Ayla Ruby
Silo composer Atli Örvarsson recently earned his first Emmy nomination for Outstanding Music Composition For A Series (Original Dramatic Score) for his work on the episode, Freedom Day. He’s no stranger to accolades, however, scoring notable shows like Chicago Fire and Defending Jacob.
We sat down over Zoom with Örvarsson and talked about his work on the Apple TV+ show. He talked about recording in an actual decomissioned missile silo to get the sound of Silo, and creating an almost alien world with the music. He shared details about how Juliette’s theme reflects her character, and his philosophy on scoring for television. The Icelandic composer even teased some of the sound of Season Two in our chat. Read on or listen below for the full conversation.
Ayla Ruby: Congratulations on the nomination. It’s very well deserved.
Atli Örvarsson: Thank you very much. Thanks a lot.
Ayla Ruby: I think the main title kind of lives in my head. I love Silo.
Atli Örvarsson: Happy to hear that.
Ayla Ruby: What does the nomination mean for you? How does it feel? Do you have anything to share about any of that?
Atli Örvarsson: Well, it’s obviously really nice to get the recognition, especially coming from my peers, obviously. And I’ve felt that the show seems to kind of, I don’t know, hit a chord with a lot of people. And I don’t know, maybe we’re in a bit of an era where apocalyptic thoughts are kind of going through people’s minds, which is not a good thing. But the show seems to ring true on some level with that for a lot of people. And it’s a great story. It’s a great cast. Showrunners are brilliant. The world building is, in my view, really unique and beautiful. So it’s a privilege to be a part of this project, really.
Ayla Ruby: What kind of drew you to it? Like how did you connect with the material besides everyone being in that mindset?
Atli Örvarsson: Yeah, well, I suppose I’m a fan of sci-fi myself, I’ve always been into that. And having a chance to be… I keep coming back to the world building aspect of it. Having a chance to be a part of that sort of building is really exciting for me, and it touches on so many aspects of being a human being and being a human being in extreme conditions. And also the power of the human spirit and being able to overcome all the challenges, both physical and emotional and mental that the characters have to get through. I just felt like it touched on so many interesting aspects of that.
Ayla Ruby: Yeah, I think that’s very well said. So I’ve talked to a bunch of people from the show, and I talked to Morten Tyldum a couple of months ago. And he sung your praises, and he also mentioned that you recorded in an actual concrete silo with an electric violin, and I couldn’t not be intrigued about it. I remember it so many months later, and I’d love to know about that, and if anything you can share, like how that worked.
Atli Örvarsson: Yeah, well, I mean, it sounds like sort of an obvious thing to go to a silo, to record for a silo. But as it happens in Iceland where I’m at, at the moment, there’s a few sort of decommissioned silos around the country that basically just stand empty and been unused for a long time. And there’s one particular one in the Westfjords where actually a lot of musicians have worked, Sigur Rós recorded there or performed there as well. And it’s got a bit of a mythical place for a lot of Icelandic musicians. So yeah, the idea just came up like, “Wouldn’t it be great to try to capture a bit of that atmosphere?” Because I feel like the music is one thing, the notes on the paper and all that is one thing, but just capturing a space is a very intriguing thing when it comes to making music.
So we went there, a small group of us with various instruments, all kinds of stringed instruments, percussion instruments, even electronic things like homemade synthesizers and stuff like that. And basically just started mostly just sort of jamming. I mean, I had a few set ideas that I wanted to work on, rhythmic patterns and things like that. But it was really just an experimental trip to see what we could come away with. And yeah, it’s been a really… Particularly in season two, which I’m already working on now, it’s been a very intriguing kind of a sound world that we’ve been able to incorporate into the score.
Ayla Ruby :Now I’m curious, you obviously… You live music, you breathe music, and then some of the producers, some of the writers, they breathe story and they breathe character. How do you merge the two worlds? How do you talk music? How do you talk emotions? How does that work together?
Atli Örvarsson: That’s a very big question. At the end of the day, the music is there to tell the story and to support the characters, and to just be a part of the whole storytelling. It’s something that frequently comes up in conversations about this process is like, “Why is there music in films in the first place?” And it’s obviously the music, just like the script or the acting or the lighting or costumes, is a part of telling the story. And discussions about music vary from one individual to another. It’s sort of like… For example, with Morten, it tends to be very high level and just idea based, and other people are very specific about instrumentation and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, again, it seems to me that the job is to make people feel what the characters might be feeling, or create in this case, kind of almost an alien world, and how do you build that feeling into the music.
And the first thing that I worked on was just kind of weird sounds and weird kind of atmospheres that laid the foundation, for then starting to write the melodies. And it’s very interesting too, that it’s such a scope in the story. There’s a lot of very, very individual stories and kind of people’s inner world is being exposed, and that’s juxtaposed against the seeming end of the world as we know it. So it is these massive issues of humanity versus really, really intimate stories. I mean, yeah, I think, again, it’s about trying to find a way to make people feel like they’re in the silo with these people. And giving maybe another layer of depth to the characters in the story.
Ayla Ruby: So there are a number of songs I love to ask questions about. Can you talk about the main title and how that came about? Because I think it’s particularly… It’s longer than most titles, right?
Atli Örvarsson: Yeah. Well, I had actually started scoring episode one when I came up with the main title where you could almost say that the main title grew out of writing the underscore for the beginning of episode one. Basically it was one of those classic things where you have some time, “Don’t worry, take your time,” and then the phone rings, “You know what? We need the first five minutes tomorrow.” So partially, it was kind of a case of just having to jump in and get out of the laboratory idea stage to just writing music specifically for the scenes.
But I mean, this tune sort of came out of those experimentations in the beginning, and at that point the decision hadn’t really been made whether there was going to be a main title. And if there was going to be a main title, how long was it going to be. So I just decided to shoot for the stars and write a long main title because that’s what we like to do as composers. So I put together the 90-second piece of music and said, “Well, here’s an idea.” And I sent it to Morten, and I think he simply passed it on to the title company, and the rest is history. It just sort of like, “Oh, this is kind of cool. Let’s just work with this.”
Ayla Ruby: That’s awesome. So there’s another song called Juliette, and one thing I noticed about the song is that I think there are vocals on that song, and I don’t think there are vocals on the other ones. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Atli Örvarsson: There’s a little bit of vocals in the main title towards the end, actually. But anyway, yeah, Juliette… I mean, that’s Juliette’s theme you know, she’s our hero, she’s our main character. And the use of vocals was something that came up in conversation with Morten as a matter of fact. And he just had this idea that there should be voices in there, almost like the ghosts of the silo somehow. There should be kind of this ghostly… I don’t know, because it’s been there for hundreds of years, lots of people have passed through and lived and died and all that.
But then as I was writing Juliette’s theme, I just thinking about her character, the feeling for me was that a vocal element will be really powerful for her. Because first of all, the tune kind of oscillates between major and minor, which for me is Juliette. She just tends to go back and forth between major and minor behavior. She’s very gung-ho and strong and powerful and has a very strong will. But she also has this scar from her childhood, which is losing her mother. I mean, in one way, the idea is it’s sort of a lullaby from her mom. So yeah, I mean, it was just a lot of different elements and ideas that came together in putting together her theme with a solo vocal.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, that’s amazing. And I’m going to sit with that a little bit and think about that. And I’m jumping a little bit to the end. So there’s the kind of end theme where Juliette goes out to clean or goes out to see the world. And there’s all the drama if she’ll clean or not, like the sound feels very eerie and also menacing. And I’d love if you could talk about that and how you came up with that and what the idea was behind the music for that ending scene.
Atli Örvarsson: Yeah, yeah. I mean it’s quite a long sequence, I mean, like her making her way out is 10 minutes, as I remember. And almost all of the themes that I’d written for season one kind of come together and culminate in those 10 minutes. And at the very end when she actually gets out and sees the other silos, I kind of intertwined the main theme, the main title theme with another theme which I basically call the Silo theme, which I use a lot for… I use it a lot for sort of the idea of Big Brother and political situation in the silo. And it’s quite synth-heavy there towards the end because… I mean, I just wanted to evoke the feeling of her seeing, first of all, just the devastation on the surface mixed with this realization that there’s a whole other world out there.
So it was just trying to find… I mean, I don’t know, I just keep thinking that everything about being Juliette or being one of these characters is they live in an eerie world. And when she gets to the surface it’s multiplied by a hundred, the eeriness of it all. So the idea was for it to be a bit obviously alien, kind of bleak and dark, but at the same time using those melodies and those themes to give a lot of emotion to it and a lot of drama and importance. Because it’s the massive… The biggest realization you could possibly have is what she’s experiencing.
Ayla Ruby: Was there anything that was kind of surprising to you or something that was really challenging as you were coming up with the scores or anything that was really gratifying professionally that you want to talk about?
Atli Örvarsson: To address your last question, it’s all been incredibly gratifying professionally and artistically. And I’m not just saying that thinking that the producers will listen, and I’m saying the right thing. It really honestly is, it’s just one of those projects that is kind of a dream for a composer. I mean, yeah, there’s been… What I love about… Well, one of the things I love about this show is all the twists and turns, and it’s only going to get more twisty and turny as season two and hopefully further seasons develop.
So, I mean, I feel like I’m sort of like… If you were driving a car, there’s always going to be a surprise turn coming up and you have to be ready to address that through the music. But maybe what’s surprised me… And I don’t think I’ve necessarily done this intentionally or there was a big sort of overriding design intellectually behind it. But maybe the surprising thing is actually how melodic and how lyrical in many ways the score really is when you break it down, it’s just masked with a lot of sounds that make it feel very dark and eerie and desolate. But there’s actually a lot of sort of simple, pretty tunes that really carry the score.
Ayla Ruby: Well, that’s wonderful and I think that’s a great note too to end on. I really appreciate you talking.
Atli Örvarsson: I appreciate talking as well, and thanks for having me.
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