If you were blown away by the craziest 3D horror remakes to hit theaters in the past few years – that'd be My Bloody Valentine and Piranha, of course – part of that wild in-your-face experience comes from the music of Michael Wandmacher, whose skill at mixing old-school orchestration with experimental sound design has made him one of Hollywood's go-to composers for just about every genre you can think of... and a very busy guy. Not only did he just finish up the score for the genre-bending epic Drive Angry, but his surreal and disturbing soundtrack to Gideon Raff's extreme horror flick Train will finally be available on iTunes. We had a chat with Michael this weekend to talk about his creative style, his take on horror music, and the Train release... so turn the page for the whole story!

FEARnet: First of all, Happy New Year!

Michael: You too!

Hope you had some time to rest over the holidays...

It was good... we wrapped up Drive Angry about the second week of December and I was actually able to spend some time with my family and do some changes to the studio. Once or twice a year you've got to just take the time to sit down and see if there's any way you can organize your material to make work easier, faster and more fluid so you can keep your head in the process of making music.

You don't want to lose that flow, especially when you're playing so many of the instruments yourself.

Exactly. Drive Angry was like that on a lot of the cues: it was a combination of a lot of different guitars, bowed instruments, dulcimers, things like that... I would record a track with a dulcimer, then put it on the floor, go back to the first measure and record the cello, then put that down, pick up a guitar and start recording again.

I'm really looking forward to hearing them all together.

It was a lot of fun to do. It was also a daunting challenge, because the movie has so many different elements, along with all the characters' eccentricities, that had to be blended together in the music. Plus it's set in the South, so there's this very subtle twang to the whole thing. The rock elements are very much in the spirit of old-school '70s album rock, more AC/DC than Linkin Park. Modern rock production just wouldn't fit with the characters in this story with their classic muscle cars and leather coats. Their mindsets are very much in the past.

I went to your Facebook page and saw that old Chevy hubcap with your instruments...

Yeah, our percussionist had that hubcap in his box of metal junk that he uses, so we knew we had to use that. We hung it on a rack by a string and started banging on it with sticks. It became a part of that whole spirit. Everybody was having such a great time on the project, and it comes across onscreen. I always enjoy working with Patrick [Lussier] anyway.

It sounds like it. The music you did for Patrick's My Bloody Valentine is just cranked to 11.

[Laughs] Yeah, it is. Patrick wants everything louder, bigger, faster, more in-your-face... he's always like that. He has a very hybrid mentality in terms of his love for genre. I don't know anyone else you can just sit down with and just talk with about any horror film ever made. He likes music as a really dynamic element to the film, and it's great for a composer because you know he'll let you bring more intensity and pure craziness. He's not afraid to try anything. Plus he's a real pleasure to work with, a really nice guy.

It's cool that you said Patrick has a hybrid approach to filmmaking, because I was thinking you went the same route with MBV. There's lots of electronic elements that build tension, but when it busts out, it goes orchestral, with the huge brass stabs.

Yeah, Patrick and I are on the same page, the idea of blending electronics and natural sounds with more tonal material to create a sense of unease. We call it “music design.” Sometimes you just can't get close to the power of that big brass when the bad guy is chasing the good guy. It's like I always say: something becomes a cliché because it WORKS. It's the composer's job to give it a voice of its own, but keep that weight and power. But Patrick's not afraid to blend it with other elements. On any given day you'll hear him listening to Jerry Goldsmith and then Nine Inch Nails.

I'll bet it's liberating to work with someone who's so open to possibilities.

Yes, and Alex Aja was very much the same way on Piranha. He wanted both orchestral and synthetic elements. He wanted an alien, otherworldly feel for the underwater scenes, but he also wanted it sometimes to be straight-up obnoxious and chaotic. That actually works for this type of film.

It totally works.

When I was researching actual piranha, the first thing that came to mind was “chaos.” Once they get into a feeding frenzy, they'll even eat each other. It was really important to reflect that in the music, so we used a really big string orchestra that was divided into sections that were sort of playing against each other – very dissonant, very chaotic – and then, on a dime, you would smash cut to something else, and the music would completely change to something completely electronic. Learning how to weave all that stuff together is a huge challenge, but it's also a lot of fun if the director's not putting any limitations on you.

How does Alex approach music compared to Patrick?

Alex is a very interesting person to work with; he's got a very clear idea of what he wants, and it's up to you to interpret and enhance that, but he's also very thoughtful and always takes time to evaluate things before he says anything. We go into what I call “mad scientist” mode, where we're running an experiment at the same time, and a lot of what ends up in the score is a happy accident, and at that point he'll be able to tell me very quickly what he likes or doesn't like. I like working with directors like that.

You took a darker, industrial-style approach for Train... what stood out for me was that distinct metallic, machine-like rhythm that runs through a lot of those cues. How did you come up with that?

A lot of those sounds were actual trains. We went down to a train yard in the San Fernando Valley and sampled different trains, and in some cases we chopped them up and turned them into loops, then played them back through effects to get these different kinds of chugging rhythms. That basically became the percussion palette for the film.

What's that string motif that runs through the opening theme?

Gideon wanted something in the fabric of the score that represented the setting in Eastern Europe, so I had a violinist play some gypsy-style melodic phrases, then I chopped them up by tempo and played them backwards. Then I played with the pieces until they became a melody.

It's exotic and sensual, but it feels slightly off.

Right, that became really important, and it was one of those light-bulb moments when we finally nailed it. Another important element score-wise was for Thora Birch's character Alex. As the movie progresses, she tries to maintain a sense of bravado to the outside world, but inside she's freaking out. So we tried to make the rhythms and sounds more internalized. It was kind of the same ideas as my score for Cry Wolf – the sounds were smaller and more sparse, and they represented her pulse rate and level of anxiety. As the movie progresses, it gets bigger, weirder, denser... and once the confrontation happens, it's a full-scale palette.

Even when you do hear the traditional instruments, it sounds like everything is processed to sound more unnerving.

I think I manipulated more organic sounds for Train than for any other score I've done. I was looking at any way to manipulate sounds so that they would be weird but people would still know what they were... like the violin or the trains. It was challenging, but a lot of fun.

It really enhances the nightmare feeling of the movie, but it stands up on its own too.

Thanks! Train was a smaller film, but it's a score I'm really proud of, and I've been hoping for a while that someone would put it out. It was a really successful process from beginning to end, and I still think that it's one of my better works.

Now that it's out on iTunes, I'm hoping a lot of people will get out there and discover it.

Thanks, I'm really happy that Lionsgate agreed to put it out... I've had really good experiences with them on Punisher: War Zone and My Bloody Valentine, and I'm going to be working with them again.

That's good to hear. One more thing I'm curious about: has any score or theme really stuck with you and influenced your own approach to horror music? Like in Piranha, there's a Bernard Hermann quality to the strings, so I figured he was a big influence...

Yeah, I'm a big fan of his style of orchestration. My idea for that score was “Bernard Hermann meets Megadeth.”

That's a perfect description.

But over all, really depends on the movie... I always think of movies like An American Werewolf in London... Elmer Bernstein did a lot of great music for that film, but there was that big loping string figure whenever David was having hallucinations that always comes back to me... it was creepy! It's little things like that, they freak me out. Or when Danny Elfman got away from the tri-tone stuff and started getting into more dissonant work. Richard Band, Harry Manfredini, those were the people I listened to when I was growing up, so that's where I pull a lot of my musical influences from, but my sound design mainly came out of industrial music, so it's all a matter of how you stir it up in the pot.

I like that you put the same thought into arranging the sound design and electronic elements that you do for the orchestral parts, instead of just laying electronic stuff on top.

That's important to me, that all the parts mesh together. When you take the time to really understand the process and what it takes to produce electronic music, it just opens up a whole new range of possibilities.

Wouldn't you say horror gives you a lot of latitude to experiment with that new range of sounds, since you're deliberately trying to unsettle people?

It really is the best genre for that, because you can do just about anything. I keep thinking about the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, during the whole banquet scene during the end of the movie you hear this constant cymbal roll, this high-pitched sound, and the noise of people hitting garbage cans and stuff... it drives you completely bananas, but that's exactly what Tobe Hooper wanted to do! The same goes with Halloween... not the theme, but the whole sequence when Michael puts on the mask and goes up to kill his sister. For two whole minutes, [John Carpenter]'s just holding down a minor second – it's like listening to the emergency broadcast system. But it totally works! Those are the things that you have to be open to. I have no preconceptions going in of how a score is going to end up. I would love to do a 120-piece Lord of the Rings epic with a choir, but I would also love to do a score where someone hands me three boxes and a tin can. Either way for me would be fun.

It's all about the possibilities, right?

Yeah, who knows what could happen?

Thanks so much for your time, and congratulations on the Train score getting out there for everyone to hear. I think they're gonna dig it.

Thanks!

The Train soundtrack is available now on Amazon and iTunes. You can also find My Bloody Valentine (on Amazon and iTunes) and several other of Michael's scores on iTunes, so be sure to check 'em out!