Esquire - "Sounds of Spycraft: The Secrets Behind Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s Gnarly, Retro-Rock Soundtrack"

Daniel Pemberton

Sounds of Spycraft: The Secrets Behind Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s Gnarly, Retro-Rock Soundtrack

Composer Daniel Pemberton broke every rule in Hollywood to bang out the perfect blend of now and then.

When it came to The Man from U.N.C.L.E.​, Guy Ritchie had one request of composer Daniel Pemberton: make every track its own spoonful of cool. "He didn't want it to feel like score," Pemberton tells Esquire over the phone. "He wanted it to feel like a great piece of music that was just being dropped on the scene." Most film scores tend to set a quick mood before falling into the background, but Pemberton's soundtrack rubs shoulders with the performers; it feels snug around the '60s-set spy tale like a well-tailored suit. It's East meets West meets crazy, an album with the freedom of a standalone record that just so happens to have shootouts and car chases backing it up. How'd Pemberton pull it off? Esquire.com asked the English composer to annotate a few of his eclectic tracks:

"Out of the Garage"

"I tried to get this sounding as much like a1960s score as I could, but with a modern twist, where it sounds a lot bigger," Pemberton says. To bring an old school flavor to the tracks, the composer recorded riffs on old harpsichords, massive drums, and the zither-like chimalong to magnetic tape and mixed them through period-appropriate desks. Digital tools were used to amplify and layer, giving it a thunderous quality that only live performers could execute, but never practically achieve.

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To read the complete story (and hear the tracks) click here.

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