When Sweden's first vampire film, Frostbite, premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, audiences also got their first exposure to the film's versatile composer, Anthony Lledo. Lledo's music was a wonderful treat for genre aficionados, and film music fans in search of a refreshing voice in symphonic film composition.

In our Q&A interview, conducted via email, Lledo describes the uniqueness of his breakthrough score, and his position in being one of the few Scandinavian composers whose work is slowly reaching international audiences.

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Mark R. Hasan:     First off, how did you become involved with Frostbite ?

Anthony Lledo : __Five years ago I was delivering some music to a studio in Copenhagen. The sound engineer was a good friend of mine, and while I was there, I played him some demos that I had done. One of the demos was a short piece in the style of a horror film score, and we played it quite loud in the studio. All of a sudden, two Swedish guys who happened to be in an editing suite next door came running into the studio, asking ‘What is that music you are playing? –It's awesome! Who's the composer?' They hired me on the spot for a horror film they were planning to make. However, that particular film never made it, and I didn't talk to them for three years until one day I got an e-mail from the director asking if I would still be interested in composing for them. This time it was for a film called Frostbite.

MRH :    Was it your decision to compose a score for a full orchestra, or the director's?

AL : They wanted an orchestral score for their film and were looking for somebody who could do it. Director Anders Banke and producer Magnus Paulsson are both huge film music fans, so I think they have always wanted to do a film with a real orchestral score in it, and with this film they had the opportunity to have one.

MRH :    In terms of the score's style and design, did the director want what's essentially a very classical horror orchestral score? And what specific ideas did he want you to follow?

AL : They were looking for something of the sort they had heard in that studio three years ago, and basically, I think that they had a lot of faith in me, and believed that I could pull it off. We had a spotting session where we discussed what the music should do for each scene -- mostly painting the big picture, discussing general ideas. I then started to compose what I found suitable for the film, and luckily enough for me, they liked my approach right from the beginning. I don't think that I redid a single cue.

MRH :    Unlike the genre films from the 1980s, the rock and electronic songs in Frostbite were basically source cues, restricted to car radios, headphones, or the party house where the massacre takes place, thereby allowing you to compose long cues for whole sequences. Did this level of freedom evolve as the score was being written and the film's score demands were being assessed during editing, or did the director basically give you the bulk of the film to craft a whole score?

AL : You are right, the songs in Frostbite are used as source music, coming from a car radio or a stereo etc. rather than being plastered over entire scenes, thereby leaving space for me to compose the score.

The songs in Frostbite were already there on the copy of the film that I got for writing the score, so the director and the editor had already decided where they should go, leaving space for me to do the real scoring. I was of course very happy about their decision to let me score the film instead of just using the songs as score. Again, this is a good example of filmmakers that understand the importance, function and possibilities of music in a film -- the score as well as the songs. Songs in a film can, as in this case, be really powerful if they are used the right way.

MRH :    I've also noticed that your score delves into some of the minimalist, idiosyncratic style of Wojciech Kilar - I'm thinking of his use of repetition, which he extends to create long swathes of tension - and I wonder if Kilar is one of your influences, or if you were making a rather discreet nod to the composer, who's best known to North American audiences for his work on Bram Stoker's Dracula ?

AL : Very interesting. I haven't actually listened to Kilar's Dracula score for many years, but it was definitely one of my favourite scores when it came out in the early nineties, and I still think is a great piece of work. It really added a unique feel to Francis Ford Coppola's brilliant film. I grew up listening to Hollywood composers -- and I didn't really listen to European film composers at all. Even so, I don't really think that the Frostbite score sounds like a typical Hollywood score -- maybe you are right that it is somewhat similar to the style of Kilar -- must be the European roots, I guess.

MRH :    How large was the orchestra you used?

AL : We had a 78-piece orchestra conducted by Englishman Allan Wilson, who is a great conductor and a really nice guy. The orchestra had just finished the recording of Christopher Young's score to The Exorcism Of Emily Rose (also conducted by Wilson ) -- one of the scariest scores ever, in my opinion. I talked about that score with the sound engineer there, and he told me that he had had nightmares every night while recording that score !

Apart from the orchestra, we had two twelve year-old choirboys singing on the score. I also added a few sampled things myself -- like in the cue called “The Kitchen,” which is mostly sound design with a few added orchestral elements. I also used a sampled glass harmonica and percussion.