The connection between musique concrète and Futurama
Exploring the odd connection between pioneering experimental musique concrète composer Pierre Henry and the beloved Matt Groening animated sitcom 'Futurama'.
(Credits: Far Out / 20th Century Television)
Music » Features
Mon 20 January 2025 21:30, UK
Humanity has always been fascinated with ideas of the future. From the visionary predictions of Leonardo Da Vinci to Marty McFly and his hoverboard, audiences and artists alike have found continued inspiration in predicting our future. During the 1950s, this basic idea gave way to a bold new era of musical composition, known as musique concrète, which left a lasting impact on the face of experimental music. Bizarrely, though, this inventive scene also had an impact on Matt Groening’s similarly futuristic animated show Futurama.
The post-war period in France was a time of incredible contrast. On one hand, the nation was forced to reckon with rebuilding its streets from the rubble left by years of conflict and bloodshed. On the other, the social euphoria that followed the end of the war provided inspiration to countless young artists who sought to create bold new sights and sounds for this new era of liberation. Among those artists was Pierre Henry.
Henry had been engrossed by experimental music prior to the outbreak of World War II, but it was the post-war period which saw the Parisian composer at his most prolific and profound. Incorporating noise, field recordings, and primitive electronic influences into traditional composition, the artist soon became a leading figure in the emerging landscape of musique concrète.
One of Henry’s most popular and accessible works was the 1967 composition ‘Psyché Rock’, penned alongside Michel Colombier. Blending his usual electronic noise with a basic structure akin to the psychedelic rock of the period, the resulting track was expectedly original, sounding like an unholy meeting of Jacques Dutronc and Throbbing Gristle. The song was hugely influential in the development of electronic music, but its influence certainly did not stop there.
Given Henry’s penchant for evoking the future within his music, it is no surprise that his impact continued for decades after his heyday. So much so that when Christopher Tyng was tasked with creating the theme tune for a brand-new animated sitcom set in the future, he looked to the inspiration of the musique concrète.
For the uninitiated, Futurama follows the exploits of Philip J Fry, a pizza delivery boy from 1999 who accidentally becomes cryogenically frozen, only to be reanimated in the year 2999. Living in this bizarre future of robots, aliens, and space travel, Fry joins an intergalactic delivery service, Planet Express. For such an out-there animated show, the creators required an equally futuristic theme tune. Enter Christopher Tyng.
Tyng took heavy inspiration from ‘Psyché Rock’ while composing the theme for Futurama. In fact, the final theme is almost entirely based on Henry’s 1967 composition, albeit updated to suit the tastes of 1990s audiences. Sampling the tubular bells that Henry had recorded all those years ago, Tyng blended the work of the musique concrète with samples of the soul track ‘Amen Brother’ by The Winstons and ‘Rapper’s Delight’ by the Sugarhill Gang – an unlikely trio, if ever there was one.
It’s unclear what, if anything, Henry thought of the inspiration he provided for the Futurama theme. Either way, the Futurama theme became one of the most recognisable and beloved theme tunes of the 2000s. The fact that his work remained as captivating and futuristic in 1999 as it had been back in 1967 is testament to the composer’s endlessly inventive body of work, which laid the groundwork for virtually all future experimental and electronic music, in addition to inspiring a pretty captivating television theme.
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