We interview Loki composer Natalie Holt about creating a sci-fi musical Marvel universe, the freedom of having Tom Hiddleston as inspiration, & more.
Marvel's Loki series just released its penultimate episode this week, and while the story has been wild, one thing hasn't changed and that's the excellence of Loki's score. Composer Natalie Holt has created arguably the best score in the MCU, one that's fresh and memorable, quirky and sweeping. It's certainly made audiences take notice.
Holt spoke to Screen Rant about the challenge of creating a whole new sci-fi musical landscape for Marvel, the freedom of having a character like Loki to lead her, the hardest piece to score, and more.
It's a very different genre and world from pretty much everything you've scored before. Did you find it daunting to have to create a whole new sonic landscape or did you find you really relished the challenge of playing with a very specific sound unique to a comic book sci-fi series?
Natalie Holt: I always have to be led by the story and by the characters and the scale of the music is really dictated to me by what I'm seeing and what I'm reading in the script. I guess the things I've done before, you know, I've done a drama for BBC which was about victims of sex trafficking rings and it was based on a real-life story. It was just these three girls and it felt like it had to be small and intimate and emotional and, yeah, I've worked on stories which have felt smaller in scale. And now this is the universe and the Time-Keepers and this god, and I knew it definitely needed to have a bigger scope than anything I've had to score before. So it felt like a really exciting challenge. I pieced it together and just had to go with the sound I heard in my head when reading the script and watching Tom Hiddleston's performances. I felt like it was okay to go there because what everyone else involved was offering and what everyone was giving me, that kind of guidance. It felt like it was okay to go to those places.
There are a number of distinct sounds and musical beats, like the theremin and the clock ticking, throughout the score. Did you play around with any obsolete or strange instruments or non-musical items to help create the soundscape?
Natalie Holt: You know, the tape machine almost became an instrument in itself because I was recording things onto it, sampling different types of clocks and church bells and stuff. Then I'd play it through the tape machine and slow it down and kept getting these weird, distorted sounds, and they were almost unrecognizable from the things they were originally. So that was quite fun to just play around with distorting sounds.
But also, I met Charlie [Draper], this theremin enthusiast before lockdown. Before I'd even heard about Loki, we'd worked on this musical project for an ad agency. So he's got this 1929 RCA theremin designed by Leon Theremin. I think there are only about 140 of them now and most of those aren't even workable anymore. So he had this instrument that was basically used for all those classic sci-fi soundtracks because for decades they were the only thing people could get their hands on. And Charlie also got a Big Briar 91A theremin, which was designed by Bob Moog and an ondes Martenot, which is bit like a theremin but more mellow. So it was amazing, knowing Charlie and knowing that Kate wanted to use a theremin, it was like, "Okay, I know who to use for this." And Charlie's a huge Marvel fan so he was just brilliant. I was sending him my ideas and he'd just send back recordings of him performing them on the theremin and he'd give me different versions on all the instruments he had, as well, so he was just an amazing collaborator on this as well. So yeah, he was on the pitch to get the job.
Speaking of, how did you get this Loki job? Did they reach out to you or did you reach out to them with a pitch?
Natalie Holt: It was just a general callout. I think there was a thing that went around to a few agents and Marvel was really looking for female composers. So that's already amazing that they're trying to give these bigger opportunities to female composers and that they were looking for people they wanted to try that they'd perhaps not heard of, hence that general callout. My agent had this unidentified Marvel pitch so I sent him my show reel. I just felt like there was a huge amount of luck involved with me getting the job. I remember someone at film school saying, "Everyone gets their moment, you just have to recognize when it is," and I remember being like, this has got that moment written all over it - it's a Marvel pitch! I spent ages on the pitch and recorded loads of live elements and did loads of research. I just wanted to really impress everybody and win the job.
Was there anything you had composed that, when you looked at it with the footage, you realized just wasn't working?
Natalie Holt: Yeah, the scene where Loki and Sylvie, you know, their connection scene in episode 4 where they set off the TVA alarm bells and it's so off the grid off what should be happening there. That one was really hard to get the right tone for. If it was too subtle, it didn't play right. I tried a much more understated version of it and then I just did this bombastic, love-in-space, the world is ending sound, just this huge, sweeping love moment and it just seemed to work with whatever it is that they brought to the table. I mean, I don't think anyone quite knows what's between them, whether it's this narcissistic moment or the system or whatever the connection they have to each other, it's still something really powerful. But yeah, that was the most challenging thing to score.
Right. I mean, it's Loki. His character is so big and bombastic and mercurial at times. Did you find his character being who he is helped you feel more comfortable opening up to do more experimental things?
Natalie Holt: Yeah! Like I was saying before, I'm always very led by the narrative and the characters. I would never want people to come away from something I scored like, "Oh my God, she just tried to impose her music all over the story and it didn't go with it at all." I'm always trying to be really empathetic to what's going on and support it. There's a fine line between dominating it and supporting it. I think Tom's performance, it is big enough to take a kind of big, beefy musical piece and handle it. But then also, there's that moment when he's walking down the corridor and Mobius is pruned and he has these tears in his eyes, you can take it to this really heartfelt place, you're really feeling these feelings for him when he's sad, as well. He's got everybody on sight caring about his character.
Have you gotten to see it yet? Have you watched all of it?
Natalie Holt: I'm a total control freak. I find it really hard to let go. So I was like, "When's the dub?" and they were like, "It's going to be 2 a.m." and I said, "That's fine, I'll be there!" because I wanted to make sure that the levels were right. They were like, "You're the first composer who has ever come to the dub." They were about to sign off on it and I was messaging Kate [Herron]: "Can we please turn it up where he's doing this or that?" It's just really hard to let go of a project and I wanted to hear how it sounded on the speakers, so yeah, I've watched it. [laughs]
