8. 2001: A Space Odyssey
I was 11 when this film came out and it was the first time I ever went to see a film twice in one week. It blew me away and changed my life. Not just the film, but largely [György] Ligeti’s atonal choral pieces. This discordant, sometimes beautiful, intertwining of voices, that were dark and then beautiful and then disturbing and then uplifting. I went out and bought the album, and then put it on my record player in my room and shut myself in my wardrobe with a flashing light and spent hours in there. I wanted to shut myself off from the world and immerse myself completely in this extraordinary sound. And I went on to be an artist that built environments and quadrophonic sound spaces – purely based on this experience. And years later, when we came to write the score for Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, I said, "do you think 2001 can be referenced?" and Danny said, "absolutely", and that was just like heaven for me. This album is at the core of where my head’s at. One minute it will be playing some Brahms and then it’s playing this beautiful, yet discordant, choral music and I think like that now. This is the rhythm of my bones. Something for the future is to score for a choir.
Obviously something happened in that wardrobe, you absorbed something…
[laughs] There was no lion in there – just my dad’s torch and a vivid imagination.
