Hocus Pocus 2 (soundtrack)
Hocus Pocus 2 is the soundtrack album to the 2022 fantasy comedy film Hocus Pocus 2; a sequel to the 1993 film Hocus Pocus. John Debney, who scored for the first film, returned for the sequel in October 2021. The album consisted of 28 tracks: two original songs, seven adapted songs and Debney's score containing the remainder of it. It was digitally released by Walt Disney Records on September 30, 2022, and was followed by a physical release on November 11.
Production
John Debney recalled on scoring Hocus Pocus 2, as a wonderful and emotional experience, and further said "It was quite a wonderful experience It was rather emotional. How often does a composer get to rework material that they wrote so many years ago, to try to make it fresh, and pay respect to its lineage". He archived the original sketches of the score he recorded for Hocus Pocus, and re-recorded them along with the fresh themes he composed for the sequel. He felt it as an interesting education, to replay original cues and worked well with the film, and further Debney said "I've also grown as a composer in different ways. The new material, the new themes for this film, they're for a more contemporary audience that likes darker sounds. It’s the encapsulation of new material, the old material, and then the blending of the two, and it worked out really well."Debney opined that creating darker sounds for the film was akin to the composition for The Sorcerer's Apprentice, that had a magical witchcraft score" from the classical world. While the score for the first film had female choir, he opted for using a solo female vocals, to give a "more personal, almost childlike sound that evokes a much darker palette". On the instrumentation of the film's score, Debney said:
"There are a lot of contemporary techniques – we’re using the strings and manipulating them and having them do glissandi, and do trimming things; a lot of tonal things with choir getting tonal textures here and there. I’ll let the readers a little bit under the hood: our demos are sounding so good these days that many times my demo sounds bigger than the orchestra. That can be good - and it can be bad. In this case, the orchestra was big-sounding, but I really needed some of the darker colours and basslines of the synthetics to really make it fill up the screen, as it were."
Debney wrote new themes for the Sanderson Sisters, which Debney described it as "sing-songy dark waltz" fashioned theme, and added "It's in the lighter moments, sometimes you'll hear it as Sarah's waltz or there’s a great scene towards the end of the film when I get a very dark version with the horns and the Wagner tubas." The recording consisted of two sessions held at the Newman Scoring Stage in 20th Century Studios and Sony Scoring Stage, as he felt that "each stage had its own distinct tone"; nearly 80 minutes of orchestral music have been recorded for the film.