Words by Jim Ottewill

From hit Channel 4’s comedy-drama Misfits to Rob Williams’ latest series Screw, the musical talents of composer Vince Pope are very much in demand. Unsurprisingly, to date, his career has led to him creating an emotive medley of soundtracks for many of our favourite television and drama shows.  

“I’ve had to put a sign on the door of my studio at home with the word ‘Closed’ on it as a reminder to myself that I don’t need to work all the time,” Vince laughs. “But it’s very difficult to say no when the projects are so good.”  

The stream of exciting work shows little sign of abating. Over the course of the last ten years, he’s become a go-to composer, initially for advertising campaigns before moving into television and earning a BAFTA nomination and winning an RTS Award for Best Original Score on the second series of Misfits. Vince’s own artist material is also picking up accolades while he’s behind the score for My Name is Leon, a new drama due to air this March. It’s a combination of resilience and sheer determination which has got Vince to where he is today

“I’ve worked on some projects where I thought the music was brilliant but the reaction hasn’t been what I wanted,” Vince says. “It almost goes without saying that you need to combine a thick skin and persistence to succeed in this world.”

Vince’s creative journey started when he went to university to study maths. He ended up living a double life, playing jazz by night and hanging out at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, then immersing himself in the world of calculus and special relativity by day. “I always knew I was going to pursue a career in music but my parents wanted me to get a ‘sensible’ degree,” Vince explains. “I was going to study music but my dad dissuaded me. He was a musician which is why I think he thought having a fallback was a good idea.”

After he’d completed his studies, Vince continued his musical adventures, joining an indie band known as Ethereal. They enjoyed some early success, inking a deal with Blur’s Food Records but their star only shined brightly briefly before abruptly collapsing. “We fell out after a couple of years,” recalls Vince. “It was a bit Spinal Tap and the band ended up hating each other. We couldn’t be in the studio at the same time, which was a deal-breaker when we were supposed to be making music together.”

Following the band’s disintegration, Vince decided to focus on his own solo endeavours and become a self-sufficient creative. Through his networks, he met some decision-makers at advertising agencies and began exploring the opportunities afforded by this musical world, launching his own Beetroot Music commercial music business in the process. 

“I was lucky to have friends working at agencies and they managed to get my name on the pitch list as they knew I was capable of working quickly,” says Vince. “I then had someone to help me shop my music around these agencies. You had to take it in person to show them your music back then. The whole music industry sector has obviously drastically changed from the ways you promote your music to how you make it. We went from writing on an Atari to Cubase and Logic - it all moved pretty quickly.” 

At the start of the 2010s, Vince made a conscious decision to step away from adverts and seek out opportunities within the world of drama and film. His breakthrough moments included a commission to work on an episode of Wallander, a series featuring Kenneth Branagh, and then the second project he landed was Misfits. 

“There’s so much luck involved in these things, it was new and no one knew it would be as successful as it was,” says Vince of the latter. “It had such a lifespan. When you do a series and it gets recommissioned, I worked on five series in the end over a number of years. It was an amazing thing to be involved in and it really cemented my reputation in drama.” 

Initially, Tom Green, the first series creator, had already worked with a different composer prior to Vince’s involvement. However, the music hadn’t been what he was looking for, offering Vince a brilliant opportunity. “It meant they had a really good idea of what they wanted,” he says. “There was this whole superhero vibe so the score needed to have this epic, Hans Zimmer-esque feel. At the same time, it’s a dark drama and comedy too so it was great fun to work on, to flit between these different styles.”

Certain episodes followed specific plot lines offering a chance to play with an array of genres. One episode sees the protagonists heading back in time to an alternative reality where the Nazis had taken over the UK while another sees a character enter a computer game. Such variety meant no two episodes were thematically the same, an aspect of the programme enabling Vince to experiment and explore. “I never had to repeat myself and ended up composing music across so many different styles,” says Vince. “I was suited to this, having worked in advertising for 10 years where one minute you’re asked to do a punk track, then the next a classical piece. My flexible approach held me in really good stead.” 

His involvement in different series also opened up myriad opportunities for Vince, allowing him to connect with multiple different directors and ramp up his industry networks. “Each series would probably see at least two or three directors, so, over the course of five years, I met many,” he explains. “I went on to work with Owen Harris many times including on Black Mirror. It shows how when you make connections, it can lead to them returning to you to ask you to work with them again.”

Vince approaches each project with an underlying aim to create something unique in his sound palette. A willingness to innovate can often take him beyond conventional instrumentation. 

“Screw is set in a prison and I talked with Rob Williams, the creator, about including these industrial sounds,” Vince explains. “I didn’t want to overdo it but ended up buying five metal dustbins to come up with my percussive sounds. It made sense for the score to be edgy and abrasive.” 

In Wolfe, a dark comedy from Sky, the main character Professor Wolfe Kinteh is a bipolar forensic scientist. This influenced Vince in trying to come up with certain sonic motifs, whether it be around rhythm or offbeat electronics “I tried to resample the sounds of these cellos to make them distorted,” Vince says. “But whatever the way in, I’m trying to find the character of the show, whether that’s a person, place or setting and reflect that in the music. The score becomes another character and I want to feature it without it being too intrusive or overbearing.” 

Other recent projects for Vince include an album of collaborative piano tracks he’s hoping to unveil with other prominent composers and the music to My Name is Leon. This new series, based on the book by Kit de Waal, follows the story of a young mixed-race boy, Leon, who is caught in the middle of Birmingham's race riots of the eighties. 

“I saw elements that were very poignant in relation to my own childhood,” Vince explains. “You try to create something sympathetic to character or place or both and in this story, it’s the child Leon growing up and his experience and the trials and tribulations. Although the story is about the struggles of a single-parent family, the director wanted it to be uplifting which is how I felt when I read the book. When you’ve read something, and it matches with what you’ve been asked to create, it’s almost like being given completely free reign.”

The deadlines within the world of TV and film can be infamously tight. For Vince, this is just part and parcel of the job as a composer although he admits to some sleepless nights in turning workaround. “I’m not sure whether there’s more demand for content since the pandemic but it’s certainly not eased up,” he says. “It’s the sheer volume of music that can be challenging. There could be as many as 30 cues per episode, and you might have to turn around the music in 10 days. It’s really full-on.” 

Despite the pressures and volume of film and TV work, Vince is also busy with his own artist material with Mary Anne Hobbes recently playing tracks from his ‘Three Days Until Tomorrow’ EP on her BBC 6 Music show. His own music is a creative universe he’s continuing to immerse himself within. 

“In the last four or five years I’ve really started getting to grips with my own music,” he says. “I’m constantly doing it side by side with my commissioned pieces and that doesn’t jar too much. When Mary Anne Hobbs played one of my tracks, it was quite a special moment for something that was mine to be heard rather than a commission.” 

With the pace of projects not letting up, Vince is gearing up for a busy and fruitful 2022. For any aspiring composer looking to follow in his footsteps, he feels that being true to your own musical sense of self is just as important as determination. “Try and be true to yourself. Sometimes, creativity can be stifled if you’re wondering what you think you should be doing for somebody else,” he advises. “Directors like someone with a point of view. So try to maintain that sense of identity once you’re working within this. Ultimately, this is all about being creative. As a composer, this is what you are hired for.”