When images from The Substance inevitably dawn upon you in horrific, delirious flashbacks, they’ll come with a sound: a synthetic whirl that revs up to just stop itself in reverb-ey silence.
It’s the sonic symbol of the titular substance, a medical miracle used in the film by Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a longtime TV trainer gasping for relevancy, who uses the neon hued serum to transform into a younger, more “beautiful” double named Sue (Margaret Qualley). Every time Sparkle gives herself the magical solution, that electronic whirl plays, often beckoning in the film’s theme — a lurid mix of dark techno exaltation and scraping-the-walls agony.
The film’s memorable score is the work of Benjamin Stefanski, a producer and composer who also releases music as Raffertie. To strike the film’s tense balance, Stefanski deployed a palette of soft ambient synths, grinding, metallic squeals and soft textured strings which harken back to a more classic Hollywood affair. He was looking to lean into the film’s unease, and to sonically represent Sparkle and Sue’s double-existence.
“Some of my early conversations [with Coralie Fargeat, the film’s director and writer,] were around the duality of these two characters,” Stefanski tells PAPER. “We wanted to have something which represents something a little bit more organic for Elisabeth, and perhaps something a little bit more synthetic or hyperreal for Sue.” That sonic concoction is our guide for a story that starts in a space of bright, poppy technicolor and ends in a ghastly, absurd affair filled with screams and bodily fluids.
Stefanski’s score has broken through, making the rare leap from the cinema to dance floors. Following the film’s buzzy release, numerous viral TikToks came out requesting the score be played in clubs. Half-meme, half-demand, the posts were heeded, and soon after Brooklyn’s own Market Hotel hosted a party inspired by the film and its music, drag artists around the world began using it for their own absurd body horror numbers, and the internet began to overflow with edits using the film’s music, grafting its themes of beauty and jealousy onto imagined cross generational “rivals” from throughout pop culture.
All of this was a “pleasant surprise,” Stefanski tells PAPER — especially given the fact that he had just a few months to c create the now-zeitgeist-ey music. “I got involved in January [2024], and [the film’s team] wanted to enter it for the Cannes Film Festival in May. [Coralie Fargeat], put a lot of trust in me,” he shares. Indeed, trust and craft came together, and though his sounds may haunt our dreams, we’re thankful for the thought-provoking nightmare.
PAPER caught up with Stefanski in the wake of The Substance-mania to chat about the process behind the music, body horror, and how his work on the film merged with the creation of his own latest double-single release: the propulsive, deliciously grim “Can’t Stop” and “Atlas.
It’s rare for a film score to break through and be played in clubs. Were you thinking about the music existing outside of the film while you were making it?
Not really. I got a request to send in a reel for the film in January of this year. Coralie responded really strongly to five or six tracks on that reel, and that became part of the film’s musical language. She knew that she wanted an electronic score, or at least something which featured electronics quite heavily. And then some of our early conversations were around the duality of these two characters. We wanted to have something which represents something a little bit more organic for Elisabeth, and perhaps something a little bit more synthetic or hyperreal for Sue. But there was never an explicit conversation about it stylistically.
Coralie put a lot of trust in me to respond to the film as I saw it. She gave me quite a lot of space, despite the fact that there was a small amount of time. I got involved in January, and they wanted to enter it for the Cannes Film Festival in May. So she put a lot of trust in me to go away for a couple of weeks, make some ideas and do what I thought was best based on a few pointers.
So to your original question: I don’t think there was ever really a conversation about how the music would be perceived outside of the film. But certainly with the title track, “The Substance” — it felt very appropriate to have this club, techno-leaning piece of music, which incorporated the “The Substance” sound which we hear throughout the film. And we needed this sensual, slightly dark underpinning for the character of Sue. That club-leaning techno track worked quite well for that character.
Did you explore other genres with Coralie throughout the process? Or did you immediately know that techno would be part of the language of the film?
I have a thing that I do. That’s not to say that I approach every film score in the same way, but I think people come to me because I am good at working with electronics. And there’s an element of my music which I think crosses over between sound design and music. One of the things which I’m most pleased about with the film is how the sound design and the music fit so well together. There are these blurred lines between the two. People have asked me, “Is that moment from the sound design department? Or is that the score?” I like the interplay between those things.
The film was one of the more visceral cinematic experiences I’ve had in recent year; the images have stuck with me long after seeing the film. Did you have a relationship to body horror, or this particular genre, prior to working on the film?
Not especially. I feel very excited watching horror films. It feels like a safe space to explore that kind of excitement. But I’ve never worked on anything quite like it before. The film does use body horror and I suppose that does make it a “body horror film.” But it uses horror tropes to talk about this inner voice and the horrible things that we say to ourselves. It’s using horror tropes to see that voice in full effect, rather than it just being this abstract internal dialogue.
As the person making the score, you’re coming into the filmmaking towards the end, where all the images are done. So you’re sitting with these grotesque, very emotionally affecting images. What was the emotional experience like sitting with this footage for hours on end?
You have to allow it to affect you to an extent, because part of your role is to express the emotional content of the film, or at least emphasize it in some way. But The Substance becomes quite surreal and almost ridiculous at the end: the amount of blood that’s used is not realistic in any sense. That’s part of what’s brilliant about it. You do become a little bit desensitized to it, but at the same time I think The Substance is never trying to be realistic, so you can tap into what it’s trying to say, rather than just sort of being put off or horrified by it.
I read that Margaret Qualley was listening to Charli xcx to get in the mode of Sue. A lot of pop stars have really gravitated towards the film (Slayyyter was posting about it, for example). Was pop music on your mind on any level, given that it had this resonance with the genre after the fact?
It’s been really interesting to see the cross pollination between Brat and The Substance. There’s the color of the Brat record which is similar to [The Substance] “activator,” for example. As far as I’m aware, that was completely unintentional. But it’s fascinating. With my own music, I’ve danced around the pop sphere in some ways. I’ve never had a pop single, but some elements of what I’ve done have touched on things that are going on now [in pop]. But it’s just a coincidence, though, with how it’s aligned. I didn’t know that about Margaret listening to Charli xcx to get in the mood for the role, though, so maybe some of that inadvertently filtered through.
I know you’ve spoken in the past about how your film scoring work and your own personal artistic work are distinct from one another. Tell me about your last two-track release, “Can’t Stop” and “Atlas. It feels like these are very much in conversation with The Substance.
I looked at those two worlds as very distinct things for a long time. The more that I’ve worked on film scores, the more that I get a better result by leaning into what comes naturally to me. Obviously there are slightly different technical considerations — whether your music has to fit with dialogue, for instance — but I think just purely in an artistic sense, there’s no reason the two can’t coexist and come from a similar place. Now, I’m a lot more comfortable with that than I ever was in the past. I felt like there had to be these distinct worlds, but not so much these days.
Did The Substance facilitate that in particular?
Yes, I suppose so. Coralie is a very inspiring person to work with. She has quite an uncompromising attitude towards her vision. Some of that relies on having a really good idea, and she had an amazing idea with The Substance. But then, once you have that good idea, it’s really about pushing it as far as it can go and not compromising on what you want to say. So from that point of view, I’ve come out of The Substance, feeling a renewed confidence by just trying to follow Coralie’s example by sticking to what you believe in artistically.
Photography: Josh Shinner
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