So, following the vague news a couple of weeks ago that Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood contributed in some fashion to the score of “Stone,” Edward Norton has finally cleared up just what the process was in fashioning the textural score in the film.
In an interview with the Oakland Examiner (via TwentyFourBit) the actor pulls back the curtain on how the score came together, revealing that Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood sent over some files, Jon Brion (aka John O’Brien) recorded some stuff as did director John Curran, and then it was all cut and taped together into what we hear in the film:
John (Curran) and I got to talking really early on about the whole theme of Stone and how he talks about becoming a tuning fork of God and how when sound comes to you, it’s terrifying. And it wasn’t in the script, but Curran and I started talking about this idea of “Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a trope in the film that was like that tuning fork” and I happened to be in England and I was with Johnny (Greenwood), and Johnny is obsessed with sounds and he’s obsessed with wave form and all kind of interesting stuff, and so is Thom (Yorke). And I said to (Greenwood), “Hey, if you were going to try to deconstruct something, like a sound, what would sound like a huge tuning fork,” and he was like, “Oh yeah, maybe an organ, maybe an organ…” (Norton says in a British accent). Those guys didn’t score the film because they didn’t have time, but they play with stuff all the time, so they had files and files and files of stuff, like taking intrsuments and literally breaking them down into wave forms and sounds…and they flipped a bunch of stuff off to us, to just play with and then we worked with their engineer a bit, but then you needed themes too, so (Curran) went to Jon Brion, as we both really love his work, and it seemd in sync in many ways with what the Radiohead guys play with. (Brion) does a lot of atonal, arrhythmic stuff, so Johnny recorded some organs, (Brion) recorded some organs, (Curran) did some things and then two of the sound engineers came up with some textural stuff. And at the end of the day, John Curran really conducted it all, he just threw it all into a Cuisinart to create this sort of soundscape. It was fun, very experimental and very unusual.
OK, so now that we have the official explanation out of the way, is this going to get a standalone release? We somehow doubt it but anything that finds the likes of Yorke, Greenwood and Brion playing together deserves to be preserved in some kind of format.