Junkie XL (Tom Holkenborg) has successfully made the transition from producing electronic dance music to scoring films, like the blockbuster Mad Max Fury Road & Johnny Depp film Black Mass.

In this video, Holkenborg shares some of the synth secrets of his soundtrack for Deadpool:

Holkenborg explains the genesis of his approach to scoring Deadpool:

“I was approached by the director, Tim Miller, and funny enough, he was raving in the 1990s in clubs in New York, and he loved my music back then. When he found out I was doing movie scores, and especially after seeing Mad Max, he was like ‘I’ve got to talk to this guy.’”

“I analyzed the movie, I watched it five times, ten times, before I even started. Just to think like ‘Okay, what am I looking for here?’ And what I found was that the character stopped growing up after 1990. All his musical references are before that, he’s got a Walkman from 1983, even the suit that he made was from that time period.

So I started to think I need to do something from the 80s. And I own a lot of these synthesizers that were made back in the day, and I went to great lengths to find special effects boxes that were made at the time that make the music sound the way it does.”

When he finally found the right sound, Holkenborg called the director and said, “‘I think I’ve found it. It’s going to be Frankie Goes to Hollywood meets Michael Jackson meets Miami Vice… but on speed.’”

In this second video, Holkenborg gives you a tour of his studio and a walkthrough of the synths of Deadpool:

The Deadpool sountrack is available via iTunes & Amazon.

via TheCreatorsProject