Cliff Martinez, the composer responsible for the sound of Drive , Spring Breakers , and now The Knick , spoke to BuzzFeed about how he created the series’ surprising sound.
Mary Cybulski/Cinemax
One of the things that makes The Knick feel so alive — and remarkably different from previous period pieces — is its very modern score. (You can get a sense of it in the first few minutes of the first episode, which is free to stream here).
Cliff Martinez has worked with The Knick's showrunner, Steven Soderbergh, on eight films, including sex, lies, videotape and Contagion. He was also a drummer for The Red Hot Chili Peppers, created the distinctive score for Drive , and collaborated with Skrillex for the indelible sound of Spring Breakers . He is, in short, incredibly talented — which is why I was so excited to talk with him about his work on The Knick, and the creation of a soundtrack to which I can't stop listening. That's what I mean when I say it's "hypnotic": There's a pulse to this music that I can't wrest myself away from. It has that effect on its own — perhaps more so — but it also has the effect on the show itself: It inscribes its rhythms on the narrative, to the point that I can't think of the plot without also thinking of the way that the score shapes it.
Listen here; you'll begin to understand:
According to Martinez, he received the packet of all 10 scripts — the equivalent of a 10-hour movie — shortly after Soderbergh received the greenlight from Cinemax to film The Knick. "It was like 'here's the Rocky Mountains, kid,'" said Martinez, "'whattya think?'" Martinez read through a few of the scripts, and Soderbergh began to send him rough cuts for the first few episodes — each of them scored with swatches of Martinez's own (very modern) scores for Only God Forgives, Spring Breakers, Drive, and Contagion.
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