Daniel Pemberton

Daniel Pemberton is an English composer whose work moves between cinema, television, video games, and experimental recordings. Born on 3 November 1977, he began writing music as a teenager and released the album “Bedroom” in 1998, using a four-track recorder and inexpensive equipment. That early do-it-yourself approach remained visible in a career marked by unusual instrumentation and an interest in electronic texture. His game music brought him broad attention. For Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet, released in 2008, he wrote much of the score and helped create its exuberant musical identity. The project earned him a BAFTA award nomination, while its soundtrack mixed his cues with licensed songs and other contributions. He later returned to game composition for LittleBigPlanet 2, which appeared in 2010. Pemberton became especially prominent in feature films after Danny Boyle hired him for Steve Jobs (2015). The score changes its sonic language across the drama’s three product-launch sections, moving from electronic sounds toward larger orchestral writing. It brought Pemberton nominations for the Golden Globe Award and the BAFTA Film Award for original score. For Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), Pemberton supplied a score that combined period pop references with original material; its soundtrack notably includes his “Escape from East Berlin.” He again worked with Ritchie on King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017), making vocal chants and rough, percussive textures central to the film’s sound. His score for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) helped define the animated film’s shifting visual worlds through turntable scratches, orchestral writing, and hip-hop-inflected rhythms. The film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, although that prize recognized the film rather than its score. Pemberton received an Academy Award nomination with singer Celeste for “Hear My Voice,” the original song from Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020). He has also scored Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World (2017), Molly’s Game (2017), Motherless Brooklyn (2019), Enola Holmes (2020), Being the Ricardos (2021), and the 2023 sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. In 2023, he composed the music for Michael Mann’s Ferrari, using a score that accompanies the film’s depiction of Enzo Ferrari during 1957. For television, Pemberton composed the score for Apple’s Slow Horses, adapted from Mick Herron’s Slough House novels. The series theme, “Strange Game,” was written by Pemberton and performed by Mick Jagger. His career therefore joins mainstream franchises with musical signatures across very different storytelling forms.