From Post-Apocalyptic Wastelands to Underground Silos: Composers for ‘Fallout,’ ‘Silo’ and More Sci-Fi Series on Taking Cues From Otherworldly Settings
variety.comJon Burlingame Science fiction and fantasy have inspired dozens of great television scores through the years, from “Battlestar Galactica” to “Game of Thrones.” Three more streaming series continued that tradition this season: “Silo,” “Fallout” and “3 Body Problem.” Atli Örvarsson’s music for “Silo,” the Apple TV+ dystopian drama set in a bleak future where everyone lives in underground silos, was initially inspired by the setting. “It’s a mechanized world,” he says. “The technology you see is very, very old; the computers look like they’re from the ’80s, so there was always this idea that even the electronic sounds should be primitive, not slick.” So he relied on Korg and Moog synthesizers from earlier eras, along with an unusual keyboard: the magnetic resonator piano, which uses electromagnets to create unusual sounds from the strings inside the instrument. “There’s a steampunk feel to the design of the show, and this is the ultimate steampunk instrument,” Örvarsson says.
It’s all over the score.” He also employed Shards, an experimental London vocal ensemble whose voices are central to his theme for Juliet (Rebecca Ferguson). “She is the voice of truth in the silo, and there’s nothing more truthful than the human voice.
We recorded a lot of vocal effects,” he adds. The ascending line of the main title theme, the composer realized only after he wrote it, is symbolic of “people trying to get out of the silo.” Throughout the 10-hour series, he said, “I deliberately wanted to be very thematic.” The music of “Silo” has already won a BAFTA Television Craft award.
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