MRH: Where did you get a keen interest in electronics, because you use them with great sophistication, particularly with your current score, The Hills Run Red (2009).

FW: Thank you. Again, John is known to be somewhat of a pioneer in terms of music technology, and he’s always on the newest, most untouched technical level that anybody can be at. Anytime something new comes out, he’s getting lost in it and trying to use it as best as he can, and so I’ve sort of grown into that same mentality of doing that.

When something new comes out he’ll get it, and we’ll spend in his studio, the two of us figuring out how to use it, and how to make something interesting out of that new piece of technology. We’re both big fans of doing our own sampling, so we would bring in a soloist or some interesting instrument and just play it for hours and just record different material played in unconventional ways, and then incorporate that into our music in a very unique way. That’s something we do quite a lot together.

MRH: I think the danger is because you can virtually do anything – create any sound, shape it in any way you want – and go overboard and create a sonic mush that can be applied towards anything, like a generic mood cue for horror, for example.

It can be intense, horrific, etc., but I find that what you do with your use of electronics and samples is very precise, and at the same time you use a bit of classical, contemporary, modern, and even if there’s electronics in a cue, there’s very sparing, carefully applied, and organized.

FW:  Yeah, that’s something I definitely try to avoid is to clutter things up with too many different sounds so people just hear it as a wall of sound. I’m very much in to using very defined instruments and recording them really well, and then I’m not afraid to expose them on their own and feature them with very little around them because they’ll sound beautiful, they’re well performed, and I think that’s very important, because in the movie itself there’s so much already going on – the dialogue and the sound effects.

There’s so many other sound levels to a film that you really have to make sure not to add more confusion to the whole process, and just stay out of the dialogue, stay out of the effects, and use very selective instruments in a clean way so people can register the work you’ve done on them.

MRH: One cue that comes to mind on the album is “Redneck Requiem,” where I think you took certain tones and reversed processed them, but they’re arranged in a melodic fashion; there is a melody that you hear, but the actual tones that you hear have been digitally flipped around. I just like the fact they’re abstract sounds organized in way that’s still sympathetic towards the characters.

FW: Yes, absolutely. What you hear there I think is we recorded a piano and processed the audio not only in reverse but made it sound more muted by adding certain filters on that recording, and it is a melody that is played earlier in the piece, but later in the “Redneck Requiem” it’s flipped around; so you’re hearing it backwards, but from the back to the front, which I thought was kind of an interesting way to twist things even more.

The Hills Run Red is a very twisted film. There are a lot of turns and twists and things that happen to catch the audience off guard, so I was trying to do similar things with the music, which is obviously happening on a very subconscious level; I’m never very obvious with that kind of stuff, but you seemed to have noticed it, so that’s great.

MRH: I noticed it, but I also like the fact that it’s something that isn’t repeated later; it’s unique to that cue, and it’s not something that’s part of, say, five recurring sound samples, that lesser composers would repeat throughout a horror score with little variation.

What’s interesting in a lot of horror scores (including your own) is that there’s a series of sounds with which we’ve become accustomed, whether it’s bass drones, shrill sounds, vibrations, and they’re used in a musical context, but these sounds are now part of an accepted musical language which audiences recognize in horror films, as well as the traditional string stab or piano hit, and these particular sounds that used be used as sound effects are not part of that musical language.

Do you think our familiarity with and acceptance of these sounds comes from our 20+ years of exposure to the dense surround sound mixes?

FW:  I think it’s a gradual process of people being more and more experimental with their music over the past decade; it just becomes something that we accept without wondering, but yes, I still try to evoke some interest in the listener by making them think ‘Oh, that’s an interesting instrument. I can’t quite figure out what it is, but it sounds cool and I like it.’

I like to sort of alter sounds in a way that you accept them as a melody or as an instrument in the score without it sounding awkward, but you’re still not quite sure what it is. I think that’s a very important thing, especially in horror movies, to get into that whole strange area.