At the age of 16 Daniel released an album of avant-garde electronic music recorded in his bedroom, appropriately titled Bedroom, on the cult ambient label Fax. This album not only got the attention of Karl Heinz Stockhausen, who even reviewed it for BBC Radio 3, but also of Paul Wilmshurst, an upcoming new director, who asked him to score his next TV show. Daniel obliged - fitting the recording around his homework - and has never looked back. Since then he has recorded the scores to over 250 TV shows, adverts, videogames, fashion shows, art installations and movies and is one of the best known names in modern British television music.
His credits include everything from cult comedy series (Peep Show, Suburban Shootout) to mainstream reality shows (Hells Kitchen, The Edwardian Country House, Bad Lads Army); acclaimed dramas such as Occupation, Desperate Romantics, Forgiven and The Yellow House to BAFTA and Emmy award winning documentaries (Hiroshima, George Orwell - A Life In Pictures); top rated lifestyle programmes (Great British Menu) to big budget family adventures (Prehistoric Park); videogames like Little Big Planet to art installations at The Louvre and the V&A catwalk shows for fashion designers such as Vivienne Westwood, Erdem and Boudicca to music for feature films suck as Nick Broomfield's Battle For Haditha and Billy Zane's Big Kiss.
His ability to jump genres effortlessly yet still bring a unique and recognizable sound to every project saw him named as 'one of the hottest people working in television today' by Broadcast magazine, who praised him as 'a composer prepared to take risks'. TVPOPMUZIK, a compilation album of his TV work released in 2007, was acclaimed not only by the press (with quotes from papers such as The Guardian proclaiming "A British Danny Elfman" and "The composing cross breed of John Barry and DJ Shadow") but also by artists as diverse as David Arnold and the lead singer of The Guillemots. The influential music critic Paul Morley wrote that it contained: "Music that is of no particular genre, but which refers, parodies, exploits, twists, mistranslates numerous other genres, and which exhibits no consistent style, but which represents a certain way of making music that is all at once serious, ironic, playful, self-deprecating and strangely skilful. Sometimes such music can actually exist right in the centre of the mainstream as a palpable surreal object, something that seems to turn the inane and the obvious into a kind of dream."
The multi BAFTA-nominated composer is at home writing a score for a ruler, turntable and an elastic band as he is a full orchestra with choir and regularly changes writing styles to keep his sound fresh. Other interesting things he has done include writing a book on British club culture (Devil's Dandruff Guide To Nightlife), being one of the first backers of a controversial opera (Jerry Springer: The Opera) and a co-founder of cult London fanzine Shoreditch Twat.
MOVIESCORE MEDIA ALBUMS BY DANIEL PEMBERTON:
