Grammy award winning Scottish composer Lorne Balfe on writing the soundtrack to Matthew Vaughn film Argylle

Balfe, originally from Inverness, recorded the disco-influenced score with The Royal Scottish National Orchestra

Lorne Balfe portrat Pic: Marcus Maschwitz

Dancing in cinemas is generally frowned upon.

However, you could be forgiven a low-key seated boogie, while watching filmmaker Matthew Vaughn’s new comedy spy thriller, Argylle, which stars Bryce Dallas Howard, Bryan Cranston, Sam Rockwell and a cat star, Chip (playing Alfie).

Its infectious disco-influenced soundtrack was created by Inverness-born and Grammy-award-winning composer and record producer, Lorne Balfe, 47, who has a prolific career spanning more than a hundred movies.

Argylle soundtrack artwork

His portfolio includes scores for Mission: Impossible, Top Gun: Maverick – which bagged him a 2023 Grammy for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media - Black Widow and Bad Boys for Life, the music for television shows Life On Our Planet and The Crown, as well as video game soundtracks for Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty. The latest project resulted in 28 tracks and involved working with the likes of Nile Rodgers, Gary Barlow, Boy George and Ariana DeBose. It was quite the long-term commitment.

“It’s been three and a half years since we started on it, so it kind of gets sad when you finish something, because that's the end of the journey,” says London-based Balfe, who studied at Edinburgh’s Fettes College after getting a music scholarship. “You live and breathe something. Your colleagues become friends, then your creation goes off to the real world. It’s very strange”.

Back in 2020, Balfe had been given a brief, to create a ‘feel good’ soundtrack for the film.

“You start off with a script, mood boards and a lot of talking,” says Balfe. “Sometimes the film is finished and you work from that and other times it starts with a blank canvas. So it's all very different, but the main thing is you're starting to write. You try to figure out where music is needed. Do the characters need extra emotion? Do we need to help the audience understand? Is there a plot twist or do we need them to feel more invested in the action? That's really the process”.

Lorne Balfe headshot Pic: Marcus Maschwitz

Also, Vaughn, who was responsible for Kick-Ass and the Kingsman franchise, is a big disco fan, and wanted to incorporate that genre into the music.

This was a new influence for Balfe, as it isn’t necessarily his go-to sound.

“I'm more a person of the Eighties, so my stable of music is the likes of Go West and Art of Noise. Matthew had a clear vision about the concept of disco and what it brings. It always makes you smile and want to dance,” says Balfe. “It really is that feeling of escapism and that's why we ended up writing the song Electric Energy, which is based off the main theme of the film music that I’d written. Then it turned into working with Stuart Price, who’s worked with Madonna, amongst many others, as well as Gary Barlow, and Boy George performed on it but he wrote on it also”.

For Balfe, the job involved a lot of collaboration and developing a new-ish talent.

Lorne Balfe in the studio conducting

“The songwriting world is a new concept to me,” he says. “Apart from in the school band, where songwriting wasn't really at the forefront, but it was attempted, this is a new path. I’d written one song before and it was a Michael Buble Christmas song, and that was it. It’s a different skill set”.

Aside from Buble’s track, The Christmas Sweater, Balfe’s real bread and butter work is instrumental and orchestral. He stayed true to his Scottish roots by recording and conducting Argylle’s score in Glasgow, with The Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

“They’re one of the best in the world,” Balfe says. “More importantly, they’ve got a great recording studio facility. They're really on the map for Hollywood now. Quite a few films have been done there. There are amazing musicians, great facilities and, wherever possible, I want to try to help get the next generation of musicians or composers working on big movies, because there's no reason for them not to”.

When the orchestra were recording the track, they were unaware that elements of the melody were referencing The Beatles’ then unreleased and final track, Now and Then, which sits at the heart of the score. It’s a reprise that’s integral to the film’s story, as a trigger for the protagonist Elly Conway’s memories.

"We were working with the song for over a year and a half, but we had to keep it very secret, so the musicians didn’t know what they were actually playing,” says Balfe. “It was an honour to work with it. You could just have played on a banjo and it would still be beautiful. So having a full orchestra and choir performing it makes for a very emotional moment in the film”.

As well as feline sounds, courtesy of amateur vocalist, Chip, which were necessary in tracks including Furocious and The Spy Who Scratched Me, Balfe also included a few subtle Celtic references in the music. These mainly appear in the percussion and are part of what he described as his ‘voice’.

“I can't remove my DNA. Celtic music is something that’s in your roots. So I always find myself adding traits of Scottish music, even if it's not on Scottish instruments. I think it's part of who we are,” he says. “When you get up to Murrayfield, or hear the pipes playing, there’s an emotional connection from your youth and it becomes part of what you end up creating”.

Now that Argylle is a wrap, Balfe is moving onto new projects, which include the release of the fourth installment to the Bad Boys series, which he wrote the music for, and conducting Top Gun: Maverick in Concert with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

He is always in demand, but what would be the dream appointment?

“My love of cinema is very Eighties and Nineties,” he says. “The Goonies, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, or Back to the Future are favourites. That time of moviemaking was very special, with creative people wanting to experiment and try new things. If they were to do remakes, my hands would be in the air”.

Argylle is in cinemas now and the soundtrack album is available to download

For more information, see www.lornebalfe.com