[Eirik Myhr]

It’s strange, because Elfman HAS written a rather large amount of scores that don’t really do anything for me, but he’s still my second favourite film composer after Williams. It might be that I identify with him as an angsty weird nerd with a lot of self-doubt and a very interesting journey from theatre musician, drummer, pop/rock musician and performer, into film composer and later a more classical composer. And his work that speak to me, REALLY speak to me in a big way. He’s just done so much different stuff.

I like his more mature 2000s period where he was sort of leaving behind the early Kurt Weill ompa-ompa style and taking a huge left turn, becoming more heavily influenced by the Philip Glass style of patterns and ostinatos in strings and melodic percussion. BIG FISH is a huge favourite, with some really beautiful main themes in strings and woodwinds, mixed with folky guitar patterns and fiddle. Just amazing. I also absolutely love THE UNKNOWN KNOWN and STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE, and also PROMISED LAND and RESTLESS. It’s interesting how he really is a completely different composer if he works for Burton, Morris or Van Zandt. Having said that, I also love a lot of his Burton stuff, NIGHTMARE is an absolute masterpiece from beginning to end. And PLANET OF THE APES is a really bold score with its brutal col legno string-slapping, tribal percussion fest and distorted synth bass trip! All of these very different scores have inspired my own work at some point.