Part 2

Is objectivity in any way a goal in your own work? What, other than your personal taste, are criteria for defining quality?

There have been lots of times where I'll just know I've nailed it and then I'll play it to the director or producer and they'll look at me and say "what were you thinking - this is absolutely awful." It is very subjective. And you have to remember that you're telling their story. Of course you can gently steer someone in a certain direction, but at the end of the day you have to take people's likes, comments and wishes on board. You can't get precious about your credibility. It's all about the client. 

Tell me a bit about your perspective on the selection process for your programming, please. In how far do PR companies, the media and public awareness of an artist or band play a role in programming them? How much room is there in your work for taking creative risks? 

I rely on PR companies, record companies, publishers. Unsigned artists send me things, majors, indies, and I keep an eye on the press and blogs and all that kind of stuff. 

It really is a question of right place, right time. Somebody might have just written to me that morning and I need something right then. 

The big questions is how do you filter because it's very easy now, if you're not very good, to still record stuff and get it out there. Whereas in the old days, you had to go to a studio, or learn to use complicated equipment, then you had to get your song pressed onto vinyl or CD, and then you had to get it to people by selling it at gigs or at a record shop. There were more gatekeepers. Where as now anyone can make music on Garage Band and whack it up on You Tube. 

You've also got thirty three of your friends saying "you have to listen to this or that - this is amazing." And you get some extraordinary letters. The gatekeepers are important, and so I try to rely on trusted sources, managers, labels, blogs and I will try and listen to new artists. I have to try and keep abreast of everything but it's hard. I'm always behind, always playing catch- up with the all the stuff that gets sent to me. 

Would you say there can be 'wrong' and 'right' musical decisions for some scenes? In which way can some film music be considered 'definitive'?

For Deathly Hallows for example, we talked about using all types of music, soul music or whatever, and with a film like that you have to figure out what's acceptable within that world. We're trying to bring their wizarding world to you that you'll live in for two hours or so. What we don't want to do is jolt you out of it and there were certain tracks or artists that would do that. I remember suggesting James Carr, Otis Reading and Oasis for that scene, to prove my point that some songs were just too muggle. 

There's a video on YouTube where someone has felt that the track “Fix You” by Coldplay would've been a better choice for the Harry and Hermione tent scene, and they've overlaid the song onto the scene. Everything about it is wrong. Coldplay have too strong a presence, the song is too emotionally explicit, virtually signposting the scene, leaving no room for ambiguity. Plus it's extremely corny. 

In terms of the 'right' song, you can look at all of Tarantino's films, Scorsese's Mean Streets, John Hughes films were all good like that, think of the scene with “Try a Little Tenderness” in Pretty in Pink. 

People tend to see film music as existing in a time of its own. Would you, on the other hand, say that there such a thing as zeitgeist in film music as well? Are there choices which you don't find appropriate or wouldn't use right now, because they're too closely associated with a particular era? 

The thing about new music, and genres is that it makes it very easy for a film to date because of the music. Of course you can use new artists and there are artists who are more classic in their sound, but then who's to say that's not too safe as an approach. “The Inbetweeners” hasn't dated terribly well, musically-speaking. 

There are also certain genres that don't lend themselves terribly well to picture. Drum and bass for example. You can have it, or other types of dance music in a club scene, but as a sound-tracking device it doesn’t totally work. For whatever reason, it's not quite the emotional resonance you want. There are some exceptions of course, like M83 and DJ Shadow, something about those artists does work to picture. 

How important is a track's social/cultural meaning in a scene?  Do you ever use this level of unspoken meaning to enhance or change the meaning of the scene it's used in? Can you think of an example where this is particularly noticeable?

It can be important. It can be like tapping into a ready-made nostalgia with some tracks. I do remember with the film “Snatch”, in the scene where Brad Pitt's mum gets burnt in a caravan, “Angel” by Massive Attack was used. But for the longest time - and this is a good example of 'temp-love' - the song that was slated for that scene was “Imagine” by John Lennon. What happens is that the chords start up and you're immediately put into a certain frame of mind and in many ways, the scene becomes very subjective and personal to the viewer because of the resonance that song has. Sometimes that can be good, but sometimes it can be bad. When you're struggling with what to do with a scene, sometimes the thing to do is to whack a really well-known song in there and it does the job. You let it kind of do it's thing, let the viewer have their own moment, their own interpretation. 

Jim Williams said "with a richer musical language and some emotional intelligence, many more levels of the drama can be explored with the soundtrack." How do know when to select music that explores those deeper levels, as opposed to reiterating the action on screen?

That's trial and error mostly. There are different levels. There are tracks that will support the drama, but there's also the danger of supporting it too much. You can also play against it, like for example if you have a terribly tragic scene you can insert something bouncy and upbeat which can then work to make it even more tragic and awful if you get it right. And sometimes if you have a sad or yearning scene, if you add the wrong type of track then you can make it too yearning, too depressing. 

Programming music can occasionally lead to better insights into the music itself. In which way, do you feel, can curating change the way music and certain styles of music are perceived?

I'm not really sure about that. People have become a lot more eclectic now and I'm not sure that people are that bothered about genre as much as they might have been in the past. 

One good thing about iTunes and the Internet is that it has made it more legitimate for you to have The Ramones next to John Taverner next to Sly and the Family Stone on your playlist. But the on the down side, iTunes killed the soundtrack album. You can get any track you want from iTunes where as before, you had to buy the soundtrack. 

'Alternative' music has become more prevalent in films. Look at “Breaking Bad”, those guys took some big risks with some very obscure stuff. I have a theory about this trend. Most of us music supervisors are roughly the same age and so I think our formative music years were affected by bands like Nirvana, that laid waste to the musical landscape as we knew it. The unthinkable happened and the alternative became the mainstream. Bands that would have been considered 'indie' bands became the mainstream, the zeitgeist. No one thought Nirvana were going to knock Michael Jackson off the Top 10. It was a phenomenon in my lifetime that made so many bands redundant literally overnight.  

With more and more musicians creating than ever and more and more of these creations being released, what does this mean for you in terms of originality? What are some of the areas where you currently see the greatest potential for originality and who are some of the artists and communities that you find inspiring in this regard?

There will always be the mainstream, and people who will listen to mainstream radio and the charts. If you choose to go outside of those areas and dip your toe into the murky waters of BBC6 music, and blogs and the live music scene, there's loads of new stuff being done that's great. 

There's no one place really though. Sometimes it can just be randomly going through Spotify, or I like Shazam, I use that a lot when I listen to 6 music. You just have to be open to everything. 

In terms of originality, I'll always go for something that isn't just following the herd musically, because that makes everybody's life more interesting. 

In this time where there is so much noise, and it's so hard to get noticed, do you find that artists are becoming more amenable to having their work feature in film, TV, commercials? 

When I started finding music for commercials back when I first got into music supervision, wanting to be involved in commercials was an exception. But now it is very much the rule. People want to be in commercials. Artists do want to be more involved in having their work synced to picture. When they're done right, they're a very good way of getting to another audience. Film is just an extension of that. Commercials tend to follow trends or social phenomenon, and they seek to echo that, where as that isn't really a thing with film. Film has more freedom to create an agenda, we can operate outside of the mainstream. Sometimes producers want a really big song, but I disagree with that most of the time. It's more interesting if you find an unknown gem.

A lot of artists want to move into composition. But it's a different culture. As an artist, they only have to satisfy themselves, or their band or management, but writing music for a film it's not so easy figuring out how to express what it is that the director wants. The artist might forget that they're telling someone else's story - enabling the director’s vision, and sometimes they can't get past that. You have to take lots of other things on board and some artists find that very difficult.

Visit Matt Biffa's bio page on www.air-edel.co.uk