Cliff Martinez’s stunning score for Prada
Cliff Martinez’s stunning score for the Prada Spring/Summer 2023 women’s collection by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons presents a sequence of realities.
NEWS
‘Drive haunts me’ – Cliff Martinez recalls race to finish the iconic soundtrack
“Do you feel like you never stop talking about Drive?” I ask Cliff Martinez, as I open my notebook full of questions about Drive, arguably my favourite film of all time. “You never hear the words ‘hit’ and ‘soundtrack’ together,” he replied with a smile. “But Drive is the exception. Film music is not that popular… but this one is.”
Read the full article at express.co.uk
Cliff Martinez to Compose Music for Nicolas Winding Refn’s Netflix Series ‘Copenhagen Cowboy’
Netflix announced today that Cliff Martinez (Traffic, Contagion, Solaris, Game Night), Peter Peter (Antboy, Over the Edge) and Julian Winding are composing the original music for the upcoming Danish Netflix neo-noir series Copenhagen Cowboy.
Read the full article at filmmusicreporter.com
How a Punk Ethos Keeps a Legend Fresh
Legendary composer Cliff Martinez talks about his score for Hotel Artemis; touches upon his work on Too Old To Die Young; elaborates on his Drive score; and shows how his craft has changed over the years, among other things.
Read the full interview by Aaron Vehlinggo at vehlinggo.com
Cliff Martinez: Lifetime Achievement Award en Soundtrack_Cologne
El genial compositor Cliff Martinez, habitual colaborador de Steven Soderbergh (autor de Solaris, Traffic, Contagio o la serie The Knick) y Nicolas Winding Refn (autor de Drive, Only God Forgives y The Neon Demon) será galardonado con el premio a toda una carrera en el festival alemán Soundtrack_Cologne en su edición número 13.
Recientemente asignado al nuevo proyecto de Marvel, la nueva secuela de Wolverine, Cliff Martinez recibirá el premio en Colonia (Alemania), el día 28 de agosto, en un congreso, el Soundtrack_Cologne, que versa sobre la composición de música para películas, juegos y series de televisión, que reunirá a un amplio elenco de invitados, y que tendrá lugar del 24 al 28 de agosto.
Glitter and doom: Cliff Martinez on horror, homage and The Neon Demon
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.
Read the full interview by Miles Bowe at FactMag
Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Each drop of Hennessy X.O is an Odyssey”
Nicolas Winding Refn recently collaborated with film composer Cliff Martinez and photographer Dan Tobin Smith for the latest Hennessy XO campaign.
Cliff Martinez : The Neon Demon S/T
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.
Read the full review by J Hubner at BackSeatMafia.com
Cliff Martinez to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award – Soundtrack Cologne
Soundtrack_Cologne CEO Michael P. Aust announced today that Cliff Martinez will receive the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award on August 27th, 2016 during the award ceremony of this year’s conference.
Soundtrack_Cologne CEO, Michael Aust and program director Matthias Hornschuh state, “Cliff Martinez’s talent is to contribute a very specific atmospheric frequency to movies through sound. Most recently this worked beautifully on Nicolas Winding Refn’s aesthetic masterpiece “The Neon Demon”.
Martinez’s music adds to the visual level and his sound therefore becomes part of the narrative. His next-level electronic film scoring doesn’t make you miss the orchestra, but makes you experience a new and different quality”.
BAFTA Award winning composer Cliff Martinez, and former drummer of the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, most recently received the Cannes Soundtrack Award for his work on “Neon Demon”, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, which marks the third collaboration between Martinez and Refn. Another director Martinez frequently collaborates with is Steven Soderbergh on over 10 projects including “Traffic” (for which he was nominated for a Grammy Award), “Sex, Lies and Videotapes”, “Kafka”, “The Limey”, “Solaris”, “Contagion” and the Cinemax series “The Knick”. His upcoming projects include “War Dogs” (directed by Todd Phillips), “The Foreigner” (directed by Martin Campbell), and “Wolverine 3” (directed by James Mangold).
Read the full article by RJ Frometa at Vents Magazine
Former Red Hot Chili Peppers Drummer Cliff Martinez Talks About His Soundtrack For ‘The Neon Demon’
The Neon Demon, directed by Drive filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, is one of the most controversial films of the year. An exploration of LA’s modelling industry starring Elle Fanning and Keanu Reeves, the horror movie follows the exploits of a young model preyed on by cannibalistic older models threatened by her newcomer status. It’s extremely violent, was booed and Cannes and got The Daily Mail all up in arms. Its soundtrack, switching between ambient numbers and banging rock songs, was recorded by Cliff Martinez, who was the original drummer in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He’s worked with Refn before, on Drive and Only God Forgives, so we chatted to Martinez about The Neon Demon, working with Skrillex – as he did on the 2012 film Spring Breakers – and why doesn’t miss the Chili Peppers.
Read the full interview by Jordan Bassett at NME
Meet the master of ominous synth cinema
bringing darkness to The Neon Demon
From Drive to The Knick, composer Cliff Martinez is now bringing his unique darkness to The Neon Demon
Whereas most film composers assemble orchestras, Cliff Martinez just needs a laptop and a keyboard (although he’s playing a Cristal Baschet here, above). The former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer’s stark, synth-heavy soundtracks for the likes of Sex, Lies and Videotape, The Knick and Drive have made him a go-to for directors with a dark side. Martinez, 62, has just completed the score for The Neon Demon. Out on July 8, it’s his third film with Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn. Here Martinez talks to WIRED about composing, Kraftwerk, and the value of long-term creative collaboration.
Read the full interview by Olly Richards at WIRED
Cliff Martinez Expertly Conveys Refn’s Inner ‘Neon Demon’
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
CD: Cliff Martinez – The Neon Demon OST
Soundtrack to Nicolas Winding Refn’s fashionista horror flick contains nuggets worth mining.
Cliff Martinez isn’t your average Hollywood film composer. He didn’t come up via an orchestral academy or even move sideways from the electronica/classical crossover milieu. Neither John Williams nor Jóhann Jóhannsson are his template. Instead, he took a sharp left out of the LA punk scene, drumming in bands ranging from Lydia Lunch’s no wave noisiness to the nascent, raucous Red Hot Chili Peppers. He even played on Captain Beefheart’s final freak-out, 1982’s Ice Cream For Crow. However, since the Eighties, and especially working with the director Steven Soderbergh, he’s carved himself a niche as a film soundtrack creator.
Read the full review by Thomas H Green at theartsdesk.com
Soundtrack The Neon Demon
Cliff Martinez schreef geen traditionele score voor deze film. Dat komt misschien doordat hij ooit meedraaide in de punkwereld. Hij gebuikt moderne klanken bij vaak donkere en psychologische films zoals Pump Up The Volume, The Limey, Wicker Park en Drive. Hij is als muzikant bekend door het manipuleren van geluid, vooral dat van percussiewerk. Zijn techniek is geëvolueerd doorheen de jaren. Zelf omschrijft hij het als ‘rhythmi-tizing pitched, ambient textures’ die vooral in Narc tot uiting komen.
Wie vertrouwd is met het werk van Cliff Martinez, weet dat de componist een heel specifieke stijl heeft. Eentje die doorheen de jaren nogal repetitief was verspreid over verschillende films en soundtracks. De vraag is dan ook of Martinez nog muzikaal uitdagend uit de hoek kan komen? Terwijl “Neon Demon” uit mijn hoofdtelefoon weergalmt, durf ik ja zeggen. De beats bonken stevig tijdens dit nummer waarbij je allerlei kleurrijke taferelen inbeeldt. De soundtrack werd bekroond tijdens de Filmfestival van Cannes. De fans schaffen zich best zeker de plaat aan.
Didier Van Hoorebeke – supercalifragilistic.be
Beauty Is Currency: An Interview with Elle Fanning, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Cliff Martinez
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.
Read the full article and interview by Michael Roffman at Consequence of Sound
David Poland chats with Cliff Martinez on DP/30: The Oral History Of Hollywood
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.
DP/30: The Oral History Of Hollywood
Interview: ‘The Neon Demon’ Composer Cliff Martinez
The Neon Demon is on its way to theaters. Refn’s macabre ode to the LA fashion scene arrives in theaters this week on a wave of positive word of mouth and boasting one win from the illustrious Cannes Film Festival. That win came by way of the film’s moody original score from Composer Cliff Martinez. The Neon Demon is Martinez’s third collaboration with Refn – after Drive (2008) and Only God Forgives (2013) – and sees the composer bring a brooding grandiosity to his signature ambient sound. Behind throbbing electronics and an ocean of synthesizers, Martinez’s compositions build a dense layer of sex and dread behind Refn’s stylized visuals. The result is a fever dream – or nightmare – of a film unlike anything else you’ll see this summer. The composer recently took some time to speak with CutPrintFilm about his less than traditional path to composing, working with Nicolas Winding Refn and strategically placed tube socks.
Read the full interview by Patrick Phillips at CUT PRINT FILM
Nicolas Winding Refn And Cliff Martinez Talk THE NEON DEMON
The film steers the ship; gives you the structure and the ideas. Interestingly, I don’t see the three works as fitting into distinct categories as you just described. They always seem like they blurred together. We both share a love of sparse electronic music. We both love ’70s and ’80s electronic music. I think every work shares these sensibilities. We’ve always talked about Kraftwerk, Goblin, [Giorgio] Moroder – those artists have always been reference points. It always seems like an evolution to me, but we’ve always tried to consciously steer clear of past work. But can we actually escape our pasts? -Cliff Martinez
Read the full interview by Jacob Knight at Birth Movies Death
Cliff Martinez – The Neon Demon Soundtrack
The composer’s latest for Nicolas Winding Refn proves they’re artistic soulmates.
This is Martinez’s third collaboration with Refn—he captured the zeitgeist with his score for 2011’s Drive and also worked on Refn’s divisive follow-up Only God Forgives—and also his most assertive. Where those soundtracks trafficked mainly in synth-heavy ambiance and shattering moments of dissonance, The Neon Demon’s 23 tracks are much more concerned with melody. Driving backbeats ground many of the tracks, as do infectious synth burbles and chugging trails of distortion. Some moments are strikingly pretty, others deeply unpleasant; none of it, though, is lacking in personality.
Read the full review by Randall Colburn at Consequence of Sound
Indie Soundtrack Master Cliff Martinez Talks Scoring The Neon Demon
The longtime movie maestro’s third collaboration with the director Nicolas Winding Refn opens Friday.
An important ingredient in my artistic upbringing is punk rock. Shortly after moving to L.A., I was rehearsing in South Central L.A. with a top-40 band that was doing George Benson cover songs. In an adjacent room, I heard an offensive racket that turned out to be L.A.’s first (or second) punk rock band, The Screamers. At first I was repulsed. My next response was, “This is interesting,” and by the end of the song, I was hooked. Shortly thereafter I joined The Weirdos. We played at the Whisky A Go Go and when I saw three people do swan dives off the balcony, I thought to myself, “That beats applause any day.”
Read the full interview at Vanity Fair by Spike Carter