Halloween is almost upon us and what a better way to set the mood than with possibly one of the best original scores released this year. In case you missed it, Apple TV+ released the Stephen King series adaptation Lisey’s Story this past summer. The limited series is based on one of Stephen King’s favorite books (he also penned the scripts.) WaterTower Music and Loud Robot have released the original soundtrack and it is available to stream/download on all major digital music platforms.
The series composer Clark (a.k.a. Chris Clark) made his scoring mark on shows like BBC1’s Relik and the Hulu original Kiri. However, if you don’t know about this iconic musician, let’s get you up to speed. Fresh on the scene in the early 2000’s he first seemed to be an organic expansion of the 90’s signature techno (the so called IDM genre), but he always pushed the envelope, and became one of the most unique acts in the category. His mastery in complex melodies, distortions, compressed breaks and beats and the energy in his live shows made him different. Clark has always composed, not produced. A true creator in all genres.
The music behind the series Lisey’s Story is beautiful work. Vibrant and emotional. Erie refrains and sounds that evoke mysterious, chilling and other-worldly ethos. It really is tender as well. I was lucky enough to have a chance to speak with Clark about this project. For real, I need the notes. I really just need the notes to the main theme.
I listened to the snippets of the score that were sent over and I found them really intriguing. Let’s talk about some of your formative, musical experiences in your life that brought you here.
I don’t come from a family that really wanted me to study music and it was almost like not encouraged in my household, but my granddad was a fiddle player and I played violin for a bit as a kid, but I actually really hated it. I think It was partly just because of classical music. I played and then favored drums and then drum machines. I really got into electronic music as a teenager just because it felt so new and fresh and like it was just breaking all of these rules that I enjoy breaking, you know this idea that it was the real music just made it more appealing to me actually. So really my background is having written electronic music since I was a teenager and then coming full circle and kind of gradually integrating acoustic instruments to my 20’s with my album Body Riddle. Now I’d say it’s almost completely hybrid. So, now the challenge for me is kind of playing instruments and composing properly, you know with notation and getting scores ready for players. I used to think not having this expensive training was a bit of my kryptonite, but I actually kind of think that’s my strength now because it just means I’m constantly thinking outside the box. Like a lot of institutional training keeps you very in the box and it’s like you can’t improvise because you neglect your repertoire. What happens If you neglect your repertoire? Oh my god. I’ve got this Mozart concert and I can’t neglect my technical exercises and I’ve never had that.
You have such a catalog of work and have done so much in a lot of spaces and genres, what challenges you?
It’s like I’ve got this perfect model of music in my head and whatever I write is in some way going to be a degraded version of that model. It’s like the model needs to be as perfect as what I hear in my head, as I can make it. And so that’s the kind of thing that keeps me up at … well, it doesn’t keep me up at night. I go to bed early actually and get up at like 5 a.m. I’m one of those weirdos. I’ll tell you what it is. That’s quite resonant. I’ve started playing the cello recently and there’s just like there’s so much range. I learned to play the piano as well. And if you play three notes on a piano, then there’s a limited range. Three notes on a cello is still way more dynamic than on a piano. The more you play the cello, the better you get. It’s so addictive like when you’re on that up curve. I don’t improve in so many other aspects and I think I’ve got my ego in check. I know there are loads of things I’m really shit at. Music is the one thing that I seem to be able to do quite easily and get better at quite quickly. So I just do it because I’m kind of compulsively addicted to the rush of it.
How many hours of music did you compose for the series?
There’s a lot of music and there’s a lot that got rejected because not all of it fits the show. Pablo the director basically just said to me, aim as high as you can. If you really want to record at the best studios in London, then you do that and I did. It was really nice to have him backing that because a lot of the time it’s like well, we’ve only got access to these players. I sort of see it as a step up from my last film, where we recorded in Budapest because we didn’t have much money. It’s still a great Orchestra. I think it’s mainly the space we recorded it in. It was just a complete thrill. I write a lot of my Melodies vocally. I find it really natural and it has that thing of having it in my head and it’s the closest I can get it if I just sing it. So, I just had these sketches on my phone. In the morning, I get up at 5 a.m. and sing something. I notate it, put it together and then like three months later it’s being played by 30 people at AIR studios. It’s crazy that it goes from those small steps. You just never know where things are going to lead. It’s the most inspiring thing to have these tiny sketchbook ideas that then just expand out and it.
How did you figure out the tone of the show and what kind of sounds would fit into it?
Yeah, that’s a good question and I think that the horror aspect of the show was possibly the easiest because whether you like it or not, there are just certain things that work in the horror genre. It’s a very strange genre because on the one hand, there’s this anarchic freedom that you don’t get anywhere else. It’s like the most avant-garde. I love a lot of crazy old avant-garde composers of the 20th century, but also avant-garde electronics, you know. Some of my favorite Whitehouse albums or just noise albums have this sense of complete freedom to them that I love. You can make the sound with anything that you want. As long as it fits this thing of suspense and deliver. Suspense and deliver. Suspense and deliver. It’s pretty easy to do compared to writing thematic material. Climbing inside characters’ heads and getting that internal landscape of psyche that all of the characters inhabit and how they interact with each other. Emotion is the thing that’s going to carry the project into the future and be something that’s timeless and makes people want to watch it.
What did the musical experimentation look like when you started this process?
It’s kind of tricky to do well because they contradict each other. The whole aesthetic of traditional orchestration and electronics, they don’t really marry that well. Unless you have a distinctive voice that can kind of link them. I think certain colors within, you know, like the range of a violin is quite similar to a wave on a synthesizer and if you can blend them through like tape or an amplifier that can really help. If you just use a tape machine and record everything on that as a stereo track then that will fuse strings and synths quite convincingly. It’s just little tricks like that. I guess it’s also knowing what won’t work. I knew that thumping techno wouldn’t really work. I watched The Thing the other day and it’s really synth-heavy. Then it’s got these gorgeous string arrangements. It works. It just works. Depending on the context of the film, you can just get away with things that you would never get away with if you were like Metallica.
What draws you to a project like this? Is it the material itself or something totally different?
It has to start with a personal connection with a director and the script and the material in general. I listen to Steven King audiobooks before I go to sleep. I have done it for years. He’s amazing. It’s a connection to the characters. Plot is just incidental to revealing people’s character. We only watch films to learn about people, I think, ultimately.
What drew you into these characters?
I think it was the fragility of Lisey’s and Scott’s relationship. The way she overcomes doubt and fear. She’s strong for Scott. And also, his dark history. It’s pretty harrowing. I think it’s much easier to score people that are just wracked with doubt and anxiety. And also psychopaths. It is always fun to score a psychopath.
When you find the right sounds and direction to go with, do you work with the director directly?
I wouldn’t be confident if they just said, do whatever the hell you like. It’s about having a take on stuff. That’s all it is. I mean, a really firm stubborn opinion on it. Generally the people with the most stubborn opinions about what It should be are the better artists. I’m not just going to do anything, obviously. Pablo was quite insistent on us covering a few bases. On the internal world being covered before the dramatic horror world, so that we really feel the characters. We feel their motivation and their intention through the music.
Does the music you provide influence the development of what’s going on?
Yeah, definitely. The title theme. It’s quite energetic. The main title theme of the show is pretty ferocious and fast. I just made that for myself and I sent it to them and they were really enthusiastic about it. It was a bit of a curveball because it didn’t fit this slow-moving world so much. So that completely dictated certain scenes, I think.
Do you have any other snippets or pieces of music saved just for a moment where it might work for a project?
I’ve got lots of saved things. It’s frightening how much work I forget as well. I write in quite a sort of dreamy state of mind and that’s quite often the stuff. That’s the best music because you’re not thinking you’re just doing your job. It’s just like a cat trying to find the warm bit of the radiator. You find it and you start purring. You’re enjoying it. You’re not really thinking. You’re not hatching plans or calculating. You’re just enjoying the warm bit of the radiator. Those tracks are quite often the good ones. The ones where the cat is just on the radiator.
Do you have cats?
I did have a cat, but it got run over. Unfortunately.
I’m sorry I brought that up. That’s horrible.
Yeah. It was a long time ago, but after that, I decided not to get another cat.
What was your favorite part of scoring Lisey’s Story?
Probably doing the titles. The amount of resources we pulled together and the amount of steps that we made to get there was crazy. It’s got long strings and then short notes on top. We recorded the long notes at AIR studios and the short notes at Abbey Road. I mean you don’t get a budget like that often. The room in AIR for reverb, it’s amazing for reverb. For tight, high stuff it’s not so great. It’s not as Incisive and cutting. So we went and did that at Abbey Road. We just layered them up. So you’ve got this sort of really dreamy bottom half and then these like really cutting live strings on top. I’ve never thought of doing that before working on this show, and it was just such a unique way of working to me and it felt so postmodern as well. There’s no samples in there and that’s why I’m quite proud of it. I don’t really like hearing samples in music when you can identify the sample library with every cue.
Have you recorded at those Studios before?
Never. It was fun. It gave me a taste for it, which has given me expensive tastes.
So, are you getting a lot out of the process of recording like this?
Yeah, absolutely. It feels like I’m having more fun with music now than I did in my 20’s in a way. It feels like every project is a bit of a step up. I guess it’s about convincingly, summing up all of the resources you can at that particular moment to capture your vision at that moment. I think, for anyone that’s paying attention. There’s this through line of it gradually kind of getting bigger and more familiar with certain compositional techniques. I think this is where taste comes into it because I’m never going to be the guy that always thinks orchestras are always appropriate. Sometimes you can say just as much with a laptop and synth plugins. It’s completely appropriate to do that and it’s completely appropriate to be Lo-Fi if it fits the scene.
Lisey’s Story is now streaming on Apple TV+. The soundtrack is available via WaterTower Music and Loud Robot.