The chemistry between the aural and the visual is so strong that The Neon Demon borders on synesthetic. Refn floods his frame with neon light, casting a glow on his vapid supermodels while lens flare cuts through bodies and faces like rainbow razors, while Martinez creates soundscapes that glow like stage lights and twinkle like glitter, only to butcher them with stabbing synthesizer pulses. The dreamy vision of LA’s fashion world is undercut with an intoxicating doom.
Cliff Martinez has been quietly dominating indie film scores for well over 20 years, starting out with Steven Soderbergh and his debut film Sex, Lies, and Videotape. He’s scored films as diverse as Pump Up The Volume, Wicker Park, and The Lincoln Lawyer, but he made his name with Steven Soderbergh. His scores are exquisite and precise. They form to the needs of the film and story. There’s never any grandstanding with Martinez. He serves the film and the film alone, but in doing that over the years he’s developed his own voice as a composer. By the time Soderbergh’s excellent remake of Solaris rolled around he’d found this unique way of serving the film, while at the same time creating a standalone piece of art in his music. That score is magnificent, dark, beautiful, and stays with you. I feel from that point on he’s become one of the most important American composers working today.
Back in 2011 Martinez started a working relationship with Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn. Martinez created the darkly lit, synth-driven score to Refn’s Drive that has since turned into a blossoming artistic partnership. He’s scored the aforementioned Drive, as well as Refn’s Only God Forgives and the short doc about Refn himself titled My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, directed by Refn’s wife Live Corfixn. Their newest collaboration is The Neon Demon, and I believe it’s their best collaboration to date.
In a stylized, oft-poetic way, Demon portrays the competitive grind and sheer artifice of the modelling world, and probably Los Angeles as a whole to an extent. The emotions are intense and massive, even in the most sedated scenes. Martinez does an excellent job of using throbbing synthesizers, scattered guitar expressions, pulsating drum machines, and ambient textures to convey this.
However, this time around Martinez works less like a counterpoint to Refn than he has in the past, when he would have tempered ostentatious visuals that seemed to call for compositions as equally stylized. (Think of Drive – the infamous elevator scene has a delicate and crystalline ambient love theme that counters the crunch of violence between The Driver and a would-be assailant.) While Demon certainly has shades of this, more than ever in their three-picture-run-so-far Martinez plays the role of amplifying Refn’s bombast.
Read the full review by Aaron Vehlinggo at vehlinggo.com
The Neon Demon actress, director, and composer exorcise the film’s themes.
A former drummer for Red Hot Chili Peppers, Captain Beefheart, and Lydia Lunch, the 62-year-old composer initially broke into film after scoring Steven Soderbergh’s 1989 breakthrough indie hit, sex, lies, and videotape, a partnership that’s continued ever since and ultimately led to his latest ventures with Refn.
The Neon Demon marks their third collaboration together — fourth, if you count Liv Corfixen’s My Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn — and Martinez’s compositions have certainly added a flavorful touch to Refn’s stoic ouevre. In a way, each score serves as a ghostly narrator, haunting the filmmaker’s trademark long shots with an ambient glaze that’s meditative and comforting.
The composer (and once Red Hot Chili Pepper) who has made multiple films with Nicholas Winding Refn and Steven Soderbergh, as well as such diverse projects as Spring Breakers, The Normal Heart, and Pee Wee’s Playhouse chats with David Poland.
Refn is quick to admit that he has no problem leaving many of the technical aspects of composing to Martinez. “I can’t play an instrument, I can’t sing, I can’t dance, I don’t have the confidence,” he admits. “That’s never stopped me!”, Martinez interjects with a laugh. Fearlessness in singing and dancing aside, he humbly credits Refn for helping him branch out and take chances. “I always tend to be really conservative because music just takes a long time to create so I don’t take that many risks, but Nicolas encourages risk-taking in the music. So that trust factor is a big deal and you kind of earn it, in our case, over three films. I seem to be getting bigger and bigger roles in Nicolas’ films.”
Jóhann Jóhannsson, Joseph Trapanese, Cliff Martinez i Łukasz Targosz gośćmi specjalnymi piątkowego wieczoru w Centrum Kongresowym ICE Kraków
„Partytura dronowa jest może trudna do zdefiniowania, ale ma przed sobą wielką przyszłość pod warunkiem, że zostanie połączona z tradycyjnymi elementami muzyki, takimi jak wyrazista melodia czy klarowna rytmika” – uważa Łukasz Targosz, jeden z bohaterów piątkowego wieczoru w Centrum Kongresowym ICE Kraków. Jego muzyka do serialu HBO „Pakt” i dramatu Patryka Vegi „Pitbull” otworzyła wczoraj uroczystą galę „alterFMF: Drone Sounds”.
Cannes Film Festival Press Conference with Cliff Martinez Winner of Best Soundtrack for The Neon Demon (starts at 14:30)
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Writers: Nicolas Winding Refn, Nicolas Winding Refn
Stars: Elle Fanning as Jesse, Christina Hendricks as Jan, Keanu Reeves as Hank
‘The Neon Demon’ Summary: When aspiring model Jesse (Elle Fanning) moves to Los Angeles, her youth and vitality are devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will take any means necessary to get what she has.
Is it possible for electronic music to be an appropriate soundtrack for the show, which action is set in early XXth century New York? Director Steven Soderbergh and composer Cliff Martinez for the second year already successfully prove that it can. The main themes from the series The Knick, produced by Cinemax could be heard on the 30th of May 2015 during the International TV Series Gala within the 8th Krakow Film Music Festival.
Niegdyś muzyk Red Hot Chili Peppers, a od wielu lat uznany w świecie autor muzyki filmowej (Traffic, Solaris, Drive) – Cliff Martinez to ostatni gość specjalny Międzynarodowej Gali Seriali w ramach tegorocznej, 8. już odsłony Festiwalu Muzyki Filmowej w Krakowie. W sobotę, 30 maja w krakowskiej arenie kompozytor zaprezentuje muzykę stworzoną do jednego z najgłośniejszych tytułów 2014 roku, nominowanego do Złotych Globów serialu The Knick.
Cliff Martinez is probably most known through his collaboration with filmmakers Steven Soderbergh and Nicolas Refn. The composer of Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Drive, Solaris, and Only God Forgives, Martinez has had the chance to set the mood for some of the best movies of the last few decades. In fact, a cursory glance through Martinez’s filmography will reveal a nearly flawless tract record. It isn’t just through his composing, however, that Martinez has received recognition. Beginning his musical career in the late 70s/early 80s punk scene, Martinez has had a career as diverse as they come; including putting in time with bands like the Dickies, Captain Beefheart, and Red Hot Chili Peppers, which awarded him a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Following the release of his latest work, the score for the HBO film Normal Heart, we caught up with Cliff to ask him about his transition from an LA punk to Grammy-nominated film composer. – Joseph Yanick, Jul 15 2014
The director and composer behind Drive talk about karaoke, the beauty of camp, and their polarizing new film, Only God Forgives, starring Ryan Gosling.
Cliff Martinez photo by Ricardo De Aratanha
A few hours after my conversation with Refn, I ask Cliff Martinez, who composed Only God Forgives’ sparse, droning score, what he thought of the film after seeing it for the first time. “Nicolas called me right after I finished watching it,” the 59-year-old former Red Hot Chili Peppers and Captain Beefheart drummer laughs, with a hint of unease. “He seems to take pride in not listening to anybody, but he’s always all over you, like, ‘What’d you think?’ So I said, ‘Where did all the dialogue go?’ Nicolas’ answer was, ‘I never shoot everything on the page. If I did, there’d be no element of surprise, and where’s the fun in that?'” Refn then asked Martinez about one of Only God Forgives’ most graphic scenes, in which (spoiler alert) Julian plunges his hand into his murdered mother’s open stomach wound, apropos of nothing. “I told him it was really weird,” remembers Martinez. “He said, ‘What do you think it means?’ I said, ‘If you think it’s important that it means something, you might want to tell me.’ He never did.”
Cliff Martinez received BMI’s Richard Kirk Award, which is bestowed on composers who have made significant contributions to the realm of film and television music. As the 2013 recipient of the Richard Kirk Award, Martinez joins a prestigious list that includes David Arnold, Rachel Portman (PRS), Alan Silvestri, David Newman, Thomas Newman, Christopher Young, George S. Clinton, Harry Gregson-Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Michael Kamen, Mark Mothersbaugh, Danny Elfman, Alan Menken, Mike Post, Lalo Schifrin, John Barry, Rolfe Kent, Charlie Fox and John Williams.
Cliff Martinez sat down with us to talk about his transition from rock drummer to film composer, show us his exotic musical toys, and discuss what quality a virtual instrument must possess to appear in his scores. With many blockbuster films to his credit, he knows what he’s talking about.
The 27th Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony 2012
On April 14, 2012 Cliff Martinez was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the rest of the members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Cliff joins the band on stage at 3:30 for Give it Away with Jack Irons and at 8:25 for Higher Ground with Billie Joe Armstrong, Ron Wood, Slash, George Clinton and Dr. Funkenstein.
2012 Hall of Fame inductees the Red Hot Chili Peppers chat backstage, reflecting on sharing the moment with Jack Irons and Cliff Martinez, seeing the Small Faces, the Roots tribute to the Beastie Boys, figuring out how to get better, the youngest inductee ever into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and why the Hall of Fame is cool.
One of the most exciting assignments I received was a chance to sit down with the incredible composer, Cliff Martinez. We met at the Sundance Film Festival Headquarters in the Park City Marriott Hotel. I was initially concerned because I knew this was the hub of the festival and finding a quiet place to chat would be close to impossible. We decided on speaking in this tranquil swimming pool area that had glassed ceilings giving us the warmth of indoor heating along with the beautiful sunlight from above. Cliff had just come back from an early morning screening and mentioned he was running on a few hours of sleep as his duties as a Jury Member of Sundance were starting to take its toll on Day 6 of the festival, however Cliff was pleased to sit down with me for this interview. We discussed his work on DRIVE, CONTAGION, his working relationships with his directors and his experience as a Jury member at Sundance 2012. – Bradley Winston
