With most of the episodes cloaked in wall to wall score, often music that verges upon sound design, the Hannibal TV series has to be one of the most scored in TV history. Yet it’s also a series where music plays a huge role in the creepiness of the show, yet also as a narrative device in itself. Which may explain why this is the second volume from the first series of composer Brian Reitzell’ score.
Reitzell, who has recently also scored the video game, Watch Dogs (Invada), with John Carpenteresque synth pulses and typically cross genre explorations, as well as releasing a krautrock inspired solo album on Smalltown Supersound, clearly doesn’ need much sleep.
The music in this second volume is much creepier, perhaps echoing the introspection of the series, which isn’ afraid to enter some truly dark places. In some sense it’s classic horror movie music, ill defined semi classical instrumentation, atmospheric with sudden abrupt jolts, though this is also the language of sound design or sound art and Reitzell seems to gather elements and techniques for his music from a wide variety of sources. In fact his modus oparandi seems to be to make the sound design musical and orchestrate upon this base. In this sense there are vague links to Franc Tetaz’ Wolf Creek score which displayed similar intentions though never pushed the notion as far as Reitzell has.
The former drummer in Redd Kross, he’ previously scored The Bling Ring and 30 Days of Night as well as touring with Air and acted as a music supervisor on countless film projects. Hannibal though is his opportunity to really demonstrate his wares. The music here is malformed, a series of dark atmospheric washes, electronic drones and percussive flourishes. It’s menacing music whilst still retaining a certain lush warmth. Yet it’s curiously unpredictable, at a moment’s notice it can and does contort into shocking new directions. There is nothing easy here, its music designed to unsettle, designed to keep you in the dark and somewhat helpless. Yet within these constraints Reitzell consistently manages to do interesting things, such as the heavy delay of Rôti for example, which sounds like millions of tiny creatures snapping at your heels, yet that’s only part of it, because at almost 17 minutes there are numerous suites of sound contained within.
Like Vol.1 all the pieces are related to the culinary world, usually fine dining and they represent the titles of the individual episodes. Rather than provide short individual cues, each track here is an amalgamation of the more interesting sounds from that particular episode, which can explain why some of the pieces can traverse such diverse terrain and feel at times disjointed. There is something beautiful in this though, something true to the nature of Hannibal, true to the density of sound, true to the abrupt shifts and unexpected shocks in the narrative where serenity can cheerfully bookend brutality.
This is a masterful score to one of the most innovative television shows in recent memory.
