From local productions to Hollywood blockbusters: The best Lankan musician you’ve never heard of!

Text and Pix by Madushka Balasuriya 

When you think of musicians, the mind immediately wanders to a template. Pop Star, Rock Star; shades perennially rested over their eyes, fedoras on their heads, torn jeans that cost more than pairs fully intact, the whirring of camera clicks blurring into a cacophony of white noise. What the mind does not conjure up is a former sales rep in a button-down maroon shirt and grey trousers. 

But nevertheless that is precisely where we are as I sit across Hirushan Maddumaarachchi, probably the best Sri Lankan musician you’ve never heard of – though all of us have very likely heard his music. See Hirushan isn’t a musician in the traditional sense, he’s a composer, and most notably the first from Sri Lanka to have music featured in promotional campaigns for Hollywood blockbusters. Yes, that Hollywood.

As of writing, ‘Hiru’ (as his friends call him) has seen his work grace the promotional material for blockbusters such as ‘Captain Marvel,’ ‘The Nutcracker,’ ‘Hobbs and Shaw,’ ‘Bumblebee’ and ‘Shaft,’ as well as TV shows ‘Blue Bloods’ and ‘NCIS’ – and all at the still youthful age of 28. 

To understand just how impressive this feat is, you need to first understand the work itself. When it comes to film and television, there’s arguably no facet of the production process more pivotal than sound design. From subtle narrative cues to all-out emotion wrangling crescendos, it is the foremost factor in hooking the viewer. 

Just think of watching a horror movie, the protagonist walking through an empty house...but your TV’s on mute. Or the ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ scene where Thor returns to fight Thanos, lightning streaming out of his every orifice...without music. You get the picture; without sound tantalising your auditory senses, prepping you the viewer for what’s to come – most of the time, without you even realising it – a lot of what we love in TV and cinema tends to fall flat.

Anyone who is willing to get into this business needs to understand the consequences. Expect to be broke for years. The entire process of landing my first movie placement took me roughly three years

“When I play a video game or watch a movie, I watch it very differently,” Hiru tells Daily FT. “You start paying attention to how the composer subtly brought in certain themes before the theme actually became a theme. For example when you watch ‘The Matrix,’ there’s a scene at the start of the movie where Trinity stops Neo from leaving. You actually start hearing hints of their ‘love theme’ at that point. It’s foreshadowing.”

But while Hiru is yet to be featured on a full-length feature film, his work for trailers is without a doubt a major stepping stone towards achieving that dream.

“I think any composer’s dream would be to work on a triple A titled game or a blockbuster movie. Either one of those would be amazing for me,” he says. “I knew about trailer music and stuff but I never thought that I’d actually get into it. But since the music plays a similar role [to that which is used in movies] – telling a story in a very short timeframe, and getting people excited for what’s coming – it kind of just stumbled on to my radar.”

In that sense this type of music engineering is very different to the work that goes into, say, creating a pop song. The first clear differentiator is in the hooks – riffs or passages of music that appear throughout the song repeatedly to catch the ear of the listener; in trailer music, Hiru explains, there are hooks but not in the traditional sense.

“The hooks are very unconventional. The tune of a hook in pop song is melodic, but in trailer music it could just be a sound. If you watch some trailers now, it’s not even music sometimes. It’s just arranged sounds that work in certain ways so that it gives a certain emotion to the people watching.”

“We also need to think like an editor when we make tracks, leaving him room so that he can chop it easily and take parts of a track. There’s sound design, where you slam a door, take that noise, and then manipulate it into something, and create something unique out of it. Not just playing a guitar or piano anymore, with technology everything evolves. So this industry also keeps moving forward.”

It’s actually getting harder. Because as an artist what happens is that you try and top your previous work, but everyone else is also moving forward with you. Every time you put up a track you suddenly realise that that other person’s track is much better than yours. And then he has a higher chance, or his output of tracks is much more than mine. So it’s a high risk job, where you don’t know whether you’ll get the return or not. But it’s a risk I am willing to take because I love what I do

A lifelong journey

Ever since he was a kid Hiru had always possessed an affinity for music. With a knack for picking up musical instruments and a family that was only ever a drink or two away from breaking out into song, there was always the feeling that his was leading him towards a musical future – even if at times it was something he had never consciously considered of pursuing as a career.

“I got into music because of ‘Metal Gear Solid’. We [my cousins and I] played the hell out of that game. And I remember playing ‘Metal Gear 2,’ and seeing the first cut scene of the game, it was just incredible, and then when the credits started rolling, it said music by Harry Gregson Williams. He’s a Hollywood composer. At that point I thought, how amazing it would be if I could do that.

“Luckily for me my cousin was also into a lot of music stuff. He was making loops and beats and stuff with his neighbour, using a software on their computer. Without his permission I went and messed around with the software and figured out how to do it. I broke it the first time, at which point my cousin shouted at me saying: ‘if you don’t know how something works, don’t play around with it!’

“I was quite small, but from that point onwards I just started messing around with the software in my spare time. But because we didn’t have much internet and stuff at that time it was very hard to get the sound tracks to listen to. Eventually I started listening to metal because of my other cousin, and once internet came into play I was able to access more material out there. So then I started checking out various soundtracks for games and movies and stuff.”

But even with such strong leanings towards music, it really wasn’t until 2017 that he began making trailer music professionally. Prior to that he had had stints at John Keells and Softlogic as a sales and marketing representative, with music simply a hobby that saw him do occasional work with local theatre productions. 

“It was my cousin’s husband who got me my first gig. He saw my music and he was like: ‘dude, we’re doing something and we’re actually looking for someone to do original music.’ This ended up being for a local production of ‘And Then There Were None’ by Cold Theatre Seven. That was my first ever public gig, where my music was heard by people other than family members.

“At the start it was very scary because I had never done anything like that. Previously if I had made a mistake when I’m doing stuff just for me no one really cares, but with my music about to be heard with stuff happening on stage, it had to have some impact. So that scared me. And I had never paid attention to production stuff before – I had always just made random tunes just for fun – but now I had to actually start looking into that as well.

“I was lucky enough to do a few more stuff with them. ‘Mousetrap’ was the second one, then there was ‘12 Angry Men’, then there was another theatre company which did a musical, ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’. On top of that I had a few other theatre gigs as well in that time. Everything else was just for myself.”

It was however the work Hiru did just for his own enjoyment which would see the wheels for his eventual break be set in motion. It all started with him creating his own theme music for ‘Justice League’. These sort of fan creations are common place on the internet, but the calibre of Hiru’s work saw him featured on a major comic and movie website.

“The movie was supposed to release that year and just in anticipation for that I made something, and then I put it on YouTube. It probably took about two weeks to make, but it was noticed by a major fan site and it went viral. 

“That was actually a turning point on a personal level, because it was then that I started to feel that I started to feel like I truly belonged in the field, and some of peers also began to take notice of my work.

“And then I would say in late 2017 was properly the start, where I got my first set of tracks into an album in a trailer label, one that focuses on Hollywood marketing, movies, video games etc.”

I got into music because of ‘Metal Gear Solid’. We [my cousins and I] played the hell out of that game. And I remember playing ‘Metal Gear 2,’ and seeing the first cut scene of the game, it was just incredible, and then when the credits started rolling, it said music by Harry Gregson Williams. He’s a Hollywood composer. At that point I thought, how amazing it would be if I could do that

Securing his big break

That year-and-a-half between leaving his sales and marketing gigs and finding work producing trailer music was one of the hardest periods of Hiru’s life. 

“I was working in two different companies, and then in 2016 I left my job and kind of lost my way, not knowing what to do,” he recalls.

But despite this period of uncertainty, behind the scenes he was grinding hard to make his dreams come true. Going on online forums Hiru began to make friends with those in the community, eventually being introduced to people who were in the business of making trailer music.

His willingness and ability to utilise social media to network and make friends, alongside his naturally sincere and friendly demeanour, meant that in what was likely the toughest period of his life he had built up a support system to help guide him - something that in hindsight was quite crucial as many in his family struggled to understand what exactly it was that he was doing.

“Until I actually got my first placement no one really knew what I was doing. And there was a lot of negativity that came with that – you need to accept that it’s going to happen, and then just drown it out and focus on what you wanna do.

“That said, I’m extremely grateful for family members and a handful of friends who stood by me, even if they did not completely understand what I was doing. There were also communities, groups and forums, where I just joined and mingled and got to know some people. By that time I had a few people who I spoke with closely, and they were the people who really explained the process to me. They told me how I couldn’t just write music for anyone, that if they liked it they would take it but if not I would simply have to keep writing, to keep trying to basically get myself into the business.

“So based on some of my friends’ recommendations, I emailed some of these publishers. And the current publisher that I worked with were guys who actually got back to me and said they would like to include my work in one of their albums.”

Like winning the lottery 

Finding his way onto an album filled with trailer music however was just the beginning, explains Hiru. In order for his work to be used in a trailer it first needed to be featured in an album, alongside the works of several other budding composers from around the world. An editor, who is auditioning for the opportunity to make a movie trailer, then had to pick his work from the selection of albums. 

Assuming that the editor utilises Hiru’s music in his trailer, this is still not a guarantee of the work actually appearing in the final product/trailer; that honour only arises once the editor’s final trailer is picked by a movie studio from a selection of other trailers.

“It’s tough, it’s really tough. The thing is it’s not just about you having the best track that you have, but it’s also about the fact that the editor who does the trailer, or cuts whatever trailer, whether it’s a TV spot or a theatrical trailer, he or she needs to win that pitch as well. 

“There are so many trailer houses working at the moment. There’s so much of music going in. So out of that, having my music and that person’s edited video being chosen for that campaign is a huge deal. It’s kind of like winning the lottery.”

Indeed, Hiru tells me of the strain and stress of awaiting news of a placement, sometimes going months on end without one. He relates stories of friends he has, some as far away as South America, who churn out track after track to no avail.

“Anyone who is willing to get into this business needs to understand the consequences. Expect to be broke for years. The entire process of landing my first movie placement took me roughly three years.”

Even now, out of some 60 tracks only five have seen Hiru secure a placement; after securing a place in the trailer for ‘Captain Marvel,’ Hiru says he didn’t have another gig for another six months. As such he works closely with his publisher to ensure he’s always raising the bar on his work.

“I work closely with my publisher, so it’s not like me one day waking up doing a track and then in another month’s time doing another track and sending. It’s literally that we’re writing every week, every day. I might not be writing as much as I should, because there are other people who churn out tracks like crazy. But that’s obviously somewhere where I want to be, because I’m also just learning, so obviously my output is less than some others.”

Without any formal music background or education, Hiru is almost completely self-taught. Nearly everything he has learned about making trailer music has been on-the-job, while the friends he’s made along the way have helped him improve immeasurably.

Until I actually got my first placement no one really knew what I was doing. And there was a lot of negativity that came with that – you need to accept that it’s going to happen, and then just drown it out and focus on what you wanna do

“A lot of the stuff I learned while I was working. Within a very short period I had to kind of catch up because everyone else who was doing it were already on their A game.

“There are certain courses out there now to learn this stuff, but when I started out, none of this stuff existed. Over the years I’ve made a lot of connections and those people have become friends over time. They’ve helped me a lot throughout. Because I initially went in wanting to do epic orchestral music, but now I do much more. In order to survive in this industry you have to be flexible in a way. You can focus on one particular aspect of music but that limits your options.”

With the industry constantly evolving, Hiru knows the competition for placements is only getting tougher, but having already come this far in a job that he could have only dreamed of a few years ago, he knows he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It’s actually getting harder. Because as an artist what happens is that you try and top your previous work, but everyone else is also moving forward with you. Every time you put up a track you suddenly realise that that other person’s track is much better than yours. And then he has a higher chance, or his output of tracks is much more than mine. So it’s a high risk job, where you don’t know whether you’ll get the return or not. But it’s a risk I am willing to take because I love what I do.”