Composer Tom Hulkenberg envisioned his sonic palette for “Mad Max: Fury Road” as a massive rock opera. For the prequel, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” he thought he needed a voice change.
Holkenborg, also known professionally as Junkie XL, lit up a cigarette as soon as he joined Variety to discuss his vision from his Amsterdam home and studio. “The music is commenting on how Furiosa sees the Wastelands and what's happening to her,” he explained. Holkinborg not only wanted the music to feel like a first-person perspective score, he wanted things to be more restrained.
He noted the lack of music for the first six minutes of the film as an example of restraint.
“Furiosa” follows the heroine, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, who is kidnapped by Chris Hemsworth's demented, new villain. Dementus and his biker bandits take him across the Wasteland in a quest for dominance.
Towards the middle of the film, Dementes and his bandits are seen stealing a famous 12-wheeler known as the War Rig. “We don't know Furiosa is in that truck. The moment we start seeing her, that's when the music comments,” Hulkenberg said. He continued, “When she's holding on for dear life under the truck, she's not listening to big brass and strings and heavy percussion. She's just a loud beat and thinking, 'I've got to get out of here.' What needs to be done to make sure?'
The pulse sound was created on an old Buchla synthesizer.
“It has such a unique character, and I knew it was going to be important to this film,” the composer said. Buchla was used as the heartbeat voice throughout the soundtrack, and her rhythm “ranging from fast, uncontrollable, even frantic at times, almost like a heartbeat, to Furiosa's heartbeat.” to echo,” he explained.
Additionally, the music needs to connect to nature, the green place where Furiosa initially lived with her family. For this, Holkinborg used a wooden instrument called the duduk, foreshadowed in “Fury Road”. “It comes from the ground, you feel the sand in your hands,” he says.
An Australian didgeridoo was also essential to Holkenberg's score.
“We clearly see that this story is actually happening in Australia. When we zoom in on Green Place, it's clear that we're in the middle of it,” he said. William Barton, a member of the Aboriginal community, was chosen by Holkenberg to play the entire instrument.
Holkenborg also incorporated elements of AI technology into the score. Instead of running away from it, he chose to engage with new ideas. “I used AI to create deep fake sounds from another sound. I actually used it for vocals, but what if the source sound was a drum beat, and what if the destination sound was an electric guitar? “But the software doesn't know what to make of it, so it gave us a happy accident that we used throughout the score,” says Holkenberg.