The ultimate chill out song? Radiohead record new music for David Attenborough's Blue Planet 2
Radiohead and Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer have collaborated on a song to be featured in a five-minute prequel video for BBC One's Blue Planet II.
Zimmer and the band have worked together on recording an orchestrally re-imagined version of Radiohead's song Bloom, which originally featured on their 2011 album The King Of Limbs. The new track, called (ocean) Bloom, will feature in the introductory video for the new series and will also see Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke re-record the vocals of the song alongside the BBC Concert Orchestra.
The popular natural history series will once again be narrated by Sir David Attenborough and will be scored by Zimmer. Zimmer, who also created the music for Planet Earth II, will also compose the theme and score for Sir David's new BBC series alongside Jacob Shea and Dave Fleming, his co-composers in music production company Bleeding Fingers.
Yorke said: "Bloom was inspired by the original Blue Planet series so it's great to be able to come full circle with the song and re-imagine 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."
Zimmer said: "Bloom appears to have been written ahead of its time as it beautifully reflects the jaw-dropping lifeforms and seascapes viewers are introduced to in Blue Planet II.
"Working with Thom, Jonny and the boys has been a wonderful diversion and it's given me an interesting peek into their musical world. They've been incredible to work with and I hope everyone likes the track."
The prequel video, spearheaded by BBC Worldwide and produced by BBC Studios' Natural History unit, will also feature exclusive footage that will not be shown when Blue Planet II airs in full later this year. The video will be simulcast globally on September 27 to coincide with the show's world premiere in London.
Blue Planet II's executive producer, James Honeyborne, added: "This collaboration between an iconic Grammy-winning band and an Oscar-winning orchestral composer is simply mouthwatering - and (ocean) Bloom doesn't disappoint.
"It's an incredibly powerful companion to the scenes we've spent years capturing. What a great curtain-raiser to the upcoming series that we just can't wait to share with everyone."
The new seven-part series will be broadcast later this year on BBC One. Blue Planet II will mark 16 years since the channel's natural history unit first set out to explore never-before-seen wildlife in the deepest and darkest realms of the world's oceans. It will see the team follow a fresh cast of aquatic animals with even more ambitious filming techniques.
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