Thom Yorke, frontman of the band Radiohead, is now composing the score for a narrative feature for the first time ever, and he couldn't have chosen a more challenging project to make his debut with. Yorke is providing the score for director Luca Guadagnino's remake of the Dario Argento classic SUSPIRIA – putting him in the unenviable position of following in the footsteps of the band Goblin, whose memorable score for the original was a major driving force in that film.
During an appearance on BBC 6 Music show The First Time With…, Yorke admitted that the task is "absolutely terrifying", but there is some relief in the fact that Guadagnino's SUSPIRIA is "very, very different" from Argento's, so no one is trying to exactly repeat what has gone before.
There's a sort of few core pieces of it that I've been trying to piece together, and uh… It's hard 'cause I'm way out of my comfort zone, and I can't read music so it's not like I'm writing for orchestra. So I'm building it all myself."
As he builds his score, Yorke is finding inspiration in the score crafted for BLADE RUNNER by mononymous composer Vangelis. He watched BLADE RUNNER twice over the weekend before this interview to study what Vangelis did on that film.
Vangelis, like, he did that, it's him. It's his hands that made that. Which encouraged me, because I think that was the thing I was finding most daunting. Normally for a horror movie it involves orchestras, it involves, you know, these specific things. But Luca, the director, and Walter, the editor, are very much, like, find your own path with it. You know? And they're giving me as much freedom as they can, which is great, because as they know I've never done it before. So I kind of have to… I just have to find a way into it. Which I am doing. And it's exciting, but at the same time I am so out of my comfort zone I don't know what's going on."
But, as Yorke says, being out of his comfort zone is a good thing.
Directed by Guadagnino from a script by David Kajganich, this new take on SUSPIRIA stars Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Mia Goth, with a cameo by original SUSPIRIA star Jessica Harper.
Based on the 1977 film from Italian horror master Dario Argento, SUSPIRIA follows a young ballet dancer who travels to a prestigious dance academy in Europe, only to discover it is a front for something far more sinister and supernatural amidst a series of increasingly grisly murders.
Dakota Johnson