Andor sound and music thoughts, spoilers
I finally begrudgingly watched Andor and to my chagrin/surprise it was really good like everyone said! That's not what this post is about though.
I thought there was some stellar sound design work in Andor, especially the prison factory stuff, all those percussive rhythmic industrial sounds. I loved what they did with the scene where Bix is about to hear the Worst Sound in the Universe, and you just hear her breathing as if you were in her head, and then that scene cuts immediately to the grinding of machinery in the prison factory room -- a great audio match cut.
[Side note, was very relieved that Bix survived the season, her storyline was one of the hardest to take, watching a vital and active character get reduced to a shell, at times it felt like downright Whedonesque levels of sadism from the writers]
I am more mixed on the music. Things I loved: The way the theme was rewritten for every intro, really set the mood and sometimes even foreshadowed stuff in the episode -- like we get the first unambiguously heroic version of the theme in the prison break episode, and the hint of the funeral marching band brass in the final episode -- that stuff was great. I also really liked how each world had its own sound palette, most obviously with the club beats in the Niamos music. Nicholas Britell is really good at this kind of thing, creating a distinct sonic atmosphere in just a few seconds.
Things I did not like: the theme itself, or lack thereof! I got really tired of hearing those five notes over and over again. It would be okay if it was just a leitmotif for Andor himself but they used it all over the place. I lost track of all the times it showed up but when I first noticed it in a random Luthen scene I was like ??? I had a similar reaction to the music in The Mandalorian, which I thought had a GREAT theme, but they really ran it into the ground by using it all over the place, not saving it for big or important moments, and not really having any other distinctive themes.
I know that this is mostly just a hallmark of modern film/tv music, a combination of the changing tastes of directors/audiences and the time crunch of having to spit out a bunch of music really quickly, and I'm old and getoffmylawny for complaining about it. But would it kill them to do, like, a thematic variation once in a while that's not just a reskinning with different instruments? A reharmonization? God forbid, a B section?
It's really tempting to blame Hans Zimmer again, whose craft seems to mostly rely on "here's this cool/weird instrument I found," and I guess that is easier to sell to an audience or a director than "check out this cool chord substitution I used in measure 17."
I guess what I find kinda sad is that the music for Andor is getting a lot of raves, and deservedly so, because it's way better than most stuff in this arena and there are some great standout moments, but what if our standards were higher?
LATER EDIT: in retrospect the Luthen scene where you hear the Andor theme is when he's headed to Ferrix so maybe it's meant to be that he's thinking about Andor or something? The problem with this is that Luthen doesn't have a theme. WHY DOESN'T LUTHEN HAVE A THEME. He's such a fascinating, complicated character, just imagine what you could do with that! Imagine if, instead of a brief reference to a motive we've heard millions of times before, for the first time we heard Andor's theme in counterpoint with Luthen's theme as their paths were set to collide? Wouldn't that be cool?!?!
Oh well. I think I'd be less annoyed if Star Wars wasn't known for having big recognizable character themes. It's not the norm now, but when John Williams does a Star Wars thing he still does them. And it seems like such a cool opportunity for a composer, to put your sonic stamp on something so that your theme becomes practically synonymous with the character for years, maybe decades! Why doesn't anyone take advantage of that???
