One-time sideman of musical nuisance Trevor Horn’s The Buggles, Hans Zimmer is now a byword for Hollywood movie scores and is credited with revolutionising the art form, a feat achieved by using modern technology and synthesizers alongside more traditional instrumentation and arrangements. I can scarcely think of anything less necessary.
There used to be two particularly well-trodden paths to becoming a soundtrack composer: as a trained classical musician or as someone versed in jazz or stage arrangements. You’ll note that neither of those includes cynically crafted plastic pop. Some of the strongest electronic scores, whether they be Vangelis’ score to ‘Blade Runner’ or any of John Carpenter’s masterpieces, exude an otherworldly charm and an often sinister edge. Attempts to humanise them or make them more familiar is to entirely miss the point.
A film’s score should accentuate, intrigue, evoke and provoke feelings and emotions and add to the viewers’ transportation to other realms; Zimmer’s techniques achieve anything but. Zimmer had previously worked in advertising, a world as cold and calculated as the use of sound in films has now become itself – a constant desire from the studios to ‘give the people what they want’, to fill ‘gaps’ at all costs, to bombard the ears until the audience is it battered into submission.
So redundant is artistry and skill in the industry that ‘think-tanks’ are run by the great man to explain how to be just like him. It’s film scoring barely centimetres removed from AI – a tutored gaggle of in-house musicians pumping out lazy sonic tropes for audiences being bullied into accepting studio blandness. How much of Zimmer’s music is even written by the man himself is another question that begs to be answered. Is it Hans, or is it a shadowy collective of Zimmer clones, a factory churning out chaff that has all his hallmarks but no sign of deviation from the magic formula? Composing on synth shouldn’t be such an issue, but it’s clear that when it comes to the actual recordings, his orchestras and arrangers are doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
Zimmer’s scores sound synthetic, not because of his use of technology to assist with the creative process but because it’s so devoid of humanity and emotion. There is no deftness, no intrigue, no deviation from a path well-travelled. It’s film scoring treated as a business, not as an art form. It’s U2 for movies. A cop-out heralding of genius based solely on omnipresence, mean-nothing numbers, and a blind assertion that because some of the early work isn’t going to grate as much as more recent efforts, everything can be brushstroked into being acceptable. You can be prolific and still be refreshingly brave and inventive – Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, Morricone (obviously) and countless others write for the film, not for their egos.
Bands regularly cite him as an influence – partly because they’re lazy, partly because they themselves are musically inefficient, and partly because they feel namedropping him shows them as something akin to classically trained. They may as well write ‘Pavarotti‘ as shorthand for “I like opera, y’know, and am therefore cultured.” In an entirely different way, they’ve hit the nail on the head- Zimmer is not an artist; he’s a brand.
A conveyor belt of Zimmer-a-likes does indeed exist and is easy to look for when you know the signs.
• The booming fog-horn workout for the cinema’s speakers, a.k.a ‘The Inception’ effect. Now copied to tooth-grinding regularity in both the trailer and the film.
• Fill the gaps at all costs! Clearly paid by the minute, endless suites and cues are completed to squeeze in at any frowned-upon moment, spliced in to give you a heads-up as to who the baddie is. How many times do you hear ‘Tubular Bells’ in ‘The Exorcist’? Twice – briefly. How many times don’t you hear Hans on a film he works on? Much harder to answer.
• Obey. Always. The studio will always know best. You must always be present during daily rushes and ‘compose’ on the hoof to fill whatever bizarre whim they conjure up. The fact they don’t know anything at all about music shouldn’t trouble you.
• If you hit upon something that works, repeat it as often as you can; no one will notice.
• Remember, fear is represented by deafening ‘honks’; love by sweeping, electronically choreographed strings; humour by computerised flutes; there will be nothing sexually charged or challenging.
There are still great composers out there, but how many have the guts and the bank account to defy convention and follow their instincts? His soft, fuzzy, flabby interchangeable themes are perfect comfort food for already fat-headed audiences, but fret not, there’s always a gap for seconds.
Daz Lawrence