Aside from being one of the biggest bands in the world, Radiohead are no strangers to film work. The band themselves have had songs featured in dozens of movies and TV shows (most recently the likes of “Black Mirror,” “Westworld,” “The Gambler” and “I Origins”), of course, while Jonny Greenwood has become the composer of choice to some of the best filmmakers we have, Paul Thomas Anderson and Lynne Ramsay. Even Thom Yorke’s getting in on the scoring game: he’s currently working on Luca Guadagnino’s eagerly-anticipated remake of “Suspiria.”
But they’ve never done anything quite like their latest work — teaming up with arguably the biggest film composer in the world right now, Hans Zimmer, for a track to soundtrack a new nature documentary series. The band have collaborated with “Dunkirk” composer Zimmer on “(ocean) Bloom,” a radically reworked version of their “King Of Limbs” opener “Bloom,” for the BBC’s new “Blue Planet II” series.
The original show, broadcast in 2001, was a visually stunning look at life below the waves, and Yorke has said that watching the series actually inspired him to write “Bloom” in the first place (“ Hans is a prodigious composer who effortlessly straddles several musical genres so it was liberating for us all to work with such a talent and see how he wove the sound of the series’ and Bloom together.” Yorke told the BBC), so it’s clear why they were keen to get involved for the upcoming sequel series.
And now, you can get a first look at the series, and hear the song in full, thanks to a so-called ‘prequel’ trailer that debuted today. Even as a relative Radiohead agnostic, I have to admit that this is pretty beautiful stuff, and the collaboration is a pretty seamless one. Watch the video below, and you can see the show on BBC America early in 2018. And perhaps it could lead to further work between Oxford’s finest and “The Dark Knight” composer down the line?…