Posted in: Max, TV | Tagged: Juan Cortés Arango, max, The Head

The Head Composer on Building Toward Finale, S03 Unique Instruments

Composer Juan Cortés Arango (Funny Birds) spoke with Bleeding Cool about the instruments he used to provide a darker final season of The Head.

Since taking over as composer of the Max original series The Head from Federico Jusid, Juan Cortés Arango has been tasked to maintain the psychological thriller's dark tones and build up to the finale. The Head is a Spanish-Japanese and English-language psychological thriller from creators David Troncoso and David and Alex Pastor, and showrunner Jorge Dorado as a joint venture from HBO Asia and Hulu Japan, which follows the mystery surrounding the massacre of the winter research team at the South Pole with some unaccounted for and the summer commander Johan Berg (Alexandre Willaume) and his team to investigate what happened to the winter team led by biologist Arthur Wilde (John Lynch). Cortés spoke to Bleeding Cool about how he utilized the Azzam bells, cello, and his various arsenal of instruments to build up to the finale.

The Head Composer Juan Cortés Arango on His Unique Instruments to Build to Finale

Bleeding Cool: As far as the horror genre goes, are there any particular instruments that work better to experiment on and refine?

I don't have it on me, but I had this instrument called an Azzam bell, which is like a water phone, just a bunch of pieces of metal tied together, and you bow it from different places. We have all the instruments from Veronica, who had this. I don't remember the name of the instrument, but it was like basically it has a certain size, but this was much bigger and made of plastic. Sound exploration is huge, and sound exploration of something that is not attainable digitally is important because, at some point, there's this insecurity of sounding like everyone else because everyone has access to the same software.

There's beauty in the imperfections of capturing someone who breathes and then stops or your bow moves differently. My basic tool was the Azzam bells, imagine a drum set that is broken. That's what it looks like. My cello is right there with different bows, and then I know these woodwinds. We recorded the orchestra like it's not an orchestra but a 1620-piece string section. For the first season, we had mostly a heavy cello section, so it was even like small players; it was mostly cellist, but [Federico] was also trying different colors and treating organic sounds of synthesizers to get new sounds out of them.

What was your most challenging scene to score?

The most challenging thing to score? Well, I'd be giving away the show.

If you want to be any more general in the end?

The last episode was challenging. I can't go into specifics, but when it all ties together, there's the comeback. There's a reprise of the main themes we established in season one because a character comes back and ties everything together. That was unexpected for me, so I was working on this show, and I had an idea where this was going. When I saw it, I remember thinking, "This entire season is darker compared to the previous two seasons, this one is particularly more graphic in certain aspects, and more physical."

The location is also a lot more physical because before, it was like a ship, and then before season one in Antarctica. This [third season] is in the desert in this giant Russian complex. Everything, design-wise, feels more physical because there are more reverberations and more metals. Action-wise, the stakes felt much higher because it's the last season. We had all that energy and then we have this moment we're coming back to this character's arc and how it ends, and it was very emotional. It was challenging when you have all this energy and stick to landing in the process.

What's next for you?

I'm working on another show with Federico [Jusid], I hope I can announce it soon. I am working on an exciting documentary with my wife, who's directing. I also recently scored this short documentary for the Olympics about these two American athletes who were awarded gold ten years after they were cleared for allegations of drug use.

All three seasons of The Head, which also stars Katharine O'Donnelly, Richard Sammel, Tomohisa Yamashita, Laura Bach, Álvaro Morte, Olivia Morris, Moe Dunford, Josefin Neldén, Hovik Keuchkerian, and Sota Fukushi is available on Max. You can check out part one.

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