“The Weaker the Executive, the More Notes You Get”: A Conversation With Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury

In their film scores, composing duo Geoff Barrow (Portishead, Beak>) and Ben Salisbury shun many tropes of the form. Instead of saccharine strings and bright horns, they favor dense, swampy atmospheres and pulsing electronics, creating soundscapes that unsettle and fascinate. After their tense, brooding work for Alex Garland’s 2014 thriller Ex-Machina won widespread acclaim, they partnered again on Garland’s Annihilation, their surreal tones adding new layers of disorientation to the sci-fi mystery. Their latest film, Julius Onah’s Luce, recently premiered at Sundance. Here, they talk about the art of film scoring.

Pitchfork: What do you get creatively out of scoring films?

Geoff Barrow: It’s opened up a whole world for me that I never really thought existed. It challenges you every day. I love the idea of using sound to explore things like misdirection, to make a person come across as being victimized while knowing that they are the worst person in the world. I absolutely love it.

Ben Salisbury: For me, as simple as it sounds, it’s the combination of music and picture. I’m a frustrated filmmaker as much as I am a composer, and I love being part of the collaborative filmmaking process. Sometimes it’s not even about the big musical moments; there might be little moments where I know that I’m changing the audience’s temperature of a film—that you’ve twisted their melon. That is very satisfying.

What are some of your personal favorite scores?

Barrow: Ben and I really bonded over Planet of the Apes. John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 was big for me—what he managed to convey emotionally, yet so simply, was incredible.

Salisbury: Jaws, Star Wars, Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith. More recently: Solaris, You Were Never Really Here, Under the Skin.

Geoff, you come from a nontraditional film scoring background where you have creative autonomy over every aspect of your work. How have you found the transition to serving somebody else’s vision?

Barrow: Quite difficult. I read something by a music supervisor the other day who said, “It’s nice when you don’t notice the music in a film,” and I thought, What a prick. But this isn’t an ego blast; you are working for the better of the film. It’s not about you and you have to get that into your head. I’m pretty honest in meetings. I don’t want to waste my time or theirs and, so far, it’s been OK. I’ve walked away from a few things, especially if they want anything like Portishead. I’m not going to try and copy myself.