I was going to ask if it would make things easier while making the movies you’ve made, but it doesn’t seem to be.
I have never worked harder on Babylon.
Is it the scale of it?
The scale of it, the amount of music, this is the most complex music I’ve ever put together. I just wanted to go deeper into music production. We stayed in the studio every night until midnight, lying down like 40 saxophone solos and one version after another of the drum version. I have never been so detail oriented. I can say I’ve gone down a music production rabbit hole I’ve never been down before.
Can you tell me about the bass sax, or tenor sax, which makes up the majority of the track?
Oh, like this? [Hurwitz leans over to plink out one of Babylon’s main themes on the piano right next to him] It’s a baritone sax. We have bass, tenor, alto, everything else in the movie. Yes. But when it’s the main melody instrument, it’s the baritone sax. I can tell you the whole story. I recorded him remotely from his bedroom in Philadelphia.
One of Damien’s early ideas that I had was, like, a modern dance music feel, but using instruments that were appropriate for the times. So I Googled “dance music on the saxophone” and found this guy, Leo Pellegrino. He has a band Too Many Zooz, and that’s what he does, he plays dance music in sax. The second I saw him, I thought, that’s exactly what we needed. Leo is in Philadelphia and he tours a lot, he’s busy and it’s hard to get him to LA. So I took what we could get, which was him in his bedroom on the mic in the bedroom. But the way you play, personality and style is what matters.
As I started listening to more of his music, I found him to have all these wonderful extension techniques, the screaming, the squealing and the squealing. And I started incorporating those sounds into a piece of music. So, like in the title tag hint, it’s called “Babylon,” on the soundtrack right before the big hit, there’s this sound—it’s Leo making one of those signature sounds that only him. he just has.
In that ending, you have music on top of each other. How do you keep it from sounding like noise? Or is it considered sound as noise?
It was definitely intentional. It’s like a wall, it’s like an attack. But we bring each tune in the movie in a slightly thoughtful way, where each will pop and have their own moment. There will be certain conflicts, but they will emerge.
We had two incredible drummers in the movie, Peter Erskine and Gary Novak, two of the best drummers in the world, going completely crazy, swinging to different sides. So you put Gary on the right, you put Peter on the left, and again, help shape these solos in the studio, so they go wild with a little bit of shaping.
