Red Stewart chats with Ian Hultquist….
Ian Hultquist is an American composer who has been working in the film and television industries since the late-2000s. He is best known for his work with his former band Passion Pit, as well as writing music for the movies Ivory Tower, A.X.L., and Assassination Nation.
Flickering Myth had the privilege to interview him, and I in turn had the honor to conduct it:
Mr. Hultquist thank you for taking the time to speak with me. You are the second band musician I’ve had the chance to talk to, but certainly the first contemporary musician, so this is a privilege.
Oh cool, my pleasure.
I was hoping I could ask you a couple of questions related to your work in music before we talk about your film composing and A.X.L.
Yeah, absolutely.
You were of course a founder of Passion Pit. Now, I admittedly didn’t listen to your music growing up, but going through some of your songs it does bring back memories of hearing Moby in the 90s. Despite that similar DNA, there is a distinction in your works, but when it comes to electronic music, I feel like there’s a lot of unwarranted criticism of repetition in the genre. Like, people who say synth is the same as techno, and indietronica is the same as synthpop. I’m wondering, what are your thoughts on these critics? Is it unfair? Are they just living in nostalgia?
I think that there’s definitely….I kind of see it both ways. Like, there is absolutely inspiration taking from stuff that’s come from before, and that is going to leak into what you’re doing a little bit; you can’t really avoid that. But I also believe that that’s what allows you to modify it in your own way. That’s how you come up with new genres, and new interpretations of older genres. So, I agree that there is a lot of music that sound like things that came before it, but that’s a part of the process of someone then discovering a new sound.
No, that makes a lot of sense. Rock ‘n’ Roll inspired a ton of genres, though it doesn’t seem to get the same kind of criticism that electronic music does.
Sure, but when rock’n’roll first started, everyone was saying “oh, they’re ripping off the blues.”
Right, that’s true. They were taking from African American roots and turning it into its own thing. Now you came into the foray really in the mid-2000s, and it’s interesting because, to me, this generation doesn’t really have a distinct music identity. Last past decades have had defining genres of music, but here we’ve seen a resurgence in hip hop, resurgence in country, pop music taking over the airwaves along with R&B, and of course the expansion of electronic music. And I love it all, but I’m wondering, do you feel the same way about this lack of identity, and why do you think we’re having such a collision of ideas?
I think part of it is just because music has become so accessible. You know, the great thing about services like Spotify is that you can find whatever you want in an instant, and it’s so easy. At the same time, because it is so easy, there’re just so many things available and music has started to become diluted in a way. I feel like it’s been a while since a label or a new artist has come out with a really strong direction that they push. There are so many bands and artists that come out now where everything is just a melting pot. And it’s cool because it’s like music is branching across genres without limitation. At the same time, though, the melting pot is becoming so big that we’re maybe losing focus and ourselves a little bit.
Yeah, I admittedly hadn’t thought of it before, but you’re absolutely right that music has become so much more accessible through platforms like Spotify, YouTube, and Pandora. If I may ask a follow-up question, what do you make of the resurgence and popularity in vinyls? Why are they making a comeback?
I actually really love it. Part of the thing that bums me out about music nowadays is that even I don’t really buy music that much anymore, and I was, up until a couple of years ago, a really strong proponent of “I will buy this record on iTunes. I want to own it, I don’t want to stream it.” But it’s just gotten to a point where iTunes has become so confusing, and with Amazon Music and all these other sites where you buy music, it’s really hard to feel like you’re owning it still. Like, it’s not fun to actually purchase something through them because then it doesn’t even download to your computer: it lives in the cloud.
So for me, if you buy a vinyl it’s like you’re buying something, you’re holding it in your hand and you’re holding something that people worked hard on and actually made, and you can look at it and smell it and feel it and listen to it. So I love that there’s some form of physical music still happening. I know a lot of people too are branching out into making cassettes again, which no one has a cassette player anymore, but honestly just the idea that you can buy one is exciting to people. And I think that also shows that real music lovers still want to buy music, it’s just the digital marketplace has become a really weird way to do it.
So I’m happy, whatever other formats they can have for us as consumers, I think people are going to jump onto. I don’t know if they’ll last forever, but at least for right now, it seems fans are really into it, so I’m happy with it. I would love to have some more vinyls come out.
For sure. My brother owns a vinyl player and my first car had a cassette player, so I’m also saddened that that’s been removed from automobiles. And you’re right, people like owning physical stuff. I feel like that collection aspect will never go away. Now, to switch gears, when you were with Passion Pit, you guys created some pretty crazy music videos. And I know obviously in a band you write the music first, then perform it, then record the video. But I understand you were always interested in film composing, so did your experiences making those music videos help when it came to film music?
Actually yes, but not in the way that I’m assuming your thinking. So the way that our music videos actually helped me get into scoring was, when we were filming our music video for “Constant Conversations,” it was kind of a bigger budget video, so were on set at some mansion in Hancock Park, Los Angeles, and there was an actual cast of actors in the video. And one of those actors was David Dastmalchian, who I recognized from being in The Dark Knight, and I’m a total Batman nerd. So I went up and said hi to him, and we started talking, and I was like “I’m in the band, and it’s really fun, but I went to film school to study film scoring and I really kind of want to dive into that.” And he said “well, I have a script for a feature film called Animals that I’m trying to get off the ground. If it ever happens, maybe you should work on it with me.” So he gave me a big leg-up in trusting me to work on that, and that ended up being my first feature narrative.
That’s wonderful to hear. I’m actually a fan of David given his prevalence in superhero fiction- he’s the Russian guy [Kurt] in the Ant-Man movies, and was Abra-Kadabra in The Flash TV show. I’m happy that he helped you.
Yeah, he’s great.
So, I’ve talked to a lot of orchestrators, and it’s interesting that I can sort of ask you the opposite question I tend to ask them, which is you’re someone who clearly works with synths, but have you ever had to do work with an orchestra. And if so, what’s that experience been like?
Yeah, even though a lot of the stuff that I write ends up being very synth-heavy, I always try to get some sort of live musician in there. It can even be me cause I play guitar and piano. But I really like working with string players when I can. I have worked with an orchestra a few times, however I’ve never done a big session in person in L.A. I mean, I collaborated three times with the Budapest Scoring Orchestra in Hanoi.
Oh wow.
And they’re really nice. They’ve been fantastic to work with. You know, a lot of the stuff that I do isn’t the biggest budget-type project yet, so I kind of have to work with what I can. And they have always been extremely accommodating. And they actually perform on A.X.L. as well.
That’s great to hear that you’ve managed to combine multiple aspects of your musical career into one access point. But prior to A.X.L., I noticed that you specialized in documentaries. And documentaries are interesting because, in my opinion, they’re the most vulnerable to cloying sentimental music. Like I love Blackfish but I felt the soundtrack got in the way of the genuine emotion that that story generated on its own.
But when I went over some of your OSTs, and they were admittedly hard to find, but I managed to listen to The First Monday in May and Love & Bananas, and there’s that sentimentality in there for sure, but you’ve also imbued it with a spiritual harmony if that’s the right word. Like it sounds very metaphysical. Why are you attracted to documentaries and what’s your approach to your compositions for them to avoid being overly-emotional?
Well I think for documentaries it’s more of a personal interest than hearing about the stories. As much as I am a huge comic book nerd and love spectacle and love blockbusters, at the same time I also really like learning, and I always learn best through film. And for me I like working on documentaries because I learn something; I learn about people and stories and history. It’s almost like taking a little college course every time I do a new documentary.
And music-wise, it just comes from a lot of the directors who I work with. I’ve worked with Andrew Rossi a lot and I’ve worked with Jason Cohen, and Ashley Bell for Love & Bananas. And out of all of them, Love & Bananas might be the most sentimental because we really wanted an emotional push. But with most of these other ones, the filmmakers didn’t necessarily want to influence the audience too much; they wanted the audience to feel the emotions for themselves, and not necessarily have me tell them what to do. And I really appreciate that because, even when I do narratives, every once and a while you have to have a little nudge in the music to let audiences know what’s going on. But I really appreciate filmmaking where you’re just letting the film watch over you and making up your own mind about what to feel, and not necessarily having the filmmaker tell you what to do.
I agree with that approach, and as I said, the scores in those documentaries have a very heightened-atmosphere approach. From there let’s talk about A X L. When I saw the previews, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Jimmy Neutron, like if he found Goddard instead creating him.
[laughs]
And it also seems to have a lot of similarities to Transformers and Star Kid, with a young person discovering a sentient technological object and befriending it. What made you want to take on this proejct?
I got brought in to watch a cut of the film, not really knowing anything about it at all, just that it was going to be a fun sci-fi movie. And so I sat down by myself and watched the entire film, and I absolutely fell in love with it, from the adventure aspect to the sci-fi aspect to the relationship aspect, because I am a very big dog person: I have two dogs of my own with my wife. And I just completely attached myself to the film. And that doesn’t always happen. You know, I see a lot of early cuts of other projects that I’ve worked on, and it kind of takes a while for me to find my connection to it. But with this one, I don’t know- it was just like it clicked, I know what to do, I’m meant to do this movie [laughs]. So I was really excited when I got to work on it.
And I’m wondering, is working on a visual effects heavy film like A.X.L. different from doing more independent low budget movies? Like, did you have to wait for the CGI to be mostly rendered before you could commence properly writing the different themes, or was it the same process?
For the most part, it was kind of the same process, because I was working with a lot of pre-vis or pre-visual effects; it would be almost like animatics. And then I would get updated cuts with the effects put in. So as far as me writing the initial music, it was the same way, like I’m just working on the story and emotions, and if there’s some action points, I can still sync them depending on what I’m looking at.
However, when the main bulk of the writing was done, there were a ton of visual effects that went on all throughout up until the end of the post-production process, and that was when I actually got a lot of help from my music editor Nevin Seus. And he did an incredible job of keeping track of all the new visual effects coming in and making sure that everything was always lined up properly.
But you know, the initial writing of it is you’re treating it like anything else.
That’s interesting to hear, and it’s nice to see that you had a good relationship with the sound people because I know that those departments tend to be more separated. Now, one thing I was surprised to read was that this was director Oliver Daly’s first feature film. He did a short before, but this was his first feature movie. Did that make any difference for you when you were working with him, or was he knowledgeable from the beginning and knew exactly what he wanted to do?
On this one, it didn’t make a difference. Oliver knows music really well, and he had a very strong opinion of what he wanted and when he wanted it. And it didn’t feel like it was his first feature whatsoever, because I have worked with a lot of people who did their first feature, and there was always a little bit of a learning curve or us finding a common language. But Oliver was amazing to work with. I hope that we can do it again, because he knew the story inside and out and he knew what needed to happen.
That’s great to hear that Mr. Daly was not just confident, but also so experienced and professional from the beginning that you guys were able to collaborate really well and create this strong score. I have one last question, and this is something I like to ask all composer I have a chance to speak to, but what are three pieces of music that have had the greatest impact on you as a composer? They can be a band album, music score, classical piece, whatever you want. Three music pieces.
Oh man [laughs].
[laughs]
I’ll say the score to Jurassic Park by John Williams, because when I was younger I always loved films, but I never really felt like I could be a film composer. However, when Jurassic Park came out, something with that music clicked with me, and it’s kind of ingrained in my DNA now: like I just know that score so well. And I believe it was one of the first sparks that was like “oh, maybe this is something I want to do.”
And then I’ll say Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco, one of my favorite records ever. That, kind of from a production aspect, was like my Sgt. Pepper’s [Lonely Hearts Club Band] where it’s just like I listen to it over and over, and I got obsessed about every little sound and noise that’s in there.
And then, I’ll be a dork and say the score to The Dark Knight by Hans Zimmer, just because there’s so much stuff that he does in there that it’s kind of like how I would think about scoring a film, and then he just did it- it’s almost like he took it out of my brain. And it was one of those moments that inspired me to think outside the box. I love John Williams, but I never want to write like John Williams, and I like [The Dark Knight’s] score because it pushes the boundaries of what a blockbuster score can sound like.
All terrific choices. And it’s interesting, because out of every composer I have spoken to, at least half of them have mentioned a John William’s piece in some capacity, so I think that speaks to just how influential he is. But for me Mr. Hultquist, you really do remind me of a young Mark Mothersbaugh. I think you are very talented, and with the amount of diversity you already have at your age, it just tells me that you’re going to have a very prosperous career, and I wish you the best of luck. Thank you for speaking with me.
Yeah, thank you so much, I appreciate it. Take care!
Flickering Myth would like to thank Mr. Hultquist for sitting down with us. U.K. audiences will be able to catch Assassination Nation on September 21, 2018.
Special thanks to Adrianna Perez of White Bear PR for making this interview possible.
Red Stewart
