‘Dune’ soundtracks: everything you need to know about Hans Zimmer’s futuristic scores
1 March 2024, 15:45 | Updated: 1 March 2024, 15:57
As Dune: Part Two arrives in cinemas, here’s how Hans Zimmer created his most futuristic soundtrack for Denis Villeneuve’s pair of sci-fi epics.
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Hans Zimmer’s epic score to Dune: Part One was met with an incredible reaction when it landed in 2021.
Acclaimed by both critics and fans alike, his otherworldly futuristic soundscape captured the inhospitable desert landscape of Arrakis and perilous undertones of political plotting, coups and assassinations.
Zimmer’s score relied heavily on strings, percussion and choral chants, with intoxicating harmonies and dramatic drumbeats that bring you right to the heart of the film’s drama in the way that only a master composer like Hans Zimmer can.
As Part Two is released, here’s everything we know so far about the music to Denis Villeneuve’s Dune series.
Read more: Hans Zimmer wins Oscar for ‘Dune’, accepts award in his dressing gown
Watch the trailer for Dune 2
What instruments did Hans Zimmer use in the Dune soundtrack?
Zimmer’s score to the first Dune film was incredibly inventive, with custom-built instruments and an unforgettably haunting vocal riff, that all worked to earn him his second Oscar for best original score.
The legendary composer told Vanity Fair how he enlisted the help of musician and sculptor Chas Smith to build a large-scale metal ‘house’ in California, which also doubled as a percussive musical instrument.
He also constructed flute-like instruments from PVC pipes, for a more breathy and less resonant sound, and asked his cellist Tina Guo to make her instrument sound ‘like a Tibetan warhorn’.
Read more: The 10 best Hans Zimmer soundtracks
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What do the words mean in the Dune soundtrack?
Much of the Dune universe is built around the fictional ‘Fremen’ language, spoken by the Fremen people who occupy the planet Arrakis – the universe’s only source of the valuable drug, called spice.
To develop the Fremen language, Villeneuve worked with legendary linguist David J. Peterson, who was also responsible for six languages featured in Game of Thrones.
Zimmer has also said that he worked with a linguist to devise the vocal chants featured in his soundtrack, but it’s unclear if the language and linguist are the same as that used in the film’s script.
Read more: The 10 best Hans Zimmer soundtracks
Who is the female singer in the Dune soundtrack?
One of the most immediately identifiable features of Zimmer’s Dune score is a gravelly-voiced vocal riff, sung by a woman.
Female voices played a large part in Zimmer’s score, as he told Vanity Fair: “The one thing that I thought was more important than anything else in the world – the human voice. The one thing that would not age, the one thing that in the future would still be valid.”
For the soundtrack’s signature riff, which Zimmer called “the cry of a banshee”, the composer called in vocalist Loire Cotler.
