Brian began his musical career as a drummer, playing for the mischievous grunge-wavers Redd Kross, and later for Air, with whom he worked on their album 10,000 Hz Legend. He's kept these collaborations going through much of his film and television work, often sharing credit with handpicked collaborators: he scored Friday Night Lights with Texan post-rockers Explosions in the Sky and Stranger than Fiction with Spoon's Britt Daniel. He also released the first new music from Talk Talk's Mark Hollis in more than 15 years as part of the score for the Gus Van Sant produced TV serial Boss. Most recently, Brian's been scoring NBC's baroque cannibal melodrama Hannibal, which he's turned into an experiment in frightening sonic textures, including bullroarers, bowed percussion, and a bizarre synth called the Swarmatron. His 2014 album, Auto Music, is a great example of corralling different players and setting mood as well.
Entering Brian's studio, in a converted apartment building north of Los Angeles' Griffith Park, is a little like visiting a Solaris-model space station. Towers of analog outboard gear seem at home beside a dismantled upright piano; an adjoining room is piled with stacks of cymbals and ancient-looking bronze percussion. There are days when he enters and leaves in the dark. The studio is equipped for a hermetic existence, with a well-stocked fridge and shelves lined with books and films, one of which is usually playing on the big screen above his mixing desk when he's not tracking to picture. When I visited, Brian started the day by playing Toru Takemitsu's mind-bending score for Rikyu through his surround sound monitors. "There," he said. "What else do you want from music?"
You might not know Brian Reitzell's name, but you probably know his work. As the music supervisor and composer for most of Sofia Coppola's films, he's worked with the French electronic duo Air on The Virgin Suicides, coaxed My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields out of retirement for Lost in Translation, and placed Frank Ocean and Kanye West alongside Can and Sleigh Bells for The Bling Ring. He's also composed scores for other films, television, and video games that showcase his formidable skills as a performer and arranger of evocative (and frequently unidentifiable) sounds. Amid the ruins of a collapsing industry, Brian is the rare musician who's found a way to thrive, and to do it by making and curating music that isn't bound to pop or Hollywood conventions.
Your studio is on fire. You can save three pieces of gear. What are they?
Ha! Well, honestly, my red Noble & Cooley snare drum, which I bought when I was 20. I had to borrow money to get it, and I slept with it in my bed for like a month. It's been so good to me, for so long. Then there's a cymbal I have that belonged to Paul Humphrey, who played with Charles Mingus, Dusty Springfield, and Joe Cocker. It's a Zildjian from the 1940s, I think, and it sounds like no other cymbal I've ever heard in my life.
What's it like?
When you hit every other cymbal, there's always a fundamental note, an overall tone, that's kind of there, regardless of how hard you hit it. But with this cymbal, every time you attack it, the fundamental is slightly different. It's the most living-sounding piece of metal I've ever heard in my life. It can be the funkiest ride cymbal bell or the most wonderful white noise wash, all at once. The third object would be my Linn LM-1 drum machine. It's a monster. They only made 500 of them, and I have number 40. I'd have to save it.
You've answered this from a museum's point of view. Maybe I should have said that you have to make a record tomorrow.
That's a very different question! If I had to make a record tomorrow and I could only use three pieces of gear — from here? And only those pieces?
Well, not necessarily, but the things that would be most important for you to make the sounds you wanted to be able to make.
Well, again, it would probably all be instruments, because as much as I love technology, I think all that stuff is replaceable. Or, if you lose it, maybe you're not meant to use it anymore. I try not to be too reliant on any one effect, one sound, or one process — or I'm screwed, you know? Though if I could leave here with my Trident Fleximix console, my Nagra 2-track, and one of my Neumann mics, then I guess I could actually do the record.
How did you learn to listen to music?
As a kid I used to fall asleep to music every night. I took the heads off a bass drum and I mounted two car stereo speakers inside. I put my pillow inside of that so I could sleep with this stereo image above me.
How old were you then?
Twelve.
What were you listening to?
Led Zeppelin, Queen, Black Sabbath, and my parents' records... The Beatles, Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed; the one they did with the London Symphony Orchestra. The Who's Tommy was the first record I remember really loving.
Do you remember what drew you to it?
Well, come on; it was "Pinball Wizard." And the artwork. I didn't see the movie until much later, and I didn't like it as much. The stories are actually quite appealing to kids, with the wacky uncle and cousin Kevin; all that stuff was really funny to me. It was way more interesting than, you know, The Jungle Book. Which I love — don't get me wrong!
A lot of the music I loved as a young teenager had a frightening, but alluring, quality to it. Like Pink Floyd; their music hints at a spooky world of drugs, depression, and violence, but it's almost never explicit.
I think children are very enticed by dark, seedy things they don't really understand — but they know there's an energy there.
Speaking of darkness, you've made a lot of scary music, certainly for Hannibal, which you're doing now, as well as for 30 Days of Night. What makes music scary?
I don't think we get really scared all that often in our lives, but when it happens it's such a rush. There are a lot of ways to do that with sound. Sheer volume can be scary — of anything, even the prettiest chord — because it's so physical. There are high-pitched sounds that hurt. And there are sounds that create an image in your mind of something that's sharp, steely, and scratchy, like barbed wire. Distortion can do that; it can be like teeth. Dissonance, in varying forms, is the most cliché way to make things scary — though I find a lot of serenity in certain kinds of dissonance. But the main thing, for me, is that for something to be truly frightening, you can't really put your finger on the sound source. I think the instrumentation needs to come from a place that doesn't say, "Hey, I'm a guitar! I'm a piccolo! I'm a snare drum!" If it comes from, "What the fuck is that?" — that's scary. Orchestras can be used to do that too.
I remember talking to you when you were scoring Red Riding Hood. You were on the way to record some crazy number of upright basses.
Twenty basses. And twenty cellos! A giant section of the low stringed instruments. It was really fun for all of the players, because they hadn't done a session like that before — not quite that extreme, at least.
Was the result what you hoped it would be?
No. What we got was fine for the film, but I wanted to push things about 300% further into a darker, heavier dimension. That involves moving microphones, and having the players being properly instructed on what to do. It's hard to write that on the page, in traditional ways. Since then I've studied more; now I know I could walk into that same situation, grab the reins, say, "This is how we're gonna do it," and it would work.
That's a very expensive instrument to have at your fingertips. I imagine it's pretty nerve-wracking when the clock's ticking.
It's the best one, but if you can't properly control it, it's useless. Having a hundred pieces is great, but I made the entire percussion section sit down for ninety percent of the cues because their percussion was just not interesting sounding. So I did it all later myself.
You've put a lot of work into making your own sample libraries. Is that normal?
I have no idea. I just don't like to use other people's sounds; I like to have my own. I've created my own kind of orchestra so I can get the results that I want, while being able to do it on the budgets of the films and the shows I work on.
What's the scariest-sounding instrument you have?
Well, I have quite a few... there's an instrument that a guy up in Oregon made for me, and I'm not sure what it's called.
Even you don't know what it is?
I don't even know how you're supposed to play it; but I play it with a bow. It's a big block of steel with a pickup in it; it has these three blades mounted on it, and when I bow them it sounds a bit like three violin players. Then I do some things that add to its character, with delay and tremolo, and it sounds really scary. The other thing I have, that might be the scariest instrument ever, is this little thing I call a crankophone, which looks like something a kid would put on their bicycle. It's got a horn on it, a little round resonator, and a wire crank; As you turn it, it turns something inside that's up against a thin piece of metal. It's so loud, it's like someone is just breaking your bones into little teeny pieces — ghrrrrkkk! It's the most intense acoustic instrument I've ever heard.
Here's a quote from you: "Who needs Adrian Belew when you've got a chopstick?"
Ha! Well, I love Adrian Belew, but you can get some of those elephant squeals and rhinoceros sounds he did by bowing a chopstick.
Just bowing a chopstick in the air?
No; I put them on drums, or on a piano, or on the back of an acoustic guitar... any resonator. A lot of the what I do here involves using a resonator of some kind to add sustain and life to another item that I'm going to strike, or bend, or bow. The resonator I use most is a 40-inch Leedy & Ludwig bass drum with two calfskin heads on it.
40-inches?
Yeah, it's huge. I set it on the floor and put things on it, and then I play them. It adds this tremendous weight.
