The Counselor (soundtrack)

Scott listened to Pemberton's debut score for The Awakening (2011) which he liked it and roped Pemberton to write music for The Counselor.[2] Pemberton felt that "Ridley responds really well to interesting and unusual sounds. So as a composer who likes making unusual sounds, that's exciting. It was daunting but he was great to work with and up for experimenting."[3] Pemberton felt essential on how the spoken word was to the themes of the film, thereby being cautious with the score. While writing the first cue "The Hunter", Pemberton recalled that the theme should be "philosophical" and "visceral". Hence he tried to experiment the guitar to sound unique and emotionally ground the film, explaining that most of the score "underlies emotion" and the cue "pushes it more to the front".[4]

The "Warning" was one of the main themes that served the idea, which is to "represent the warning, every time the Counselor (Michael Fassbender) is told to be careful". The track "A Glorious Woman" which was played the Counselor proposes to his to girlfriend Laura (Penélope Cruz) was not planned for the film score, but however he wrote the track as the "contrast and elegance was too great to resist". The piece was slightly similar to the track "Memories of Green" composed by Vangelis for Blade Runner (1982) which Pemberton described as "the memory before the memory".[4]

The score consisted of sounds in a mix which consisted of scratching wires, which played a sustained melody that bent wives. The film furthermore consisted of a "ping" sound heard throughout, which Pemberton described as a load of guitar harmonics re-recorded through a guitar amplifier with a spring reverb and bent in a sampler, so that they are slightly in and out of tune with one another to give an uncomfortable feeling to the listeners. This became a separate cue written for the film.[4]

A review from Evening Standard praised the soundtrack as "ridiculously explicit".[5] Jason Pirodsky of The Prague Reporter called the soundtrack as "terrific Morricone-esque border" which "effortlessly moves from Southern twang to pulsating Euro beats".[6] Pat Padua of the DCist wrote "Daniel Pemberton’s score is, unlike so much movie music these days, unobtrusive".[7]