What Trent and Atticus have given the film and TV world is, then, self-evident. But less considered is what it has given back to the pair. When it came to scoring Ken Burn’s enthralling 10-hour-plus Vietnam documentary, it opened up whole new ways to approach music.
“Ken sent us a list of words that we started building stuff around and kind of states of mind,” Atticus told K! back in 2017. “There would be an evocative list that Ken wrote that we worked towards, creating pieces that evoked these emotions he described.”
“It wasn’t scoring the picture,” said Trent of the gargantuan scoring task they had taken. “A lot of it was me asking Ken, ‘Could you come up with a list of emotional themes that you need covered?’ He gave me a really interesting list of things that were great as a composer [to work with] – for us it was a dream come true.”
All of this has had some incredible side-effects for its creators.
“We’ve been very fortunate that we’ve been able to do other things that are creative in slightly different ways – working on film scores and whatnot – that keep it exciting,” Trent told us in 2017. “What we’ve learned from working with other people on more soundtrack/scoring type things is you’re part of a team and you’re helping tell a story – you’re not the sole storyteller. It’s an interesting way to work, and it can complement what we do when we’re then set free and able to do whatever we want.”
“We work fast, and the way that we work often is there’ll be another project going on,” Atticus agreed. “You can work on Nine Inch Nails for, say, a week or two weeks and give it 100 per cent, but at a certain point of time it’s worked to change one’s mindset to deep dive on something else. It’s just balancing. That way nothing ever feels tired, it allows one to feel energised.”