When Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Göransson was nine-years old, he heard a loud, unfamiliar noise coming from his father’s guitar studio. Lo and behold, when he opened the door, he discovered his father wildly headbanging to a confounding new sound: “Enter Sandman” by Metallica.
Göransson is the esteemed guest for Wrensilva’s The Records That Made Me listening event this month, fresh off another Academy Award nomination that same morning for his work on Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster Oppenheimer. His parents chuckle from the audience as Göransson reminisces on Metallica and files through his record collection in Wrensilva’s West Hollywood studio. He lays down a surprising influence to his composition work – a wax copy of Joe Satriani’s 1987 record‘Surfing With The Alien.’The record console erupts with a whoosh; Göransson smiles and points a finger at the turntable as Satriani’s brute electric guitar ignites. In a flash, the solo shifts from a high, glittery squeal down to a deep, grisly snarl, like the beam of a UFO drawing. Göransson shares, “The tone of the guitar . . . sounded like an alien to me, or the future, or [like] you’re on a different planet.”Hearing beyond its feral surface, Göransson translates many of heavy metal’s complex features into his work across genres. Use of jerky, emphatic rhythms, muscular tempo changes, and dissonant harmonic structures often disguise his music’s intricacy with ferocity.
