Daniel Pemberton

As a composer for cinema, small-screen productions, and interactive titles, Daniel Pemberton launched his path through experimental and atmospheric electronic music during his teenage years, absorbing the influence of pioneering figures such as Jean Michel Jarre, Tomita, and Vangelis. Early on he began amassing keyboard instruments and financed higher-end gear by contributing an advice column to a gaming periodical. He simultaneously captured his own pieces on tape and handed one to Mixmaster Morris following a live performance. Continued circulation of those recordings and additional cassettes prompted the release of his first album, Bedroom, issued in late 1994 on Pete Namlook’s Fax Records. The same connection opened doors at Coldcut’s Ninja Tune imprint, resulting in a DJ Vadim remix that appeared on the U.S.S.R. Reconstruction LP.

Shortly after Bedroom reached listeners, Pemberton turned to television scoring, beginning with music for a Channel 4 documentary; his profile across film, TV, and games rose sharply in the new millennium. British television assignments have encompassed Peep Show, Dirk Gently, My Mad Fat Diary, Hell’s Kitchen, and Great British Menu, while the 2009 Ivor Novello Award for Best Television Soundtrack recognized his work on Desperate Romantics. In the gaming sphere he earned BAFTA nominations for Best Original Soundtrack, first in 2006 for The Movies on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, then in 2008 for LittleBigPlanet on PlayStation 3.

Feature-film credits include Self Made, Enemies of the People, and Ghost Recon, all from 2010; The Awakening in 2011; Blood in 2012; and the 2013 trio In Fear, Cuban Fury, and The Counselor, the last a Brad Pitt project directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Cormac McCarthy. Cuban Fury brought him the World Soundtrack Award for Discovery of the Year in 2014, and 2015 saw high-profile contributions to Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. together with the Danny Boyle–Aaron Sorkin collaboration Steve Jobs. He and Ritchie teamed again for the 2017 epic fantasy King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, followed in 2018 by the spy thriller Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House.