There's a classic 1960s story about how The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson optimised his home songwriting environment, the better to capture the magical world of Californian surf culture: he plonked his piano in eight lorryloads of sand. Might Hans Zimmer, the 21st century’s greatest evoker of mythic sandscapes, most recently for Dune: Part Two, employ a similar trick?
'It's funny you should mention that,' says the composer, who won an Academy Award in 2021 for his soundtrack to Dune: Part One, film director Denis Villeneuve’s debut installment of Frank Herbert's story about what Zimmer calls 'the most unloved planet' of Arrakis. 'The only time I took sand home and had it in a glass jar next to me was when I was working on Dunkirk,' says the 66-year-old German, referring to the 2017 Second World War drama directed by Christopher Nolan.
