About the Project Hail Mary Soundtrack
This will be a long post, but I have been listening to it nonstop and it's in my area of expertise (ish) so I have a lot of thoughts.
First of all, the thing that makes this music special is that it's so textured. There are a million different sounds to hear in the background and every time I listen to it, I notice something new. They tried to use as few electronic sounds as they could and you can really feel that. It's like the music is emulating their decision to use a puppet for Rocky, it sounds and looks organic.
All of the weird little things that you would think are instruments, are either weird sounds that they found and sampled, or actual unusual instruments like the glass harmomica or the cristal baschet, and a ton of wooden percussion. There is a prominent sample of a squeaky tap that you can hear for example at the beginning of God Willing.
The whole soundtrack reminds me a lot of the Czech game Samorost 3 with soundtrack by Floex. Now to be fair that is one of my favorite soundtracks of all time and I think about it constantly, but I do think I have a point. That soundtrack is all texture. Listen to this track for example:
It's full of little nature sounds, weird synthesizers and wooden percussion. The wooden percussion especially is emblematic of PHM. Which makes sense if you look at one of the inspirations:
If you listen to Erratic Movement Detected or Amaze Amaze Amaze (Life on Erid) you can really hear those overlapping wood block rhythms. Apparently Daniel Pemberton was at some point asked to score the whole movie on wood blocks and he went "Cool idea, but no." Lol
The other thing they did was use as many different "human" sounds as they could. There is only a handful of tracks without choir voices and there is also a lot of mouth and body percussion, and they went really creative with all of it. They also sampled voices and made them into sounds that could be played like an instrument, which Daniel Pemberton himself has said was to emulate Rocky's speech. And in the score they do actually appear for the first time only after we meet him.
Here are some other fun examples to listen out for:
- in Last Man on Ship starting at 1 minute you can hear whispering in the background
- Invalid Operation starts with stomping
- in Cannister Catch the vocals that start at 00:23 do a wawawa as if someone is using their hand to open and close their mouth
- Clock Numbers has tongue clicking that sounds like a ticking clock
- Learning to Communicate has a "krchk" sound as if someone is pulling a crank. In this one you can also hear the sampled voices pretty good (starting at 00:16)
Daniel Pemberton has said that using this much voice and other human sounds was meant to connect Grace and the audience back to earth, as if all of humanity is cheering him on.
The scale of the scoring is another thing. There is very little orchestra used in it. On one side Daniel Pemberton wanted to make the score sound alien and the orchestra was too familiar, but on the other side I think it also helps strike the balance between the backdrop and the actual story. Because of course there is a big majestic background and we are in space where nobody has been before, trying to save earth, and that is where the orchestra comes in. But in the majority of the movie, the score is small scale and personal because that's what the core of the story is: friendship, perseverance, communication and sacrifice, all of which you never expected to experience again because you thought you were on your own.
Specific songs I want to highlight:
Erratic Movement Detected
This song is just so much fun! They couldn't have written a better song to introduce Rocky if they tried. It's also my personal favorite and the one moment in the cinema where I went 'Oh, I think this composer is a genius.' It's so playful and funny, but still tense. We know this new thing is an alien and something completely outside of our known world, but it is neither dangerous nor "weird". It's not a xenomorph that wants to lay its eggs in you and it's not a blob creature from Creeblecrooble, but Rocky from Erid. Something that is alive like us and that is mutual. The music isn't fearful, it's uncertain and full of curiosity.
It starts with one wood block. But oh boy does it not stay there. There are weird metallic sounds that join in the background. Then we get body percussion, then the Eridian voices, then more of the weird instruments and strings. It starts out tentative and tense, and then something snaps. Suddenly, the music morphs into all these different sounds of distress. An alarm beep, a weird flitting in the background, deep bass sounds that drag you towards the ground, the choir that sounds like something between singing and screaming. The music builds and builds and doesn't let you go for seven minutes!!
Excessive Centrifugal Force
Listen to the strings. It sounds like the spaceship is spinning. You can hear the wobwobwob that you get when you have a car window open on the highway or are sitting in a rollercoaster. I can't pick out how exactly they did this, but I think it's the deliberately simultaneous strokes by the strings? I don't play any string instruments, but that can't have been easy to record and it sounds so cool!! It's also the only track on the entire soundtrack where I couldn't hear any human sounds and I think that makes sense. It's the moment in the story where success seems least likely and earth is the farthest away.
It starts in a very similar place as the very beginning of the movie. Not with the same melody, but similar sounds and a somewhat solitary vibe. Grace is alone in his spaceship. Then, suddenly, there is a brilliant major chord, a light in the depth of space. Hope. This hope quickly builds into the most joyful and triumphant piece in the whole score. Grace came to find Rocky and they'll do this together. Then in the middle of this organic soundtrack of wooden blocks and choir, suddenly there is an electric guitar and a drum set. We're back on earth with Stratt, the only time we're actually looking at it as it is now and not through Grace's memories. We've almost forgotten what it's like, but it's still there and it is saved.
I have more thoughts on some of the musical motifs, but those are a bit difficult to describe in a post of words, so I'll leave it at that. So yeah. I personally have never cared about any awards, but god do I wish this wins something.
