Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.06.2019, Blaðsíða 38

Sickening
Silence
Hildur Guðnadóttir’s ‘Chernobyl’ soundtrack
brings radioactivity to life
Words: Hannah Jane Cohen Photos: Timothée Lambrecq
TV Show
‘Chernobyl’ is available to view now
via HBO streaming services. The
soundtrack is out now
How do you transform something
silent and invisible and yet inhu-
manely savage into sound? Com-
poser and former Grapevine cover
star Hildur Guðnadóttir was faced
with this challenge when tasked
with creating the soundtrack for
HBO’s newest mini-series ‘Cher-
nobyl.’ What she ended up mak-
ing is an uncomfortable, eerie, and
remarkably beautiful accompani-
ment to one of the greatest human
tragedies in recent memory.
An atypical soundtrack
“It was clear from the get-go that
it wouldn’t be appropriate to do
a normal thriller
TV score,” says
H i l d u r , w h e n
asked how she in-
itially approached
creating a sound-
scape for ‘Cher-
nobyl.’ “We’d need
to approach the
subject honestly.
It’s such an im-
portant histor-
ical event—and
we didn’t want
to sugar coat anything. It was out
of the question to have violins
marching in for the dramatic mo-
ments.”
Instead, Hildur approached
the project scientifically, asking
herself, ‘if you could hear radioac-
tivity, what would it sound like?’
“It’s just such an interesting sound
world, because radioactivity is
so powerful and strong... but it’s
silent at the same time,” she an-
swers. “Of course, the explosion
was big, but the impact of it, and
the actual aftereffects... they are
so silent and invisible.”
A loaded experience
To turn the silent into sound,
Hildur journeyed to Lithuania to
spend time in a mid-decommis-
sioning nuclear power plant that
looked and operated very much
like Chernobyl. She recorded
every sound that went into the
soundtrack in the plant. “We went
to just observe and document
what it was like
to be there,” she
explains, “And to
find out how it
sounds to be in
such an environ-
ment; what that
physically feels
like.”
Hildur was de-
termined to seek
out the sounds
rather than cre-
ating them. “I
didn’t want to go in and slam
doors or bang on stuff because
that would be too much of an in-
trusion,” Hildur says. “We tried
to capture as honestly as we could
what it sounded like to be there.”
The whole experience was an
eye-opening one. “The feeling of
being there—the smell, the in-
tensely long corridors, the amount
of people cleaning any radioactive
material, the constant measure-
ments they have to take,” she paus-
es, reliving those uncomfortable
moments. “It was so loaded.”
Human element
The soundtrack Hildur ended
up with was also loaded. One of
the most haunting moments in
the show comes whenever radi-
oactivity is unknowingly passed
between two parties—a fireman
picking up a piece of graphite, or
a wife touching her sick husband
in the hospital. In these scenes,
a delicate but intense frequency
becomes audible. Hildur perfectly
managed to articulate the passing
of this invisible decay between ob-
jects and people, which only the
audience is privy to.
“That comes from this door
to one of the pump rooms,” says
Hildur, when asked about this par-
ticular sample. “We had to pitch it
down because it was at this crazy
high frequency, almost inaudible.”
The only human touch on the
album is Hildur’s own voice, which
she added for a few selected mo-
ments. “There’s not a single in-
strument on the whole score,” she
says. “It’s all actual recordings
that we made there, but we need-
ed the human element as well. It’s
a huge human tragedy, because it
was a human mistake that caused
the catastrophe.” She pauses; it’s
clear working so close to the trag-
edy has had an effect on the artist.
“My voice became the human ele-
ment in it.”
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Share this + Archives
Hildur Guðna, about to shred the cello
“It’s just such an
interesting sound
world, because
radioactivity is so
powerful and so
strong... but it’s
silent at the same
time.”
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