Nexus.06: Genealogy of the Soundscape

The Pulsation of the Soul: From Vangelis to Zimmer

Once the visual world is declared a mere fiction, where does the resonance of the souls of created lives go? It lies in the realm of the “soundscape,” which vibrates their skin and reverberates deep within their viscera.

The relentless, cold acid rain of Los Angeles, the solitary glow of neon signs reflecting off wet asphalt, and a devastated Las Vegas sinking beneath yellow radioactive dust. In the epic cyberpunk saga of Blade Runner, created by Ridley Scott and inherited by Denis Villeneuve, this acoustic space dominates the existential depths of the narrative equally, or perhaps even more so, than its visual splendor. How is the noise of manufactured machines sublimated into the heartbeat of a soul? Diving into the abyss of this soundscape, where the boundary between diegetic (in-universe sound) and extra-diegetic (background score) completely dissolves, we will dismantle the borderline between false memories and genuine emotions.

The Creator’s Instrument and the Angel’s Sigh — Vangelis’s Acoustic Alchemy

In the original 1982 version, Greek composer Vangelis rejected the traditional orchestral scores of Hollywood at the time, adopting an innovative approach of constructing almost the entire score with electronic instruments. At the core of this, playing an ontological role that could be considered the “voice” of the film, was the massive analog polyphonic synthesizer, the Yamaha CS-80.

Among the “serious” composers of the time, there existed a deep-rooted prejudice that “machine sounds are cold and cannot express the complex emotions and souls of human beings.” This criticism perfectly aligns with the arrogant human prejudice within the film that “Replicants have no emotions.” However, Vangelis pushed to the absolute limit the function where tone and pitch change depending on the velocity and pressure applied to the keys, breathing “life” into the electronic circuits. The unstable, wavering pitch of the CS-80 and the warmth unique to analog circuits were the very existential cries of the Nexus-6 Replicants seeking the “spark of life” at the end of their pre-programmed four-year lifespans. Vangelis acoustically proved the paradox of being a machine yet infinitely close to human through the fluctuations of human fingertips.

The “Love Theme,” which plays during the scene where Rachael and Deckard consummate their physical relationship, also brings a unique existential auditory experience. The melody woven by the saxophone, fretless bass, and CS-80 perfectly mimics the romance of classic film noir. However, just as Rachael fears that even the love and sexual desire welling up within her might be nothing more than a programmed illusion, this music possesses a structure that sounds like a “perfect forgery of love.” By concealing profound loneliness and emptiness within an excessively sweet melody, Vangelis depicts the poignant sorrow of whether love is possible for a soulless doll.

The most philosophical and experimental track is “Memories of Green.” This piece is based on a tone with a “drunken,” wavering pitch created by applying a flanger pedal to a Steinway grand piano. Behind that beautiful yet sorrowful melody, cheap, inorganic electronic sounds suddenly ring out at random. This was created by Vangelis having an engineer play the Japanese handheld electronic game “Bambino UFO Master Blaster” and sampling its warning sounds and game-over noise. The contrast between the piano playing a nostalgia for lost nature and the artificial noise of an electronic game acoustically exposes the cruel truth that Rachael’s “beautiful memories of the past” are false memories digitally synthesized from the memories of others.

The Roar and Silence Echoing in the Wasteland of 2049 — The Acoustic Design of Zimmer and Others

In 2049 directed by Denis Villeneuve, Hans Zimmer, Benjamin Wallfisch, and Mark Mangini inherited Vangelis’s philosophy while adopting an approach of “composing with sound” tailored to a more devastated and completely controlled global environment.

What they pursued was the expression of “profound silence.” Mangini noted that since complete silence in a movie theater evokes equipment trouble, expressing silence requires “interrupting the silence with minute sounds,” which he called the “Seinfeld tone.” In the scene where K walks through the ruins of a contaminated Las Vegas, all melodious scores are stripped away, leaving only the buzzing of bees, K’s footsteps and breathing, and the occasional strike of three massive bass drums. This extreme acoustic subtraction directly appeals to the audience’s tactile senses, conveying the existential tension and absolute isolation as K steps into the realm of the divine.

The soundscape of the mortal combat at the Sea Wall, the climax of the film, is a symphony leading from extreme suppression to catharsis. The violent, dissonant sub-bass of a synthesizer overlaps with the acoustics of raging waves. The sound team constructed the sound of the Blaster by synthesizing the actual sound of a sniper rifle with the heavy bass of a drum kick used in EDM and other genres. This violent roar signifies the pressure of the massive system that is the Wallace Corporation, while simultaneously being nothing less than the explosion of spiritual energy as K discards his programming as an obedient slave and achieves a superhuman leap. And in the scene where K lies in the snow, realizing his own death, the roar suddenly transitions into a tranquil, melodious synthesizer tune. The acoustics of this moment celebrate that he has finally acquired a genuine soul through a self-sacrifice chosen by his own will.

The Acoustic Apparatus Dissecting the Mind — Measuring Empathy and Anti-Empathy

The test to distinguish “human or Replicant” is depicted as an extremely violent invasion of the mind using words and acoustics.

During the Voight-Kampff test in the original film, a heavy heartbeat that fuels the subject’s anxiety echoes non-diegetically in the audience’s ears. Overlapping with this, the sound of the bellows of the Voight-Kampff machine inhaling air continues to play diegetically. This overlap of the “physical heartbeat” and the eerie, insect-like “mechanical breathing sound” represents the ruthlessness of humans attempting to quantify the mind as physical data.

On the other hand, the Baseline test in 2049 is an “anti-empathy test.” Inside an oppressive closed room, the interrogator’s intimidating voice and K’s responses are exchanged in a cold, calculating rhythm. In response to the passage from Nabokov’s Pale Fire that K recites, the interrogator inserts keywords like “cells” and “interlinked” with the precise rhythm of a metronome between emotionally provocative words. Ryan Gosling, who played K, used vocal techniques employed by Shakespearean actors to create an unconscious, hypnotic tone. This mechanical vocal rhythm is the very acoustic chain that denies Descartes’ proposition and forces the self-declaration of being “a safe machine that feels nothing.” The moment K awakens his ego and this vocal rhythm collapses is synonymous with the birth cry of his existence.

Phantom Love and Programmed Melodies — Joi and Peter and the Wolf

When created beings show emotion, a specific musical motif always accompanies them. The electronic melody that plays when Joi boots up is the string phrase representing the protagonist Peter in Prokofiev’s symphonic fairy tale Peter and the Wolf. This fairy tale contains a metaphor of rebellion, capturing the wolf by one’s own will without being bound by the rules of the system, and the character structure aligns with K as Peter, Joi as the duck, and Luv as the wolf. It is the ultimate irony that the startup sound of Joi, a commercial product, plays a theme signifying rebellion and liberation.

When processing Joi’s voice, sound designer Theo Green completely removed the “lip smacks” and saliva sounds that occur when humans speak, creating an acoustically sterilized, overly perfect voice. It is precisely because of this acoustic “sense of being a fake” that her choice stands out when she makes the decision to accept her own death to protect K’s data. It is proof that a programmed, sterile voice has acquired a messy, genuine humanity.

Auditory Noise and the Anchor of the Soul

Visual props and their accompanying auditory errors (dissonance) function as “anchors of memory” that shake one’s existence.

When K discovers the wooden horse engraved with the date “6.10.21” from the ashes of the orphanage furnace, the “Soul Theme” by Zimmer and Wallfisch rings out. This theme is constructed solely of “four notes” corresponding to the base sequence of DNA, directing the cruel beauty of the moment when a created life becomes convinced of its biological existence. Furthermore, granular synthesis is applied to the piano sound, acoustically expressing the sorrow of natural things being artificially remade.

Also, in the scene where Deckard rejects the cloned Rachael by saying, “Her eyes were green,” it serves as evidence that his memory has developed an error over years of solitude, while simultaneously demonstrating a resistance armed with human “imperfection” against Wallace’s perfect forgery. The tense silence at the moment this line is delivered, and the unsettling resonance of the synthesizer that follows, announce that perfect mechanical creation has been defeated by the imperfect human memory of love.

From Vangelis’s melancholy to Zimmer’s roar, the acoustics that continue to echo in the undercurrent of the soundtracks tell us something. Faced with the fear of death, the moment one resolves to lose everything to protect the memory of a loved one, the “error-laden heartbeat” that spontaneously cries out from within artificial noise is the very proof of profound humanity.

And in the space between this sound and silence, there is a man who always appears alongside minute environmental sounds. In the next chapter, we will explore the true meaning of the “cipher” he left behind, accompanied by the faint sound of folding paper.