Son Lux: “Chosen by Marvel for the melancholy of our music”

How the trio dei Son lux To music the last release of the Marvel universe, “Thunderbolts*“, In Italian cinemas starting from April 30, 2025? Ryan Lott, Ian Chang and Rafiq Chatia they told that To contact them was the director Jake Schreierconvinced that the melancholy of their songs, the “emotional crudeness with which we make music, which for us is an almost therapeutic process” was perfect for Thunderbolts. The group of Marvel superheroes presented in the film just released, in fact, deals above all its inner demons: the lack of purpose, being died in life, as if the true enemy in history is a sort of shared depressive state.

After signing the soundtrack of “Everything Everywhere All At Once”, the US experimental band returned to composing for the cinema, with a process that brought them for the first time behind the scenes of a great mainstream film, having to compare with the rich pre-existing musical canon of the Marvel universe.

What is the difference in the writing process between a song for a disc and a theme for a movie?

Ryan Lott: I think that making a film is a process of discovery of the potential of an initial idea: an approach in which we recognize ourselves a lot. The interesting thing about the film composition is that it aligns quite well with the way we create music as a band, when we make records. We often start with something quite conceptual, we are a little nerd. We work as scientists: we start from a creative hypothesis and try to discover the solution.

In “Thunderbolts*” each character has his own musical theme. How does the writing process associated with a character work?

Ian Chang: We were very lucky to start the musical writing process very soon. If, on the other hand, they had contacted us in postproduction, as is typical in the environment, we would have had a assembly with already temporary music glued above, with the request to replace it: it would not have been the same. We were able to explore the sound without looking at anything else if not at the script, even before something was shot. One of the things we knew we wanted to do from the beginning was to create malleable themes, themes that could “dress” history in different ways: perhaps a more intimate emotional scene can have the same theme of a heroic moment.
Director Jake Schreier told us that at the first reading of the script he made the cast listened to a suite of the themes we had already created. Our music was part of the process immediately.

Ryan Lott: It was strong.

Ian Chang: I know he made our pieces listen to people on the set, while the scenes and things liked. When the first assembly came, our music was already everywhere.

Being composed of about thirty films, the Marvel universe already has a bookshop of existing musical themes, some of which are related to the characters of “Thunderbolts*”. In composing how did you approach the pre-existing fee?

Rafiq Chatia: the Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of the greatest interconnected mythologies that exist, therefore it is a great responsibility to dialogue with what has come before. We talked about it with the director: we really wanted to look for something that adapted to this story, with its specificities. In many ways, it is a very human, rooted and intimate music. The music reflects the tone of the film, but there are moments of homage and in dialogue with the rest of the MCU musical canon.

Is there a particular moment in the “Thunderbolts*” soundtrack that you are most proud of?

Ryan Lott: it always makes you a certain effect to hear a piece that you wrote become part of an important scene – no spoiler – to hear him playing from a live orchestra, with the London Contemporary Orchestra under the direction of Hugh Brunt … Incredible. We were in the Abbey Road studios, right in the Beatles room when they engraved it.

Your first experience in the cinema was with a new film with sensational success like “Everything Everywhere all at Once”. Did the work done with Daniels influenced “Thunderbolts*”?
Ian Chang: That was the first soundtrack that we have ever done as a group. On that occasion we developed our approach to the soundtracks. That experience has been so strong that it also influenced the way we make the discs.

With the composition for films, honestly, since it is so demanding, we all take command on different things and we find ways to connect everything together, while when we are in the studio we give ourselves time to do one thing at a time and everyone follows their inclinations. “Everyhing Everywhere all at Once” was by nature, you know, “multivale” in its aesthetic and in its expression. Despite being three different composers, we did not have to standardize all our nuances. This time, however, we really refined a very narrow collection of sounds and music, with a single voice. I think it is one of the many ways in which these experiences have continued to shape us and help us grow individually and as a group.

Hans Zimmer goes on tour and plays his live soundtracks. Could you have a “Thunderbolts*” concert?

Ryan Lott: why not? Let’s go. Let’s do it. (laughs) In both our soundtracks we were involved in the project so soon that we were able to help grow films from its initial seeds. In a sense, I was a dialogue as usual music becomes when I play it alive.

From spectators, what was the moment when you tried a strong connection between cinema and music?

Rafiq Chatia: In recent years I have had a very powerful experience watching a film by Thai director Apichatong Weirasethakul. The film won the golden palm in Cannes in 2010, I think it is called “the uncle Boonmee who remembers the previous lives”. There is almost no music in the film, but the way in which the sound of the environment evokes a sense of the place and participates in the evolution and direction of the characters and the plot, and contributes to destabilization and surrealism in the film is remarkable.

Ian Chang: I was very young when I saw the film “Akira” for the first time, whose soundtrack is made by a sort of mysterious Japanese musical collective called Geinoh Yamashogumi. I think he had an unconscious influence on the way we approached percussion in this film. I didn’t realize it at the moment, but I could have been influenced by how much I love the Akira soundtrack in approaching that particular appearance of the soundtrack.

Ryan Lott: Ian pulled out a pair of large tables from the garbage and added them to percussion, the influence may have been. (laughs) Honestly, it has become one of the primary colors of our soundtrack, which is Fico. I would like to give an answer from Fico, but I can’t think of anything but “Arizona Junior”. I think I saw him one hundred thousand times as a child. And when I recently looked at it, I realized how much the soundtrack was even more deeply strange than I remembered. And it is such a beautiful reminder that we can do things musically in the context of the film and we can like “frank it” with incredible ideas that would not necessarily be in mind or we would think of putting on a record.