Listen: Radiohead and Hans Zimmer reimagine ‘Bloom’ for Blue Planet II

Radiohead, one of the world’s most acclaimed rock bands, and Hans Zimmer, one of the planet’s most successful movie and TV composers, are joining forces to produce an exclusive track for the forthcoming BBC natural history landmark Blue Planet II.

The piece will be featured in a five-minute prequel, which will be released globally by BBC Worldwide at midday (BST) on September 27th. Inspired by the sounds and musical palette of Blue Planet II, Radiohead and Hans Zimmer are recording an orchestrally reimagined version of the Radiohead song Bloom, from their 2011 album The King of Limbs, at London’s iconic AIR studios with the BBC Concert Orchestra. The collaboration, which will also see Radiohead’s Thom Yorke rerecord the vocals, is being produced by Russell Emanuel of Bleeding Fingers Music, the company which also crafted the BAFTA & Emmy-nominated score to BBC’s Planet Earth II.

Here is the BBC’s Blue Planet II prequel accompanied by the new track (ocean) bloom: a collaboration between @Radiohead & @HansZimmer pic.twitter.com/VsazdZU61X

— Radiohead (@radiohead) September 27, 2017

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This world-exclusive introduction to the show, which is narrated by series presenter Sir David Attenborough, also features an array of some of the most awe-inspiring shots and highlights from the new series, as well as several exclusive scenes that will not feature in any of the seven episodes which are set for UK broadcast on BBC One later this year. Blue Planet II will be scored by Hans Zimmer, Jacob Shea and Dave Fleming for Bleeding Fingers Music.

Thom Yorke of Radiohead commented on the project: “Bloom was inspired by the original Blue Planet series so it’s great to be able to come full circle with the song and reimagine it for this incredible landmark’s sequel. Hans is a prodigious composer who effortlessly straddles several musical genres so it was liberating for us all to work with such a talent and see how he wove the sound of the series’ and Bloom together.”

Blue Planet II will take viewers on a revelatory and magical journey into the greatest, yet least known part of our planet – our oceans. The seas are by turn tempestuous and serene, exquisitely beautiful and bleakly forbidding, and are the lifeblood of the planet: driving our weather, regulating our climate and ultimately supporting all life on Earth. In recent years, our knowledge of what goes on beneath the waves has been transformed. By using cutting-edge breakthroughs in science and technology to explore this final frontier, Blue Planet II will reveal the astonishing characters, otherworldly places and extraordinary new animal behaviours.  Warm and compelling stories about marine habitats and their characterful inhabitants will build people’s emotional relationship with our oceans and bring a new perspective to this little-known world.

Broadcast in 2001, multi-award winning The Blue Planet was the BBC Studios Natural History Unit’s unprecedented look at the world’s oceans, the scale and breadth of which had never been seen before. Twenty years on, the Blue Planet II team have spent four years mounting 125 expeditions, visited 39 countries, and filmed off every continent and across every ocean.

Blue Planet II, a 7×60’ will air in the near future on the BBC Earth channel in Asia. In Asia, BBC Earth channel is available in Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, The Philippines and Vietnam. In the Philippines, BBC Earth is available on Cignal ch 245.

Blue Planet II is made by BBC Studios’ Natural History Unit, co-produced with BBC America, WDR and France Télévisions in partnership with The Open University. It is Executive Produced by James Honeyborne and Series Produced by Mark Brownlow, and was commissioned by Charlotte Moore, Director of BBC Content and Tom McDonald, Head of Commissioning, Natural History and Specialist Factual.