“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
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
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 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
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
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
For his original score for Refn’s latest fever dream THE NEON DEMON, Martinez has created his magnum opus, his aural masterpiece. A collection of cues that veer smoothly between lush landscapes of dreamy ambience and abstract swells of mind and ear-bending malevolence.
The main attraction here is Martinez’s seductive sounds and, for almost 20 tracks (the CD is a single long playing disc and the vinyl is 2 platters; both will be released via Milan Records, the former on June 24th, the latter on July 8th), Martinez seamlessly blends new and old technology and musical sensibilities to disorienting, rapturous effect.
Each track connects to the other, creating a tapestry of unbearable tension that punctuates with organic, aural money-shots before settling back into a deep, lulling droning tone. The score is the logical extension of DRIVE’s California menace, but far less sunny an experience. Because THE NEON DEMON is a horror movie. And this is most assuredly a horror movie soundtrack.
Read the full review by Chris Alexander at SHOCKTILLYOUDROP.COM
Film Fest Gent & Brussels Philharmonic proudly present a new album combining the best film scores by Cliff Martinez.
Cliff Martinez is a key figure in our time’s film scoring. In the 80’s, he began spending several years drumming with such acts as Captain Beefheart, The Dickies, Lydia Lunch and The Weirdos, and then joining the Red Hot Chili Peppers. His career is exemplary.
His experimental electronic music highlighted many cinematic masterpieces. He has been Steven Soderbergh’s regular composer (‘sex, lies and videotape’; ‘Traffic’; ‘Solaris’; ‘Contagion’) and he has been making a name for himself for a few years now scoring the two last films of visionary Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, ‘Drive’ and ‘Only God Forgives’.
Cliff Martinez also scored the great ‘Spring Breakers’, ‘Arbitrage’ (Milan Records) and ‘The Company You Keep’ (Milan Records). We now hear about him as he has just scored the first Steven Soderbergh TV series ‘The Knick’ (starring Clive Owen), to be released by Milan Records as well.
This Film Fest Gent album combines the best film scores by Cliff Martinez (‘Solaris’; ‘Only God Forgives’; ‘The Company You Keep’; ‘Contagion’) arranged for orchestra and performed by the Brussels Philharmonic conducted by Dirk Brossé.
Read full article at World Soundtrack Awards – Cliff Martinez’ Film Fest Gent Album
The 41 minutes of Martinez’s score included on this album are much more thrilling than I expected them to be. There’s a constant undertone of dread and suspense that permeates every track of this album, but without tipping the vibe over into the type of paranoid action thriller scoring that sometimes result from this type of attempt. There seems to be a grim optimism playing out in the peppy rhythms that help maintain a positive vibe throughout the album despite the inherent darkness hanging over every note (listen to “I’m a Missionary Man” for a perfect example of this). The jumpy percussion in tracks like “Whose Side Are You On?” bring some unexpected levity to such an otherwise heavy score. Mixing in some digital effects with the guitar and other instruments gives the music a modern/urban feel that plays nicely into the image of the film. In the liner notes Martinez briefly comments on how seriously he took this score after seeing the film, and this dedication shows clearly in his music. – by Zach Freeman
Full review at BLOGGER NEWS
Is Cliff Martinez’s Solaris the best sci-fi film score since Vangelis’ opus for Blade Runner (1982)? Martinez’s effort may have equals in the sci-fi sphere, but nothing surpasses it for originality and haunting atmosphere. Martinez and American filmmaker Steven Soderberg have worked together for many years and their collaborations have always been interesting, notably Traffic (2000), Contagion (2011) and Sex Lies & Videotape (1989), even if the accompanying soundtrack albums for those films are hit and miss affairs. Solaris, however, is completely unified as a standalone album. – by Mike G
Full review of Solaris Soundtrack at Ambient Music Guide
