Arrival

How does one musically bring to life alien language? Arrival is an aural experience as much as it is visual, the score and the sound design ebb and flow, breathing as if it were a creature itself. The musical score is comprised of abstract and entirely unfamiliar sonic textures, with a life to the sounds that feels organic. As with the story, sonically we are plunged into the unknown, surrounded by unfamiliar sounds and aural textures — the score almost howls as we enter the darkness of the pod for the first time, bellowing as we ascend into this chasm, entirely alien in its form, its physics, its appearance and its sound — yet the music adopts an abstract form and physicality. There are elements of familiar sounds throughout the score, but their form, their composition is abstract, almost creating a wall of sound that is both familiar and unfamiliar, natural and unnatural. The score is made up significantly of intricate abstract vocal choir arrangements, however, the score is fully absent of any human sounds right up until the aliens first time communicating — as soon as the alien language is first seen on screen, the first vocal elements are introduced. While the sound feels familiar to us, the composition and aural textures are still abstract in their form, with Johannsson extracting abnormal characteristics from the voices. The use of voices forges a narrative link to language which is the primary theme underlying the whole film — language is something we know, and even if it is not our native language, it is something that is common through every single species or being, and the language native to us - the human voice - acts as a way to sonify and aurally ground this narrative theme throughout the film.