Daniel Pemberton - King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2017)

A long long time ago if you told me I’d one day be scoring a big Hollywood blockbuster about King Arthur I’d have probably imagined some sort of very luxurious scenario that involved a fancy orchestra playing my music in the background of a very posh studio while I drunk the finest champagne and got my back massaged at the same time by a litany of glamorous flunkies as I nonchalantly perused my latest notated masterpiece. I didn’t imagine I would be up at 2am with my face red and stinging having spent the last hour slapping it as hard as I could to get the best unusual percussive sounds for a particularly fiddly assassination scene that we needed the next day. Nor phoning up my neighbours to not worry if they heard any screaming from my flat, I was just trying an idea out on this piece of music.
But then again this wasn’t your usual Hollywood blockbuster. It was a Guy Ritchie Hollywood blockbuster. And that means usual rules don’t apply. In fact no rules apply. All that matters is can you make a score that sounds like nothing else? That was the mission. Like pulling a sword out of a stone, just a bit harder.
We wanted the music to feel physically visceral. There is so much rich imagery in the world of the film - the dirt, the grime, the metal, the leather, the wood, the stones – I wanted to bring as much of this into the score as I could. I wanted to capture everything from the struggle and fight of an orphan raised on the streets to the nobility of a leader who could change history.
I started by researching the intriguing world of early music enthusiasts. Fascinating people obsessed with making, collecting and playing instruments from hundreds of years ago. I met a wonderful player – Clare Salaman, who introduced me to a wonderfully horrible instrument, the Tromba Marina - a huge stringed beast from the 15th Century that pretty much makes only one very nasty and unpleasant noise. Fantastic. We’ll use that. I was lent a pretty hokey Hurdy Gurdy. It was impossible to tune. It also sounded horrible. Let’s use that too. It sounds insane pitched two octaves down. Go round to visit this guy called Nicholas Perry who is a massive collector of ancient horns and wind instruments. He has this crazy metal trumpet that’s so big that the only way we can play it in his flat is if we put half of it in the toilet. Becomes known throughout the production as the ‘toilet horn’. We re-record it in Abbey Road but use the test done in his bathroom on my phone in a few places because it just sounds so awesome. I send one of our percussionists on a mission to find the best sounding rocks he can get – he ends up finding them in a garden center. The guitarist is tuning his guitar and it is making such a great squeaking noise because the pegs are so old we end up using that over half a track. If it made a cool noise and sounded like it could have existed a few hundred years ago I wanted it. Even the chopsticks from our Chinese take away one night made it onto score.
So I started to curate this mongrel orchestra made up of the weirdest instruments and sounds I could find and make. The next challenge was then working out how on earth to build it bit by bit into a soundtrack that could take you on a journey the size and scale of the movie itself. Luckily for me there were many knights at my round table – from the always fantastic team at Abbey Road, the amazing musicians (who also gracefully indulged my sudden obsession with bad tuning), the timeless voice of Sam Lee and most importantly Guy’s unbelievably talented and inventive editor James Herbert – who all helped me get that sword out of the stone. Whenever you try and do something different it is always tough. There have been many occasions in my life on film scores where I have wanted to scream. But on this one I actually got to do it on the score. That was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy it.
DANIEL PEMBERTON
London, 2017

Tracklist:
01. Daniel Pemberton - From Nothing Comes a King (0:43)
02. Daniel Pemberton - King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2:52)
03. Daniel Pemberton - Growing Up Londinium (2:42)
04. Daniel Pemberton - Jackseye's Tale (3:31)
05. Daniel Pemberton - The Story of Mordred (2:00)
06. Daniel Pemberton - Vortigen and the Syrens (2:18)
07. Daniel Pemberton - The Legend of Excalibur (2:43)
08. Daniel Pemberton - Seasoned Oak (2:19)
09. Daniel Pemberton - The Vikings & The Barons (2:59)
10. Daniel Pemberton - The Politics & The Life (3:22)
11. Daniel Pemberton - Tower & Power (3:53)
12. Daniel Pemberton - The Born King (2:31)
13. Daniel Pemberton - Assassins Breathe (4:23)
14. Daniel Pemberton - Run Londinium (5:45)
15. Daniel Pemberton - Fireball (2:03)
16. Daniel Pemberton - Journey to the Caves (1:57)
17. Daniel Pemberton - The Wolf & The Hanged Men (2:29)
18. Daniel Pemberton - Camelot in Flames (2:25)
19. Daniel Pemberton - The Lady in the Lake (3:07)
20. Daniel Pemberton - The Darklands (2:43)
21. Daniel Pemberton - Revelation (3:05)
22. Daniel Pemberton - King Arthur: Destiny of the Sword (2:43)
23. Daniel Pemberton - The Power of Excalibur (4:04)
24. Daniel Pemberton - Knights of the Round Table (3:30)
25. Daniel Pemberton - King Arthur: The Coronation (1:45)
26. Sam Lee - The Devil & The Huntsman (4:18)
27. Daniel Pemberton - The Ballad of Londinium (Bonus Track) (2:49)
28. Daniel Pemberton - Riot & Flames (Bonus Track) (1:59)
29. Daniel Pemberton - Anger (Bonus Track) (1:55)
30. Daniel Pemberton - Cave Fight (Bonus Track) (1:26)
31. Daniel Pemberton - Confrontation with the Common Man (Bonus Track) (2:32)
32. Daniel Pemberton - The Devil & The Daughter (Bonus Track) (4:25)