M83 Scoring OBLIVION

I missed this news over the summer but French artist M83 would be providing the entire score for Oblivion. Similar to when director Joseph Kosinski hired Daft Punk to score Tron Legacy, leading to one of the greatest film scores of that year. A small piece of the score can be heard in the first trailer.  When the promotional machine goes into full-gear expect to hear multiple tracks in promos. Joseph confirms to Collider the music will be original material and talked about the process. I'm loving this trend of hiring artists instead of composers because we end up getting solid and unique scores. Previously, Renzor/Ross' work on Social Network/Dragon Tattoo, Chemical Brothers for Hanna and Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood composing of There Will Be Blood/The Master being standouts.

No I had been thinking about M83. I went back and I found my first treatment for Oblivion from 2005 and it had listed in the treatment a soundtrack of M83, Boards of Canada; they were listed back then when they had only done an album or two. So I always felt like Anthony’s music was suited to this story from its very inception. So when it came time to putting this film together, obviously the Tron: Legacy collaboration with Daft Punk worked out as good as I would have ever hoped, I wanted to do something similar in that I’m pulling an artist from outside the movie business to create an original sound for this film. But I didn’t want it to be—Daft Punk’s music wouldn’t make sense for this movie. It had to be an artist whose music fit the themes and story I was trying to tell. And M83’s music I felt was fresh and original, and big and epic, but at the same time emotional and this is a very emotional film and it felt like a good fit. So I talked to him very early and he was finishing up his latest album at the time and I am so excited. I brought in Joe Trapaese, the orchestrator from Tron: Legacy is now the orchestrator on this so it’s very similar arrangement of talent. I’m as excited about what we’re doing musically for this film as I was for Tron.

I’m not sure what the count is, but it’s a lot of music. There’s a lot of music in the movie. It’s probably eighty percent scored. I would say the same thing I said for the Daft Punk tracks, some stuff feels like Daft and some stuff you would never guess Daft would do. Some of my favorite tracks from Legacy were tracks that you would never guess in a million years were Daft Punk and I think the same goes for this. Some of the stuff you’re going to hear the M83 in its full glory, screaming out, but at other times it serves the movie as a score should it’s under the surface. So it will be interesting to see what people think.