The Daily Swarm

Variety:

THE GAMBIT is simple yet extraordinary: a superhero without a theme song.

Say Batman, Superman, Indiana Jones—the list goes on—and a theme clicks in. Hear a theme, and the mind plays the visual. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard have tossed that tradition out the window for “The Dark Knight”: Batman gets two notes. The Joker, only one.

It’s a radical concept for a film score, a technique more likely to be found in a Wagner opera. Those notes do not sit alone or on top of a brash comicbook score either. This is a score inspired by minimalism, repeated motifs that echo the work of Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” and Philip Glass.

L.A. Times:

Let’s talk about the “Joker Suite.” This almost sounded like an orchestral interpretation of an industrial song.

Zimmer: Look, I’m German, so I come from the German tradition of Kraftwerk…. But I kept thinking I wanted to find a way to bring corrosion into Gotham—corrosion and recklessness. The funny thing about that piece is that I knew what I wanted to do, but it took me months to actually do it. Nobody could play it.

It’s all about acting and attitude, in a way. It’s very much of the idea of taking one note and expressing any part of fearlessness and recklessness and surprise…. It is very industrial music. I tried to give it a punk attitude. I used to work with the Damned and bands like that.