Emmy Nomination for Slow Horses Composers: Daniel Pemberton, Pablo and James known as Toydrum

joining me today are the slow horses composers Daniel pepperton Pablo Clemens and James Griffin known as toy drum they have been nominated for Emmy for season three for best original score and the series is airing on Apple TV and if you have not seen it yet you must and they're here today to talk about composing together how it started and what is next for them welcome welcome you three hello hi hi hi now I wanted to ask you the first question is what inspired you three of you to work together Dan yeah well i' I've kind of known Pablo forever like from when I was almost like a teenager when he was DJing in clubs which I was going to and I got like approached about doing slow horses but the difficulty I I have is I I kind of like being really obsessive about everything I do and I don't like just taking jobs on and just not really caring about them but you the problem is had all these other films on and it was like how how can I take on a really big series because you know they're like you know each series is like six episodes and it's kind of like doing two or three films at once and I wanted to find someone to work with who kind of shared the sensibility the Sonic sensibility of what I was trying to achieve with the with the show which was trying and create something that didn't feel like sort of generic TV spy music I wanted to feel very different and have a different Edge to it and uh James and pavo's work as toy drum was I always thought been very good very under the radar and um I thought there'd be you know really good collaborators to work with and you know help us all create a sound that felt very different for TV series I think that's what's been exciting about this is you know I think by now by season three people are really kind of understanding what we've been trying to achieve all through this all through this show yes that's wonderful and Pablo James did you want to comment or add uh well yeah I mean I guess like Dan said and then he uh I think we we had a a mutual friend also in the in the music supervision which was Katherine Greaves and I think yeah Dan new Pablo and we all got in touch and decided to we were available and yeah decided to do this thing and I think we we shared a um a very similar idea when Dan was talking about the show I think we were all on the same page definitely so and here we are season three so wow that's amazing um did you want to add um well no I mean that's how it all got together and that's how we joined together um yeah I mean we've I've known Dan for for many many years and um yeah but we hadn't seen each other had we Dan for like years you know what I mean must been like 20 year Gap and then I think Dan came down to our studio about how eight nine years ago now maybe what what were you working on down yeah I did something with like so Pabo James have a very crazy Studio which I I describe as the the sonic equivalent of slow house kind of looks like a you know it looks like a hole basically from the outside you have no idea what magic is inside it but inside it is a bunch of uh I would say somewhat slow horse style characters all beavering away unappreciated by the outside world you know they're not Flash and they're not Flash and and it's a real hot bread of like creativity and Chaos which is kind of like the way I like to work as well and I think one of the the things all of us in our approach to of writing is we come at it from a different a different way that's not a particularly heavily schooled or systematic uh way of composing which is like we just do the same thing each film and I think that's what we've really been trying to capture through the through the energy of the score is is this this sort of soundtrack that feels different and captur some of the kind of chaos uh and outsiderness of the characters uh inch levels is yes and you know for season three it's strange games correct yes yes and tell us about the homemade instruments if you will um unique authentic original instruments um can you tell us how you created the score for this particular season and it was filmed in stanbul is that correct the opening episode was film and Istanbul uh it kind of moves around I think for this thing the first the first um what we what we normally do on each season is we all get together and we kind of like talk about what the approach is going to be so for season 3 um I came down to James and Pablo studio and you know I get very excited when I'm there because it's like a different environment for me um and we just start kind of like playing off each other's energy uh and the sort of instruments there and we start sort of jamming and through that we get stuff that feels uh more usual just do this kind of process of all just collaborating in the same room at the same time I'm sure James or Pablo tell you a bit more about that yeah yeah our studio yeah I guess we have a we have a lot of uh weird broken instruments and our our studio has a sound that comes out of it I guess and it is always nice when Dan comes down because he's like uh it's all a lot of it's all new to him so he's very he's jumping around on stuff and a lot of ideas start flowing really easily but uh yeah I mean there's a mixture of uh I mean pretty much everything is organic just a lot of organic and manipulated stuff to make it sound different and um I think we did bring in for the more heavy gunfight stuff towards the end we sort of brought in this very weird Russian synthesizer that we messed with and that really helped with the coldness of the bunker and all that stuff that was a sort of a new ad For That season but yeah I mean a lot of stuff is like like Dan the instruments you were making were banjos distorted banjos that sound like I don't know what they sound like sound like something but everything has a everything has an organic face I guess and it's so it's just more manipulating what's there yeah it's very important like with this sound world like what we try to do is differentiate the world of the park which is a very surface uh um seemingly slick operation um with one of the slow house and the slow horses which is a lot more wonky and Sham and seemingly shambolic even though they're pretty good it turns out sometimes at what they do and it's trying to find how do we capture that in the sound and the tone of the show so a lot of that is using sounds that have imperfections in them and you know this kind of like Reliance on it's a very heavy reliance on stuff that is organic organic stuff by by Nature has an imperfection to it um and a raess and a visness that is lacking if you get stuff that is too slick um or um too [Music] conventional yeah so there's like the pacing is really important as well um when I was watching the trailer for season three it's it's very in my mind in my opinion when they say it's very fastpac and it hits you and then it comes back and it has um you are storytellers right so it's very important that music plays a very important um in movies and TV series and where I'm going with this question is what are some ways um how you contribute your creativity um while falling you know working with others like the directors The Producers how do you stay balanced if you will to have that creative license and you know as I said working with uh producers and directors which I would think would be different from TV series as opposed to movies yeah it's like what we normally do is we normally all all go for spotting sessions so director this season was s meten Stein so we're all we all of us go to the spotting session with salt and we'd all together watch each episode through but we kind of get involved what we normally do is we get involved early on we come up with Concepts and ideas based in the scripts but we don't really get our hands properly dirty until they they've shot and start editing the film we then go to a spotting session with Saul and the editors and we we talk through all the beats in the episode and what we think the music should achieve what's going to help the story how do we give it a shape so it's not all the same things just Dynamic and art through it and storytelling art and then we go off and we each work on different bits I might work on a couple of scenes James and Pablo go and work on scenes James and Pablo absolutely fantastic doing action stuff um so I'm always like hey you want to do the action scenes and I will we will like carve it up between us and then send them back and forth so you know toy Jan might send me some stuff they've worked on I'll go into it and then I might do some tweaks and vice versa uh and I'm sure they can talk to you a bit about that yeah I mean yeah you go it's it's a fun process I mean like each of the stories you know you're kind of constantly breaking it down and you know like especially with season 3 I mean like if you were to look at the way uh the opening sequence of season 3 starts and the journey that it takes you through um you know from action to emot to also being based inan buul and the influence the music and also also tying it into the kind of the sound bed that slow horses is it's a real approach of you know that that part of the show is very different to even you know 10 minutes later within it you know so the story is always changing and the tone is good you know like you know and kind of moving always in different directions especially with season 3 as it gets to the latest Seasons it starts to get more as it gets into the bunker it gets more roarer and pulsing and heavier I suppose we have the Istanbul traits of like there there's like themes that we come up with like that first that kind of opening has a lot of seeds which get planted on later in the episode with with some of the characters like Donovan um he has theme and and so we kind of like try and work out what the key between us what each episode has a sort of a theme running through it alongside the sort of slow horses in the park there's also normally a new storyline a new adversary or a new mystery and we try and come up with themes for those in those early sessions James did you to add oh I was just you were talking about how we you know asking about working with the directors and the spotting sessions I'm just going to say it seemed like season three wouldn't you say got like it seemed like we had a bit more because people were confident with the sound and everything had been really stamped down that it seemed like we have a a bit more fun a little bit more freedom maybe why it's this this season is stuck out especially I don't know um seems like as we go it's just a bit easier to work that everything's been established that's all I was going to say so it was it seemed it was really fun to the collaboration really started to work and and with the director and everything everyone's I think everyone's really confident in what we're doing so it was just seems a bit easier a bit more fun that's what I can say which leads to me how much fun did you do you have working together and you have years of experience uh I mean it's always I always love getting when we get stuff through and it's exciting because I'm so used to working on my own the whole time like most I kind of do everything on my own for most projects and most films so it's quite rare for me to actually you know have other people working on on something together so it's kind of exciting when you you get something to especially when you get like a really great sequence through and you're like this is great and that's always a good vibe like always gets me kind of excited about the project and um and excited about the show because you know you kind of got you normally it's just me having these extra ears and extra eyes on it means you get something that's that's uh like you know got a wider bre to it I mean when when we started started like we were saying you know we have a couple of days where we literally go into our studio and record our the in we've decided we're going to use for That season and you know we just pretty much don't let the record not record you know it's just everything being and those those days are really good fun you know because you're kind of restricting yourself to the tone and we all go away what we recorded and that's the basis of what we use you know for the show the season you know and it will differ from every season that's what's quite exciting and Jan did you want to add any yeah I mean yeah I agree I mean those are those I mean it's all it is fun and like I said I think the you know it's taking time you you Dan's I mean I'm we're used to collaborating Pablo and I so we're we're always doing stuff together but I think it just like anything I think we've really started hit the stride in three so it's it just gets more fun every time I think and um yeah but that those initial sessions are always great because it's just throw every you know try anything no nothing's out of bounds and yeah a lot of great stuff comes from it so um yeah and just one last question before we wrap up and what has the feedback been like so far because I said at the beginning if you haven't seen it watch it but tell us what the effect's been like so far it definitely feels like from season three the world kind of started to catch up to what we were doing um which is you know CU I think early on if you're trying to approach a a series and a film in a way that has very own particular musical language and it's very important to all of us that we create a language that had limitations on it so we kind of kind of ban the use of strings uh ban the use of big thumpy heavy drums um and anything it was sort of overused and more conventional in in drama scoring um and it means you in some ways like you start off creating something and you've got your own limited palette and your own limited techniques which mean you have to write in a different way and I think what's been good is I think by the time you get to season three you can really understand this approach that we've been all trying to do and it's been very satisfying to see you know to get this nomination and and for people to understand you know from the first couple of Seasons I think people because it's a different sound it's it's sometimes it's difficult for people to to to sort of appreciate that and I think the more they get used to it and the more it feels like mesh to the show and it it becomes integral part of the show hopefully is part of the reason the being such a success um I think really think in season three that comes to the floor thank you agree and James um yeah yeah no I think that's that's exactly like Dan said it's uh it it seems like because it and it is a you know you've created a pallet that's very different and is on super slick and like a lot of scorers are that in that way or they seem very like almost Polished in a bad way this is very rough around the edges and we've kept it that way on purpose and everything's been very deliberate and yeah it's great it's great to see that people it's it's yeah like Dan said it's stuck to the show it's a big part of the what the visual is so yeah it's great that it's people are catching on so just in time just yes and Pablo did you want to ask before yeah I mean look I think the show in a hole as well is like this season 3 it's like the world you know the thing that's been quite nice about working on the show it never felt that slow horses even though people knew it was out there it's like the world caught up with the show as well you know it's like people really really did every when we first started doing it and season one and stuff you'd ask people and be like yeah I've heard about that I've not seen it yet but now season 3 is out with this season it felt like the whole world loved it so it's really nice to be the tone to that you know and the sound to the show thank you very much for your time today I so enjoyed the interview and congratulations again okay thank you very much thank you so much yes sorry sorry we're all spread out sorry I'm in a car I like I said summer holidays with children it's a been been hectic so thank you very much no it's I I so enjoyed it and and uh so well deserved if I may say thanks very much thank you okay thank you