moving - as you can see for yourself online.

Our latest guest on Soundtracking is the man responsible for one of the blockbusting cinematic events of the summer. Colin Trevorrow has played a part in the last 3 Jurassic movies - World, Fallen Kingdom and now World Dominion, which he co-wrote and directed.  The film is scored by friend of the show Michael Giacchino - and you'll hear plenty of his work throughout.

Our latest guest on Soundtracking is someone we've been trying to get on for a very long time.  Anne Dudley made her name in Art Of Noise, and has since gone on to score numerous films, including The Full Monty, for which she won an Oscar. She's also collaborated with some of the biggest names in pop music, from Tina Turner and Elton John to George Michael and Liza Minelli. We also discuss her latest solo album, Crossing The Bar.

Now, as you're probably aware, Top Gun: Maverick has hit cinemas, a full 36 years after Mav, Goose, Iceman and co. first took to the skies. And to mark the occasion, we're rather giddy and excited to welcome director Joe Kosinski and the legend that is Jerry Bruckheimer to the podcast to discuss the iconic music of the original and how they retained the spirit of said music in the sequel. Suffice to say, they got a little help on that front from our old friends, Hans Zimmer & Lorne Balfe ...

Our latest guests on soundtracking are not only composers, but also brothers, who between them have built up an extraordinary body of work for both film and television. Indeed, it's on the small screen that Harry and Rupert Gregson-Williams have joined forces for only the second time, on Julian Fellowes' New York high society drama, The Gilded Age. We'll talk about that and several of the other projects they've been involved with, including Catch-22 for George Clooney.