WW II: From The Frontlines

World War II: From The Frontlines is a fantastic documentary series featuring incredible colourised archive footage of 1939-1945, much of which has rarely (and some never) been seen before. Narrated by John Boyega, it covers the Second World War pretty much chronologically across its six episodes. I think it’s an epic piece of work, and absolutely loved working on it in the first half of 2023.

The score was a mammoth undertaking, featuring a 60 piece orchestra, some brilliant soloists, a lot of electronics and the whole kitchen sink…  With help from assistants Gus Nicholson and Steve Hickling, I created new ‘instruments’ and textures derived from manipulated sounds of WW2 Panzer tanks, crowds at Hitler rallies, explosions and air raid sirens.

Then I made the amazing discovery of ‘stretcher railings’ (see picture above) which are found all across London. These were metal stretchers designed and made in Britain for WW2, in anticipation of a German land invasion.  Thankfully they mostly remained unused, and after the war hundreds of these stretchers were repurposed / upcycled into railings for London housing estates. Few people know about them, but once you see their distinctive bent frames you spot them everywhere! I found there were some of these railings not too far away from my studio, down in Deptford, South East London. I went down on a quiet Sunday morning armed with a portable recording device and I bashed and scraped them with wooden spatulas, metal carving forks and other miscellaneous tools. From these sounds I created a big library of ‘clangs’ and ‘scrapes’ that were used extensively in the score… for instance in the track ‘The War Machine’ on the right, in which you can also hear crowd noises towards the end, but also in ‘From the Frontlines’, ‘Numberless Forces’ and many others. I thought there was some poetry in using these WW2 relics to help create the ‘sound’ of a Netflix series in 2023!

My dad, Alex Schweitzer (who passed away in 2021), would have really loved to see this series. We had so many conversations about this period of history and its profound impact on his – and therefore my own – family. Having been born in Berlin in 1939 to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, he and his family lived through World War II and he remembered the end of the war (which he somehow managed to survive) very vividly. I often found myself thinking about him and his parents and siblings while working on the score.

Thanks to director Rob Coldstream, to Ross Booker, David Glover and others at 72 Films, to the editors, and also to Sophie-Alice Davies at Vaudeville who did the sound mix. On the music side, I’m very grateful to Jon Wygens who composed additional music on the series, and to Gus Nicholson who was my indispensable assistant on this score. Thanks also to Alec Roberts (orchestrations), Gareth Williams (score mixer), Steven Hickling (sound design and assistance), Flora Curzon (violin solos), Nick Holland (cello solos), and Jack McCartney (Protools prep).

The orchestral elements of the score were recorded by Fames Orchestra in Macedonia under the baton of Oleg Kondratenko.

The soundtrack is out now on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon and YouTube etc, so even if you don’t want to watch (though you SHOULD) you can still listen! There are a few tracks from the soundtrack album you can listen to now on the right, and also a few of the cues that didn’t make the album that people have requested subsequently, so I’ve just put them here anyway (First Victory for America, Misled and The Americans Take Paris).

Thanks for reading… over and out!! DX

UPDATE 1st October 24:

I’ve won an Emmy!! I was incredibly excited to pick up this wonderful (and surprisingly heavy) piece of metal for the music to World War II: From the Frontlines last week at the Documentary Emmys in New York. It was also  lovely to spend a couple of days in NYC with Mary to celebrate.