Composer Graeme Revell has long pursued an intricate and wide-ranging method in his film music, a direction shaped by his formative time with the industrial group SPK. His first major public recognition arrived via the atmospheric music he created for the well-received 1989 Australian picture Dead Calm, after which he gained further notice through his work on 1993’s The Crow, 2005’s Sin City, and 2013’s Riddick—the last of these representing his fourth project with filmmaker David Twohy. In addition to composing for directors including John Woo, Wim Wenders, Robert Rodriguez, Ted Demme, and Michael Mann, Revell has contributed music to television series such as CSI Miami, The Forgotten, and Fox’s Gotham while also providing arrangements for performers including Evanescence, Emma Shapplin, and Biffy Clyro.
Revell entered the world in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1955 and received training on classical piano and French horn during his early years. Despite his strong interest in music, he earned degrees in economics and politics from the University of Auckland. While employed as a nurse in the psychiatric ward of a Sydney hospital, he established the industrial noise rock band SPK alongside colleague Neil Hill.
The group took its name from the radical German Marxist organization Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv (or Socialist Patient’s Collective) and drew inspiration from the avant-garde and Krautrock textures associated with Kraftwerk, Can, Neu!, and John Cage, developing a distinctive style of dissonant, highly theatrical post-punk. Anticipating Revell’s later cinematic efforts, SPK frequently enhanced its live shows with surgical films and slides along with flamethrowers and oil drums.
Though the ensemble disbanded in the late ’80s, Revell moved into film composition, incorporating the band’s track “In Flagrante Delicto” into his score for Phillip Noyce’s breakthrough 1989 thriller Dead Calm, which starred Nicole Kidman. That soundtrack earned him an Australian Film Industry award and led him to relocate to London for additional film and music endeavors. His visibility increased during the ’90s through scores for projects such as Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World, John Woo’s Hard Target, The Crow, Street Fighter, and The Craft.
In the 2000s Revell formed a sustained partnership with director David Twohy, creating music for the 2000 science-fiction thriller Pitch Black and its later entries The Chronicles of Riddick (2013) and Riddick (2018). Additional film assignments have included Ted Demme’s ’70s drama Blow, Michel Gondry’s comedy-drama Human Nature, and David Gordon Green’s action-comedy Pineapple Express. He has maintained a close association with Robert Rodriguez on Sin City and Grindhouse: Planet Terror.
While sustaining his film output, Revell has preserved ties to rock music, supplying arrangements for Evanescence’s 2003 album Fallen and for releases by Biffy Clyro, the Wombats, French singer Emma Shapplin, and additional artists. He has also composed for television, delivering scores for CSI Miami, The Forgotten, and Fox’s Gotham.
