Daniel Licht, the composer of the series Dexter, has died

Cinema 15 August, 2017

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His name won’t tell you, probably not much but still, if you’ve watched television in recent years, you’ve probably heard his music without knowing it. Daniel Licht is dead and we are sad.

When we speak of the great composers still in business, it’s always pretty much the same names that come back : John Williams, Hans Zimmer or Joe Hisaishi… yet there are other artists, the more discrete but just as interesting and that deserve the spotlight. And Daniel Licht was undoubtedly part of it.

The composer just has unfortunately left us at the age of 60 died of cancer, last August 2 and he leaves behind him a work as rich as experimental. Very early, he enrolled in the tradition of Christopher Young or Eliott Goldenthal composing the soundtracks for several horror films including The skin and bones, children of the corn 2 and 3 , as well asHellraiser : Bloodline. Affirming from the start a style to him, just as much innovative as melancholic, it is with the series Dexter that he will find a small dedication in adding to the special ambience of the adventures of the serial killer, its chants, which did not hesitate to go to the extreme as Licht, by his own admission, used knives and surgical instruments, to really connect us émtionnellement to his hero in the hope that we feel each of his murders.

Result is a soundtrack terribly atypical and effective as they like to listen to it again today. But this was not, however, the greatest challenge that confronted Daniel Licht. In 2011, he composed the original soundtrack of the game and Mute Hill : Downpour and the issue is a result because it must pick up where the legendary composer Akira Yamaoka left the franchise, after having defined the atmosphere and the music. A bet more than successful because, rather than fall into the mimicry, Licht will move away from the riffs, wild Yamaoka to explore a musical universe that was wet and ambient very close to his style on Dexter and that brings a real added value to this game wobbly but nowhere near as catastrophic as they like to sometimes say.

Thus the work of Daniel Licht, a constant research of mood and atmosphere that stick to the most ready of our emotions, not seeking so much the technical virtuosity, but the connection with the heart, and discretion. It is thus all the more sad that he died today…