28 Years Later director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have spoken to NME about Young Fathers’ soundtrack to the horror sequel – check out the full interview above.
28 Years Later is the long-awaited follow-up to Boyle’s iconic zombie thriller 28 Days Later, which was released back in 2002. A sequel 28 Weeks Later followed in 2007 without much involvement from Boyle or Garland.
The new film stars Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes and is the first in a planned trilogy. The soundtrack for 28 Years Later has been created by progressive Scottish hip-hop group Young Fathers.
“You can’t really brief someone for scoring the apocalypse,” Boyle told NME. “You send them the script and you talk about it, then you send them the songs you’re listening to while you edit the film, so you can start talking about music rather than ideas. Then they started sending music back, and it develops from there.” Boyle went on to describe the band as “The Beach Boys on steroids”.
“They use vocal harmonies as well as these beats and it just seemed like a wonderful idea to give them this horror film and see what they made of it. If you’re a Young Fathers’ fan, you’ll say ‘yes that’s them’ [when you hear the soundtrack]. But they also wrote this tune ‘Remember’ for this big scene at The Bone Temple and that will definitely surprise people. It’s a very beautiful song and I just love them. They’re a real inspiration.”
“They won’t mind me saying this, but they work in a dump,” continued Boyle. “I went up to visit them and they were basically crammed into a shed. I had to wear a coat because there was not much in the way of heating and it was winter in Edinburgh. They don’t do biscuits either, I had to bring my own. They were worth it though.”
Joined by writer Alex Garland, the pair also reflected on 28 Days Later’s iconic opening scene that sees Cillian Murphy’s Jim walking through a deserted London following a zombie apocalypse. “We shot that a couple of months before the rest of the film and I’d put Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s ‘East Hastings’ on it. Very rarely do you get that feeling of ‘oh god, that just works and I don’t care what anybody else says about it’. We’ve used it again at the end of 28 Years Later as a homage to that scene,” explained Boyle.
“I remember you telling me about them when we were still developing the film, so I went out and brought their [2000 album] ‘Lift Your Skinny Fist Like Antennas To Heaven’ . I listened to it while I was doing rewrites,” added Garland. “It was funny because you usually discover the needle drops while you’re working on the film.”
“It was quite hard to get them for the original film though. Understandably, they distrusted Rupert Murdoch and Fox. Andrew [Macdonald, producer] and I went to Newcastle to watch them in concert before going out to dinner with them. They were wary as anything about us, but then they saw the bit of the film we wanted them to soundtrack and they reluctantly agreed. When we approached them for this one though, they said yes instantly. They obviously thought we were okay.”
Elsewhere in their chat with NME, Boyle and Garland reveal the one album they couldn’t live without and share the lessons they’ve learnt since working together on 28 Days Later. Check out the full interview above.
’28 Years Later’ is out now in cinemas.