Thom Yorke Of Radiohead Talks Composing Soundtrack For ‘Suspiria’
This year’s Venice Film Festival has been home to some major film debuts. The Coen Brothers screened their new Netflix-produced movie, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and Bradley Cooper’s new collaboration with Lady Gaga, A Star Is Born, also premiered alongside numerous other noteworthy titles.
One of the most buzzed-about movies of the entire film festival, however, was a remake of the 1977 Italian horror film Suspiria, originally directed by iconic horror filmmaker Dario Argento.
Suspiria (2018) reportedly received an eight-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, following the movie’s premiere. In a review by The Telegraph, it was declared that the upcoming horror remake was better than the original.
However, one of the more noteable aspects of Suspiria was the decision by filmmakers to hire Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke to work as composer for the film’s original score. In a report from Pitchfork, Thom Yorke likened the project to creating “spells” and claimed he was given a certain artistic freedom he had not previously experienced.
“I was making spells — and that sounds really stupid but that’s how I was thinking about it. It was a sort of freedom I’d not had before: I’m not working in the format of a song or arrangement, I’m just exploring. I’m putting things out into my studio and seeing what my studio is bringing back.”
Previously the singer joined the rest of his bandmates in Radiohead to compose a song for the Spectre soundtrack, but this is his first time he’s composed original music for a full-length motion picture.
Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood, however, has worked on a number of movie scores, most notably collaborating with director Paul Thomas Anderson. Greenwood composed scores for There Will Be Blood, The Master, Inherent Vice, and most recently, Phantom Thread, receiving much critical acclaim for his film-scoring work.
Aside from Johnny Greenwood, Yorke also joins Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor as a fellow rocker-turned-composer. Trent Reznor surprised audiences in 2011 when he took home an Oscar for Best Original Score for the David Fincher-directed The Social Network. Reznor went on to score movies like Gone Girl and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Thom Yorke recently announced a U.S. tour which will begin on November 23, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is slated to wrap up on December 22 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Suspiria is due in select theaters on October 18 and is directed by Luca Guadagnino. The movie stars Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, and Chloe Grace Moretz. It will open in theaters all across the United States on November 2, 2018.
