It was when his daughter walked in on LAMBERT at his piano one afternoon in his Berlin apartment that he understood he needed to make some changes. “You always do the same thing,” she announced, staring icily at her father as he hid his reaction to this bombshell behind his ever-present mask. “You won’t have a career if you carry on like this.” Of course, he’d always been happy making music “like this,” from 2014’s self-titled debut for cult label Staatsakt to 2022’s Open, his fourth collection for Mercury Records, and, moreover, his stature in his native Germany was such that he could headline Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and Berlin’s Funkhaus. Anyway, he’d already explored multiple genres, including electronica on 2021’s False and jazz on 2023’s All This Time and Live In Amsterdam. Consequently, since his 14-year-old had grown up listening to his serene compositions and had never complained before, her comments came as a shock. What if there was some truth to her wild accusations?
Paralysed by self-doubt and crippled by this criticism more than any review he’d received, LAMBERT found himself questioning everything he knew about his artistic identity. Fortunately, as he searched desperately for answers to seemingly impossible, even ridiculous questions, he realised he had the perfect solution. Indeed, it was a project he’d been weighing up a little while. He’d been invited to contribute the score to the first TV series by an English director whom we shall simply refer to as Matt – for reasons which will become clear, but among them the remnants of the filmmaker’s dignity – and recently an unexpected additional proposal had arrived: he wanted to cast LAMBERT in this gritty crime drama about the true story of the notoriously unsolved, so-called ‘Ice Cream Man Murders’ of the early 2000s.
“It was the production team who’d originally asked for me as a composer,” our budding Til Schweiger elaborates, “but when Matt saw this weird guy wearing a mask he thought, ‘That's who we need for this story!’ I’d been holding off because it seemed like such a strange idea, especially for a German musician, but now I thought, ‘Becoming a detective in an acclaimed English TV show doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.’ Anyway, my daughter agreed I should ‘expand the Lambiverse’ and the more I thought about it, the more I loved the idea of trying a different mask. So, thanks to her, I decided it was time to grasp the mettle. Or is it nettle? English isn’t my first language.”
LAMBERT had already seen the script, of course, and admired the director’s intentions. “He knew all about Tatort, which is this amazing German cop show that’s been going for over fifty years, and he’d seen all the black and white, 1950s Edgar Wallace films which our parents grew up watching. He was also going on about these English shows like Lovejoy, Rosemary and Thyme, even Bergerac. I didn’t know these, but he sounded really passionate and called them ‘the canon’. At least, I think it was ‘the canon’. ‘Cannon’ wouldn’t make any sense. Anyway, Germans really like crime stories, so I thought, ‘Why not? Let's do it!’ It was probably the worst decision of my life.”
The show was called The Stranger and – due to its scheduling – Lambert ended up writing the soundtrack before it was filmed. In fact, by the time he arrived on set, recording had been completed. A haunting, intimate title track would open with rolling piano arpeggios and sedate contributions from renowned cellist Marie-Claire Schlameus, and there was also the singular ‘The Move’, with its staccato synths, plus the more formal ‘Don’t Know Anyone’, to which Ralph Heidel contributes saxophone. Then there was the richly textured but playful ‘Pressure And Room’, as well as, in contrast, ‘The Others’’ bucolic innocence, with Robin Scherpen’s acoustic guitar centre stage. ‘Maybe The Future’, on the other hand, displayed the optimistic charms of Francis Lai’s underrated Bilitis soundtrack, while ‘Four Walls One’ returned to solo piano before ‘Drama And Comedy’ combined tension and elegance in equal measures. The spirited ‘Rather’ would also feature, as would the irrefutably redemptive ‘Happy Place’, while the credits would roll to ‘How It Ends’, providing one last welcome opportunity for the reflection demanded by such an intense experience.
As soon as LAMBERT reached England and the abandoned court house near the Thames where much of the action would take place, it became clear things weren’t going to run as smoothly as the scoring process had. “He's a very weird guy, this Matt” the musician confides, “and I'd never actually met him. I’d talked to him before, obviously, and he’d sent me some goodies to try and convince me – salted caramel M&Ms, in fact, proper limited edition – but by that point my daughter had done her thing and I’d decided I’d like to be on camera. So anyway, in England every Matthew is called Matt. That's just normal. I know that, even as a German. But, right from the very first time I said that, he went crazy, like, ‘It’s Matthew! It’s Matthew!’ So that was quite a surprise. Not that I paid any attention.”
Within hours – as LAMBERT has previously disclosed on ‘Lambert Klamra Jazz’, his weekly podcast with fellow musician Felix Weigt a.k.a. Gregor Klamra – things got worse. “During the first scene he seemed unhappy because there was a bench he didn't like. He started shouting again, ‘Why’s there a bench there?! Is this a fucking viewing gallery?!’ There was also a guy playing the role of the murderer that wasn’t a professional either. He’d been promoted from the crew because Matt liked how he looked, but then he decided he really couldn’t act. Matt gave him such a hard time, and everyone was affected by the atmosphere. If someone starts screaming in a working situation, it's never good. It's never good. And it didn’t take me long to realise he regretted hiring me, too. I think he felt like the focus would be on LAMBERT and not the director, you know? He was worried I might take all the attention, which is funny. Everyone knows I hate attention.”
One of the scenes most appealing to LAMBERT was a car chase, an ambition he’s always wanted to fulfil. “Every crime story has one, right?” he laughs. “I love car chases! Who doesn’t? Since it was in the script I’d used to compose, I was really looking forward to it. But by the time I got there he’d reconsidered. He was yelling things like ‘We have to think out of the box!’ Actually, I just think he’d miscalculated the budget. They’d spent a fortune on ice cream. We ended up doing it on micro-scooters, and I ended up breaking a rib. They didn't even have money for a stuntman. If we’d done the car chase, nothing would have happened! It's all effects!”
To be fair, he might have fared better if he’d had a helmet, too, but strict British ‘Health & Safety’ laws were nothing to Matt, who’d adapted LAMBERT’s character so he could continue wearing the mask he’s worn throughout his career as a musician. Consequently, there was no way anything else could fit on top of his head. Still, as is the nature with such injuries, he ended up staying on set another 24 hours until the pain became insufferable, only to get caught up in another row. “Matt kept saying my detective represented ‘the truth’ and, whatever happened, I had to project that ‘truth’ to the audience. Then he started screaming. ‘What is ‘the truth’?! What is ‘the truth’?!’ No one knew what to think. What kind of question is that? I definitely don’t know what ‘the truth’ is!”
Adding further insult to literal injury, Matt failed to notice when his star went missing, so, after several days recovering, the wannabe detective decided he was done with the entire venture. His only concern was that the music be rescued for release. And so, lacking what he calls ‘sitzfleisch’ – ‘arse meat’ – to deal with the director, he left his hotel as soon as he was able and returned home to Berlin. The two artists never spoke again. The Stranger, meanwhile, was never finished. Indeed, Matt never paid LAMBERT’s fee. Not that this has affected any long-term ambitions. “I’d still love to do another film,” our incognito virtuoso chuckles. “It’s fun being someone you’re not.”
Eighteen months later, and ten years since LAMBERT’s debut album, The Stranger’s now retitled score is finally ready for release. Inevitably, unravelling the complications involved took some time, forcing LAMBERT’s manager to file law suits with which, thanks in part to Brexit, Matt couldn’t compete. “Serves him right,” LAMBERT adds. “I think he voted for it.” In the meantime, LAMBERT got to work, making sure that whatever was released wouldn’t be just more of “the same thing”. This, it had turned out, was all Matt had really wanted.
In an unexpected twist, the team also succeeded in salvaging footage from the shoot to use in promotional videos, while a remarkable mini-documentary, made in the style of Werner Herzog’s My Best Friend and Terry Gilliam’s Lost In La Mancha, has also been completed. Directed by Tom Oxenham, who was present on set, it records the making of this swiftly curtailed crime catastrophe, not to mention its extraordinary, real-life denouement. What matters most, though, is this album, and the overdue opportunity to hear its contents the way LAMBERT actually intended them to sound. “At the end of the day,” our masked maestro concludes, “the music was totally compromised by that fucking director, and I needed this to be more cheerful, not that typical ‘Scandi-noir’ shit. I worked on it until it was the way it always should have been, and I’m really satisfied. My daughter loves it too. The Stranger might be shit, but the music is ACTUALLY GOOD.”