Film and TV critic Clint Worthington (Consequence, RogerEbert.com, The Spool) talks to a new composer every episode about the origins, challenges, and joys of their latest musical scores.
When last we spoke to composer Jay Wadley, he'd just finished scoring the mercurial Charlie Kaufman film I'm Thinking of Ending Things. Four years and a million projects later, the Charles Ives Award-winning composer (and co-founder of music production house Found Objects, with previous guest Trevor Gureckis) has been keeping busy, from films like Fire Island, Swan Song and the upcoming We Grown Now to shows like Apple TV+'s Franklin. Set in the eight years Benjamin Franklin spent in France drumming up monetary and logistical support for the Revolutionary War, Franklin stars Michael Douglas as the Founding Father himself, who must navigate dueling alliances and a host of stakeholders on both sides of the pond. What's more, he and his grandson Temple (played by Noah Jupe) find themselves at the head of a cultural clash between the French aristocracy and their budding republic that will change both their lives forever. Wadley built the lush sound of Franklin with the help of an enormous orchestra and his background in classical composition, melding traditional instrumentation with modern orchestration and a decidedly Americana flair to Franklin's upsetting of the French social order. Now, he joins me on the podcast to discuss the musical journey of Franklin. Franklin streams weekly on Apple TV+, and you can listen to Wadley's score on your preferred streamer courtesy of Apple.
4/19/24 • 41:13
This week, I talk to legendary TV composer Mike Post about everything from the Law and Order dun-dun to his original album of musical suites. If you've had a TV turned to a network station anytime in the last forty years, you've heard Mike Post's music. A stalwart in the TV scoring game, he is the voice of so many police and law procedurals, from The Rockford Files to LA Law to his Emmy-winning theme for Murder One. But most know him best as the voice of the long-running Law & Order franchise, having scored almost all of its varying spinoffs since the Dick Wolf flagship series premiered in the late 1980s. But outside of his stuff TV schedule, Post is also incredibly busy as a solo composer, having just released his first standalone album in thirty years. Message from the Mountains & Echoes of the Delta is a two-part series of suites inspired by the blues and bluegrass music of his youth, lending an orchestral heft to the American musical traditions that have inspired his iconic career. It's a stellar series of tracks, ones that feel like an already-accomplished musical artist spreading his wings and revisiting the music that made him who he is today. Message from the Mountains and Echoes of the Delta is currently available on your preferred music streamer, courtesy of Sony Music Masterworks.
4/12/24 • 39:40
This week's guest is RTS winning and BAFTA-nominated composer Vince Pope, a London-based composer who cut his teeth on scores ranging from Misfits to episodes of Black Mirror. But his most exciting collaborations of late have been those with filmmaker Issa Lopez, starting with her 2017 magical-realist horror film Tigers Are Not Afraid. Now, the pair reteam to put a supernatural spin on HBO's seminal crime thriller series True Detective. Inherited from Nic Pizzolatto's three-season anthology series, Lopez's new season, subtitled Night Country, follows a precarious period of darkness in a small Alaskan town as the town sheriff (Jodie Foster) and her ex-partner (Kali Reis) investigate the mysterious deaths of the members of a corporate research station on the outskirts of town. The case may well be tied to the unsolved murder of a Native woman that tore their partnership asunder years prior, and sends the pair down an ominous road filled with tough moral choices and events that lie beyond their understanding. Pope's score blends elements of horror and murder-mystery atmosphere with a deep swell of psychospiritual torment, to say nothing of the addition of Native American elements like throat singers and collaborator Tanya Tagaq to incorporate the show's exploration of those cultures. Now, Pope joins me on the podcast to talk about True Detective: Night Country. You can find Vince Pope at his official website here. You can stream the entire season of True Detective: Night Country on Max, and listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of WaterTower Music.
2/24/24 • 30:02
Grammy- and two-time Emmy-winning composer Carlos Rafael Rivera has spent the last decade building moody, complex musical worlds around complicated characters. His earliest prominent work was with regular collaborator Scott Frank on films like A Walk Among the Tombstones, and the Netflix miniseries Godless. But it was his mercurial work on Frank's miniseries The Queen's Gambit that earned Rivera breakout status. Since then, he's worked on a host of films and series both with Frank and elsewhere: Apple's Lessons in Chemistry, HBO's Hacks. But his two most recent scores, and some of his best, have him dealing with different ends of the prestige-crime-drama ecosystem. Take Netflix's Griselda, in which an unrecognizable Sofia Vergara climbs her way to the top of Miami's drug trade as the real-life Cocaine Godmother; scored like an opera, Rivera's sound is full of harpsichord, lone voices, big breathy melodramatic moments. On the other side of the Atlantic lies AMC's stellar miniseries Monsieur Spade, in which Clive Owen plays an older Sam Spade solving a mystery while spending his retirement in rural France after World War II. There, the usual noir trappings are leavened by a distinct sense of melancholy, lonely guitar strains underlining the postwar fragility of its French setting. This week, I'm thrilled to have Rivera on to talk about these shows and so much more, from his musical journey with the guitar to his philosophies on which perspective to score from. It's a brilliant chat (maybe one of the best this podcast has ever enjoyed), and I hope you enjoy. You can find Carlos Rafael Rivera at his official website here. Griselda is currently streaming on Netflix, and Monsieur Spade runs weekly on AMC and AMC+. You can also stream each soundtrack at your music service of choice.
2/9/24 • 41:43
This week, we're catching up with one of the Oscar-shortlisted Best Score nominees -- Anthony Willis' score to Emerald Fennell's lavish, mysterious thriller Saltburn. Fennell's second directorial feature, after Promising Young Woman, is a kind of Brideshead Revisited by way of Tom Ripley and mid-2000s party culture: A mysterious young bloke named Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) follows his irrepressible attraction to fellow Oxford pretty-boy Felix (Jacob Elordi) all the way to Felix's palatial mansion, Saltburn. There, he immerses himself in the hedonistic lifestyles of the ultra-rich, all the while hoping to catch a glimmer of Felix's attention -- or does he? Reuniting with Fennell for his second score with her, composer Anthony Willis crafts a suitably Gothic sound for her idiosyncratic class thriller. Opening with romantic strings, transitioning into classical choir, then electric pianos and additional layers and textures, Willis draws the listener in like one of Oliver's obsessions, before disrupting the film's jagged classicism with rough modern electronic textures and a sense of sweeping orchestral doom. Today, we talk to Willis about all of that and more, including his longtime collaboration with Fennell and his early life as a chorister at Windsor Castle. You can find Anthony Willis at his official website. Saltburn is currently available for rental or streaming on Prime Video. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Milan Records.
1/26/24 • 34:57
For nearly fifteen years, composer Dave Porter has been the musical voice of the Breaking Bad universe -- having scored every season of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and the film El Camino for good measure. Now, he plies his penchant for atmospheric, guitar-driven thrills to the MCU, with the new Disney+ series, Echo. A spinoff of Hawkeye, Echo hearkens back to the grittier, more violent climes of the Netflix Marvel shows, centering on deaf Choctaw assassin Maya, played by Alacqua Cox. Last seen betraying and shooting her boss and father figure, Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin, at the tail end of Hawkeye, Maya rides home to her small town in Oklahoma to reconnect with her roots and finish the war against Wilson Fisk that she started back in New York City. To score Maya's blood-soaked journey across Echo's five episodes, Porter made use of his signature mixture of guitar and synths to build a suitably neo-Western noir feel to the series. On top of that, the show incorporates many aspects of Native music and instrumentation, literally giving voice to the legacy of Native women Maya finds herself connecting to throughout her journey. Dave Porter joins us on the podcast to talk about the rigors of scoring for television, the role of music in a show about a Deaf protagonist, and the careful treatment of Native musical elements in his music for Echo. You can find Dave Porter on his official website. All episodes of Echo are currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Marvel Music.
1/19/24 • 32:21
This podcast has had a long and fruitful relationship with composer Paul Leonard-Morgan, the man behind the scores of films like Dredd and Limitless, among countless others. But two commonalities have permeated the scores he's discussed with me: Errol Morris and Philip Glass. For the former, he teamed up to score Amazon's Tales from the Loop; for the latter, he's scored A Psychedelic Love Story among many other Morris docs, many of them alongside Glass. Now, both have teamed up for yet another of Morris' deep probes into an intriguing figure, this time famed novelist John le Carre, the author of books like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Framed as the prototypical days-long sitdown between Morris and his subject, The Pigeon Tunnel takes us through le Carre's childhood and early days with his abusive father, to his time in the spy service, to the ways those experiences informed his legendary novels. In so doing, Glass and Leonard-Morgan had to build a whopping eighty minutes of score, a propulsive effort that keeps the spy-thriller momentum of the doc going with cimbaloms and other features of the '60s espionage caper. And this week, we've got Paul back on the podcast to talk about his collabs with Morris and Glass, and building a score for the most mysterious man in the world. You can find Paul Leonard-Morgan at his official website here. The Pigeon Tunnel is currently streaming on Apple TV+, and you can listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Platoon.
1/12/24 • 35:31
This week, we're joined by Ivor Novello and BIFA-nominated composer Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, a Paris-born artist who has made quite the name for herself in the last few years. Getting her start building scores for friends in film school who needed music for their short films, Emilie quickly cut her teeth on films like 2018's Only You and 2019's Rocks, before breaking out big in 2021 with her devilish score to Prano Bailey-Bond's British horror film Censor, and 2022's Living, for which she won a Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best Original Score in an Independent Film. Now, she turns those two instincts for exploring death and longing to the latest film from Andrew Haigh, All of Us Strangers, in which a gay man approaching middle age (Andrew Scott) finds himself with the opportunity to spend time with his long-lost parents, who died in a car crash when he was little. Still as young as the day they died, Adam clings to this newfound chance to spend time with his parents, as he navigates an uncertain new relationship with a boy in his apartment building (played by Paul Mescal). Leviennaise-Farrouch's work here is stripped down, bare, as spectral as the ghosts who make up at least half of the film's cast. She combines electronic with acoustic instruments, flitting between analog synths and deep, warm strings to sell Scott's alienation from the world around him and the deep loneliness he feels. Now, Emilie joins me on the podcast to talk about the process behind scoring All of Us Strangers. You can find Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch at her official website. All of Us Strangers is currently playing in theaters. You can also listen to the score on your preferred service courtesy of 20th Century Studios. Support us on Patreon Follow us on Twitter/X at @rightoncuepod
1/5/24 • 26:44
As we've seen this year, and my interview with the songwriters behind Dicks: The Musical some weeks back, 2023 has been a surprisingly solid year for original musicals. But as the year draws to a close, I wanted to highlight one of my favorite films I saw this year, all the way back at Sundance: Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman's Theater Camp. Set in a struggling theater camp in upstate New York called AdirondACTS, Theater Camp takes the form of a mockumentary that follows the camp's kids, counselors, and owners as they try to get through another season of shows with their sanity and friendships intact. It's a shot straight across the bow for a lot of theater kids' experiences, from the competing egos to the petty jealousies, to the moment you set all of those conflicts aside to, as one character puts it, turn cardboard into gold. To do that, Gordon and Lieberman enlisted the help of Emmy and Drama Desk-nominated writer Mark Sonnenblick, who's written songs for Spirited, Lyle Lyle Crocodile, and others. Composer James McAlister, who has enjoyed collaborations with everyone from Sufjan Stevens to the National, came in to help with the songs and provide the charming series of acoustic and vocal sounds that serve as the film's underscore. Together with the writing/directing duo and writers/stars Ben Platt and Noah Galvin, the songwriting team built the camp's showstopping original musical that closes the film -- Joan, Still. You can find Mark Sonnenblick on his official website and James McAlister on his Bandcamp page. Theater Camp is currently streaming on Hulu. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Interscope Records. Support us on Patreon Follow us on Twitter/X at @rightoncuepod
12/29/23 • 46:17
This week, we talk to composer Mac Quayle, who burst onto the scene in 2015 with his Emmy-winning score to Sam Esmail's mysterious, genre-bending series Mr. Robot. Since then, he's enjoyed healthy collaborations with Esmail and fellow showrunner Ryan Murphy, for whom he's scored everything from American Horror Story and Pose to 9-1-1. For his latest score, Quayle reunites with Esmail for a film this time -- Netflix's eerie adaptation of Rumaan Alam's 2020 novel Leave the World Behind. Following a well-off couple (Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke) on a vacation to a remote Airbnb with their two children, the film takes a bizarre turn when the home's owner, G.H. (Mahershala Ali), and his daughter (Myha'la) return and insist on staying there. Meanwhile, the power goes out, deer start behaving strangely, and one gets the sense the world is coming to an end. That sense is borne out in Quayle's approach, constructed from a custom library of sounds he built specifically for the movie. And now, Quayle talks to us about building a score to suit the end of the world. You can find Mac Quayle at his official website. Leave the World Behind is currently streaming on Netflix, and you can hear the score on your preferred streamer courtesy of Netflix Music. Support us on Patreon Follow us on Twitter/X at @rightoncuepod
12/22/23 • 27:41
This week, I'm thrilled to talk to English musician and nascent film score composer Jerskin Fendrix about his score to the wacky, surreal, oddly poignant new film from Yorgos Lanthimos: Poor Things. Starring Emma Stone as Bella Baxter, the creation of Frankenstein-ian scientist Godwin Baxter (played by Willem Dafoe), the film delves into her ongoing quest to explore her humanity, sexuality, and the absurd social structures of a world careening into modernity. Lanthimos' films always push the boundaries between the vulgar and sublime, and this one's no different -- a Victorian-era fantasia complete with bright, presentational production design and wild costuming that fits the strangeness of Bella's world. And this strangeness bears out in Fendrix's score, his first after spending years in the London DIY pop scene. The score is punctuated by minimal voices, spare instruments, dissonant, bended notes that seem to lumber awkwardly like Bella taking her first furtive steps out into the world. Fendrix speaks with me about stepping into Yorgos' world, giving voice to a creature that evolves over the course of the score, and what it's like for such an autobiographical artist to surrender himself to a more collaborative medium like film. You can find Jerskin Fendrix's work on his official Bandcamp page. Poor Things is currently playing in theaters. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Milan Records.
12/8/23 • 29:50
This week's guest is an Emmy winner, a Grammy winner, and a nine-time Oscar nominee, whose scores have graced the big and small screens since the 1980s. James Newton Howard is the voice of many of your favorite scores, from co-scoring the Dark Knight Trilogy with Hans Zimmer to his Oscar-nominated score for Paul Greengrass' News of the World. Now, he's back with several new projects, some of which hearken back to music he has written in the past. Howard's latest solo album, Night After Night, is a beautiful look back at his eight-film partnership with filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, recontextualizing some of his most intriguing melodies from that longtime collaboration into piano-driven suites performed by virtuoso musicians, including concert pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. On the small screen, Howard recently completed a lush, yearning score for Netflix's new miniseries All the Light We Cannot See, based on the acclaimed novel by Anthony Doerr and directed by Shawn Levy. Plus, after nearly a decade away from Panem, Howard resumes his collaboration with director Francis Lawrence for the Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Now, Howard is here on the pod to talk about all of these projects and more. You can find James Newton Howard at his official website here. Night After Night is currently available on vinyl or your preferred streaming service, courtesy of Sony Masterworks. Same with All the Light You Cannot See, courtesy of Netflix Music, and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, care of Sony Music.
11/17/23 • 32:31
Sometimes, the dumbest things are the most delightful -- and that's certainly the case with A24's riotous new musical, Dicks: The Musical. A tongue-in-cheek (and other places) song-and-dance comedy, Dicks: The Musical started out as an hourlong show at the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City, written by and starring Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson who play two definitely identical twins who find each other and decide to get their estranged parents back together, Parent Trap-style. Problem is, their parents are even crazier than they are, leading to a cavalcade of numbers about incest, sociopathy, not having a pussy, and spit-feeding ham to two tiny animatronic freaks called the Sewer Boys. The duo responsible for such disgusting earworms are songwriters Karl Saint Lucy (who wrote for the original UCB show) and Grammy-winning music producer Marius de Vries of La La Land and Moulin Rouge! fame. Together, they expanded songs from the musical, made new ones out of whole cloth, and leveraged a bevy of musical influences to build the sprightly, surprising songbook featured in the film. And this week, we speak to the pair about their collaboration, the long road to release, and finding the funny in the filthy. You can find Marius de Vries and Karl Saint Lucy at their respective official websites. Dicks: The Musical is currently in theaters. You can also listen to the soundtrack on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of A24 Music.
10/20/23 • 31:18
This week, we speak to composer Yair Elazar Glotman about his score for the latest prestige thriller from Netflix, Reptile, a stylish neo-noir starring Benicio Del Toro as a mercurial detective looking into the murder of a real estate agent. Everyone's a suspect, from the victim's boyfriend (Justin Timberlake) to the creepy guy down the street (played by Michael Pitt), even to some of Del Toro's fellow officers (incluidng Ato Essandoh, Domenick Lombardozzi and Eric Bogosian). It's the directorial debut of music video director Grant Singer, who fills each corner of the frame with cold, calculating and precise compositions, painting an isolated, alien world of hidden motivations and untold terrors hiding within the mundane. Singer's work in Reptile closely mirrors the work of David Fincher, and it's an intriguing experience to behold -- not least because of Glotman's dissonant, visceral, textural score. Building eerie combinations of altered string compositions and textured syths, Glotman's work fills in the empty spaces left by Reptile's sparse, opaque script, echoing through the vast voids of understanding the central mystery leaves its viewers. Now, I'm pleased to have Glotman on the podcast to talk about how he got started in music and composing, his work with Singer on Reptile, and his fascination with pulling apart the sound of things to see what he can find. You can find Yair Elazar Glotman at his official website here. Reptile is currently streaming on Netflix. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Netflix Music.
9/30/23 • 29:07
Historical biopics of famous leaders are a very familiar genre at this point: Great Men (or in this case, Women) of history navigating war or struggle or controversy with the stiff-upper-lip resolve history has granted to them. Guy Nattiv's Golda is certainly no exception, though it innovates not just with its presentation, but with its subject: Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, played under heavy prosthetics by Helen Mirren. More than that, it's not a tale of victory, but of defeat -- a Pyrrhic victory that nonetheless shakes the public's confidence in the film's chain-smoking leader, and damns her to the annals of infamy. The film covers the three-week period of the Yom Kippur War, in which Egyptian and Syrian forces, among others, launched a concerted attack on Israel during the holy day of Yom Kippur. The attack led to tremendous losses, and kicked off a standoff that would rope in both the US and the Soviet Union before it was done. Nattiv's approach to the material is stark and haunting, keeping close to Mirren's wearied, resolved take on Meir through claustrophobic, smoke-filled rooms. And aiding that sense of mystique is Golda's score, courtesy of Russian composer Dascha Dauenhauer, utilizing discordant violins and detuned cowbells to build a bleak, atmospheric sound for Golda's race against time. We're thrilled to have Dauenhauer on the podcast to talk about her early days as a composer, her boundless sense of experimentation, and the many themes and unusual sounds of her score for Golda. You can find Dascha Dauenhauer at her official website here. Golda is currently playing in select theaters. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of MNRK Music Group.
9/4/23 • 21:53
Composer John Powell has been composing film scores since 1997; whether it's How to Train Your Dragon, The Bourne Identity, or Solo: A Star Wars Story, you've likely heard and loved at least one of his scores. He earned an Academy Award nomination in 2010 for the epic, uplifting sweep of How to Train Your Dragon, and has three Grammy nominations for his scores to Happy Feet, Ferdinand, and Solo. But now, the veteran composer has an Emmy nomination under his belt, for a decidedly different project than he's used to: Documentary. For Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Davis Guggenheim's Apple TV+ original exploring the actor's rise to Hollywood fame and subsequent struggle with Parkinson's, Powell spent a whopping five months working on a score that balanced Fox's unique struggles while emphasizing the joy and energy that animates the actor's decades-long career. Powell was also kind enough to join us to talk for a bit about the arduous process of building the score, how scoring for documentary requires an entirely different musical vocabulary, and how Guggenheim pulled him through his toughest moments as a composer. You can find John Powell at his official website here. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie is currently streaming on Apple TV+. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Lakeshore Records.
8/25/23 • 23:45
Ever since his 2018 feature debut Sorry to Bother You, Oakland-based musician Boots Riley (of The Coup) has built a reputation as one of our most imaginative, socially-minded filmmakers, combining abject surrealism with biting commentary on the complex interweavings of race and capitalism in American life. (With a healthy dose of absurd comedy, of course.) His followup is the seven-episode Amazon series I'm a Virgo, starring Jharrel Jerome as a 13-foot-tall Black man named Cootie, hidden away since birth by his overprotective parents in Oakland. But when he escapes and finally sees the real world for what it is, he's both amazed and aghast at the joys and horrors it contains. Sure, he finally gets to try fast-food burgers, and falls in love with a charming woman named Flora (Olivia Washington) who has her own sort of superpower. But he also faces the increased commodification of his size and self by a world that views him as an object... or, in the case of real-life superhero The Hero (Walton Goggins), a "thug" that needs to be taken out. Aiding Riley's beautifully maximalist project is indie duo Tune-Yards, aka Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner, who adapt their signature frenetic hooks, and limber vocalizations to a soundscape as riveting as it is unconventional. And now, Garbus and Brenner join me on the show to talk about working with Boots' exacting creative vision, adapting to the world of composing, and what it's like for musicians out there in a world where unionization is on the minds of everyone in the wake of the SAG and WGA strikes. You can find Tune-Yards at their official website here. I'm a Virgo is currently streaming on Prime Video. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Lakeshore Records.
8/6/23 • 39:35
Much like the zombies that infest its world, the Walking Dead franchise simply refuses to die. With Dead City, the shambling hordes make their way to the island of Manhattan, an urban hellscape now infested with the remnants of a dead civilization. And in the middle, two of the original Walking Dead's main characters, Maggie (Lauren Cohen) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), on a rescue mission that'll test their fractious relationship with each other. While Bear McCreary's more mournful, orchestral sound personified the original series, composer Ian Hultquist sought a newer, more electronic sound, one more reminiscent of John Carpenter's work on Escape from New York (another thriller about characters trying to survive in a walled-off Manhattan). In addition to those ominous synths, Hultquist also made use of a suite of organic sounds of unique provenance, including recruiting friends to travel to the Maine wilderness to collect all manner of sounds. Together, we talk about that sense of sonic experimentation, how Hultquist wanted to move the franchise's sound forward, and the importance of building a sonic palette to work from when composing electronic scores. You can find Ian Hultquist at his official website. The Walking Dead: Dead City is currently airing on AMC and AMC+. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Milan Records.
7/7/23 • 40:13
Veteran composer Jongnic "JB" Bontemps took a long and winding road to film scoring. Despite showing an early passion for scoring (and studying music at Yale), he didn't immediately enter that world. Instead, he sought a tech career, becoming a software developer and entrepreneur. But music came calling again, and JB found himself studying film scoring and building a career as one of the industry's top composers. After years of building his bona fides working under various A-list composers and scoring video games like Redfall and shows like Godfather of Harlem, he's found himself with his highest-profile work yet: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Building off his childhood love for the robots in disguise and the groundwork that composer Steve Jablonsky had laid for him in the Michael Bay films before that, JB worked with Rise of the Beasts director (and longtime collaborator) Steven Caple Jr. to assemble a suitably robust, muscular, and era-appropriate score for the '90s-set throwback blockbusters. Together, JB and I talk about all of this -- his winding path to film composing, the value of building a team and working with valued collaborators, and using music to mark Rise of the Beasts' distinct globe-trotting adventure and '90s aesthetics. You can find Jongnic Bontemps at his official website. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is currently playing in theaters, and you can listen to the score on your preferred platform courtesy of Milan Records.
6/30/23 • 41:19
In a relatively grim year for superhero movies, both critically and at the box office, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is blissfully bucking that trend. Building off the dizzying, kaleidoscopic animation style and storytelling of Into the Spider-Verse, Across the Spider-Verse manages to elevate what worked about the previous film and roll it into an even more exciting, heartfelt second chapter in Miles Morales' uncertain journey toward becoming a hero. As with the first, though, a fundamental component for keeping the film's multiversal craziness in line is the score by Oscar-nominated composer Daniel Pemberton (who returns to the pod after talking with us about Being the Ricardos). Together, we talk about finding the sound for this film, discovering the right punk sound for Gwen Stacy (whose journey runs parallel to Miles'), and juggling familiar motifs while layering new sonic textures to allow the different universes to invade each other. What's more, we also chat about his intensely personal working style, the value of doing just about everything yourself, and how rare that is in a film music landscape where most big composers hire huge teams to get the work done. You can find Daniel Pemberton at his official website. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is currently playing in select theaters. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Sony Music.
6/26/23 • 33:41
How do you write the score to someone else's self-mythology? That's the challenge this week's guest, composer Ronen Landa, faced for one of the year's most idiosyncratic, difficult-to-describe shows, Peacock's Paul T. Goldman. A strange mix of documentary comedy and wish fulfillment, the show follows the titular man, a nebbishy middle-aged guy who turned his hellish marriage to his second ex-wife into a grand quest for justice in the form of a bestselling self-published novel (and subsequent script adaptation). These, with the help of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm director Jason Woliner, take the form of compellingly straight-laced reenactments of Paul's life as he saw them, with the man playing himself, surrounded by professional actors at once bewildered and fascinated by his presence. It's a wild, weird mix of true-crime and true-crime satire, a needle that Landa was very careful to thread. In fact, he constructed his score much like a concept album, bringing in an intimate ensemble with strings and piano to record a lend Paul's own search for truth -- as blinkered as it may or may not be -- a sense of grand, personal tragedy. Then there's its ominous main title theme, with harsh, lurching low piano chords surrounded by mysterious strings and building brass. Together, Landa and I speak about building the score for Paul T. Goldman without seeing much of the finished product, folding the theme on top of that, and embracing the enigma of its strange, compelling central figure. And Ronen also talks us through two of the show's biggest cues, including its mysterious title theme. Plus, we end up chatting about his own upcoming musical dip into the world of Star Trek. You can find Ronen Landa at his official website. Paul T. Goldman is currently streaming on Peacock. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Lionsgate Entertainment.
6/10/23 • 44:55
When last we spoke to composer and multi-instrumentalist Ariel Marx, we broke down her haunting, curious score to Hulu's miniseries Candy. But she's been as busy as ever since, bringing her signature sense of experimental sparseness to projects on both the big and small screens. Most recently, she's lent her unique musical voice to two intriguing projects about women asserting their strength and power in unconventional circumstances. The first is the National Geographic miniseries A Small Light, following Dutch secretary Miep Gies (Bel Powley) in her efforts to keep Anne Frank and her family safe during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. Breaking away from typical symphonic approaches you'd expect from period dramas, Marx's score is intimate and sparse, juggling the 1930s jazz vibe of Amsterdam in its prime with the looming spectre of the Third Reich, and the many sacrifices its characters will endure. On the other side of the coin, Marx lent her talents to NEON's sizzling, kinky dark comedy Sanctuary, starring Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott as two people playing out their own dangerous game of domination and submission. Marx's score is glossy when it needs to play up the perverse romance of their situation, brittle when the delicate balance of the pair's play begins to fray. Ariel Marx comes onto the podcast to discuss both of these scores, her love of sparse ensembles, and other methods to her musical madness. You can find Ariel Marx at her official website. A Small Light is currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+, and Sanctuary is currently playing in select theaters. You can also listen to the score for A Small Light on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Hollywood Records.
5/26/23 • 37:35
The third season of Star Trek: Picard had a lot on its shoulders: It was the final season of its show, as well as a bombastic, blockbuster-level bow for the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. For its first two seasons, Patrick Stewart and the showrunners shied away from Starfleet uniforms and shiny utopias, and Jeff Russo's score reflected that (as we've discussed with him on this very show). But showrunner Terry Matalas had a different vision in mind for Season 3: Celebrate the crew whose adventures captured generations of fans, with a big, brassy sendoff meant to give them the finale they finally deserved. And that they did, thanks to the tireless work of composers Stephen Barton and Frederik Wiedmann. Together, they handled hours of big orchestral sounds, crafting new themes for ships and characters like the Titan and Jack Crusher. At the same time, there was decades' worth of callbacks to Star Trek's musical legacy that needed acknowledgment, from Jerry Goldsmith's TNG theme to the movie-esque sweep of James Horner and Dennis McCarthy. Through plenty of blood, sweat, and tears, they pulled it off, crafting an immense body of work that fit snugly within the legacy of Star Trek while incorporating musical Easter eggs big and small into its superstructure. This week on the podcast, Barton and Wiedmann join me for a nice long chat about the hectic production process, the many Trekkian cues they had to blend together, and the value of having creative collaborators (like Matalas) who know exactly what they want. You can find Stephen Barton and Frederik Wiedmann at their official websites. The entirety of Picard Season 3 is available for streaming on Paramount+. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Lakeshore Records.
5/19/23 • 51:04
In the 1990s, Nickelodeon was a bastion of surprisingly sophisticated children's animation, and few shows demonstrated that freewheeling sense of absurdity than Rocko's Modern Life. The tale of a beleaguered wallaby surviving the wildest adventures with little more than a smile on his face and his close-knit group of friends, it was a generation-defining show thanks to its surprisingly adult jokes and unhinged tone. But a huge component of the show's success comes courtesy of its frenetic, genre-hopping score, courtesy of New Wave legend Pat Irwin. When he first came to the show in the '90s, he was primarily known as a member of the B-52s, and had played with bands like 8-Eyed Spy and the Raybeats. But here, he gave Rocko's antics vivid life with an unstoppable earworm of a score, flitting between lounge jazz, surf rock, and a host of other influences and touchpoints depending on what shenanigans the wallaby found himself in next. Now, Nickelodeon Records has finally released an album comprising highlights from the first two seasons of the show. Irwin joins us on the podcast to talk about his early days in the "no wave" New York music scene, assembling a master team of musicians to record the score, and his current projects (including his ambient country project, SUSS). You can find Pat Irwin at his official website. Rocko's Modern Life is currently streaming on Paramount+. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Nickelodeon Records.
5/12/23 • 27:19
It's morphin' time! Thirty years after Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers hit the airwaves and thrilled '90s latchkey kids the world over, the franchise has stayed strong through 29 seasons, dozens of incarnations, and more Zords than you can shake a Power Sword at. But one of the elements that made it such a mainstay was its shredding, hard-rock theme song, with its heavy power chords, driving rhythms, and catchy battle cry of "Go, go, Power Rangers!" It, and the Power Rangers sound as a whole, was the soundtrack to a generation, fueled primarily by the show's composer, Ron Wasserman (who also supplied other catchy licks to other millennial catnip like the '90s X-Men cartoon and Dragon Ball Z). Now, Wasserman is back for the first time in decades to score new Power Rangers -- this time, for Netflix's 30th-anniversary reunion special, Once & Always. Bringing back four of the old-school '90s Rangers, including original Rangers Zack (Walter Emanuel Jones) and Billy (David Yost), the special lets these middle-aged superheroes get one last crack at classic villain Rita Repulsa, with all the spandex-clad karate that entails. Not only that, the special's a hotbed of Easter eggs for new and old fans alike, and the nostalgia trip wouldn't be complete without Wasserman's involvement. We're thrilled to have Wasserman on the show to talk about Power Rangers' grip on a certain segment of pop culture, how the sound of the show evolved, and how he's updated it for this latest trip back to the Morphin' Grid. You can find Ron Wasserman at his official website. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always is currently streaming on Netflix.
5/5/23 • 24:07
When last we left composer Trevor Gureckis, he was just beginning his eerie, unsettling work on M. Night Shyamalan's acclaimed Apple TV+ series Servant. But in the intervening years, he's lent his uniquely experimental grasp of both classical and electronic instruments to films like The Goldfinch, Bloodline, and Old. But his most recent project sees him dipping not just into the world of video games, but the existing soundscape of a previous composer: EA's high-def remake of the space horror classic Dead Space. Building from Jason Graves' dissonant, screeching-metal score to the original game, Gureckis' role is to flesh out the expanded adventures of Isaac Clarke, the unlucky engineer who finds himself amid a monstrous infestation of alien creatures aboard the USG Ishimura. That includes giving voice to new areas of the game, as well as new narrative sections that lend Isaac greater narrative weight than in the original game. Now, Trevor joins us on the show once again to catch up with his work since Servant began, his first foray into video game scoring, and the challenge of composing new material that matches the existing voice of another composer's work. You can find Trevor Gureckis at his official website here. Dead Space is currently available for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. You can also listen to his score for the remastered Dead Space on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of EA Music.
4/18/23 • 31:38
The 2023 Grammys have come and gone, and the first Grammy for Best Video Game Score has already been awarded (congratulations, Assassin's Creed Valhalla's Stephanie Economou!). But one of her fellow nominees in that category is video game music royalty in his own right -- Austin Wintory, whose score for the acclaimed indie game Journey netted him a Grammy nomination for a video game score years before it became its own category. This time, he was nominated for his score for Aliens: Fireteam Elite, a third-person shooter based on the iconic Alien franchise. Following a team of Colonial Marines shooting their way through alien-infested space stations and planets, Fireteam Elite calls for a much greater action focus than Journey or other games Wintory has scored. But in so doing, he manages to craft a bombastic, atmospheric score that both pays homage to the soundscapes of previous Alien composers like Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner, but also injects lots of low brass and flute solos courtesy of Sara Andon, creating a noir-like sound to fit the story's mysterious tone. Together, Austin and I talk about the score itself, how to weave those influences into the demands of gameplay, and grander chats about the broader composer community and his role in highlighting those voices (thanks to Wintory's robust YouTube channel, which features score recommendations, BTS stuff, and interviews with other composers and voice actors). And if you want even more insight into his process for the Fireteam Elite score, you can find a track-by-track video breakdown of the score, complete with text commentary, here. You can find Austin Wintory at his official website here. Aliens: Fireteam Elite is currently available to play on PS5, PC, XONE, PS4, and XS. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of 20th Century Studios.
3/31/23 • 49:46
The Star Trek universe is a franchise with decades of musical legacy, from the original Alexander Courage fanfare to Jerry Goldsmith's nautical bombast for The Motion Picture, all the way to Michael Giacchino's sweeping work on the J.J. Abrams films. But Paramount+'s animated comedy Star Trek: Lower Decks, which follows the bottom-rung officers on the support ship the USS Cerritos, doesn't stray from that formula to go for the laughs. Instead, composer Chris Westlake chose to lean into Trek's innate musical majesty, crafting a score that's just as big -- if not bigger -- than some of the other entries in the franchise's canon. It's new Trek, constantly referencing the old Trek, but taking the exploits of the Cerritos as seriously as those of the USS Enterprise. Westlake has worked for decades on films like Before We Go, also offering additional music for trailers for Star Wars and films like Gravity. And for Lower Decks, he and showrunner (and close friend) Mike McMahan knew they needed to build a suitably Trekkian soundscape for the show, rather than pointing out the gags innate to the series' irreverence to the final frontier. Together, we talk about boosting the laughs by taking Trek music seriously, his own history with the franchise's musical soundscapes, and figuring out exactly what Klingon death metal sounds like. (Plus, you'll get exclusive commentary from Westlake on how his iconic theme for the show came together.) You can find Chris Westlake at his official website here. All three seasons to date of Star Trek: Lower Decks are currently streaming on Paramount+. You can also listen to the score on vinyl or your preferred music streaming service, courtesy of Lakeshore Records.
3/27/23 • 42:07
Today, we're talking about the latest film from director Brandon Cronenberg, Infinity Pool, another in a series of cinematic provocations from the son of acclaimed body-horror maestro David Cronenberg. While his works travel along similar roads -- the alienation of the self from the human body, how class intersects with violence -- the younger Cronenberg twists the visceral knife even further in parts, trafficking further in extremity and seeing how that further warps his film's reflections of humanity. In Infinity Pool, that takes the form of a blood-soaked bacchanal on a mysterious island nation frequented by rich tourists, who can afford to literally get away with murder (by having a clone made of themselves to be executed in their stead). With the threat of consequence no longer looming over them, the characters of Infinity Pool sink into a (sometimes literal) orgy of depravity, as disorienting as it is compelling to watch. Aiding in that dizzying psychedelia is the score by acclaimed experimental musician and producer Tim Hecker, who crafts a suitably disorienting, doomed sound constructed from crunchy samples and unexpected analog elements. He's a deeply thoughtful musician and theorist, as you'll hear, as we talk about building a "music ecology" for Infinity Pool's constructed setting, exploring the limits of the film's sonic nihilism, and more. You can find Tim Hecker at his official website here. Infinity Pool is currently playing in theaters. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Milan Records.
3/6/23 • 24:14
Earlier this month, the 2022 Grammys ran its first-ever category for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media -- a long-overdue recognition of the value of video game scores as a legitimate method of expression, and a source of some incredible music. And among an initial crop of stellar composers offering intriguing sounds to all manner of video games big and small, it was a DLC, of all things, that took home the prize: the Dawn of Ragnarok DLC for Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Valhalla. While the base game put you in the shoes of a Viking descendant of the Norse god Odin, Dawn of Ragnarok puts you right in Odin's shoes, telling a mournful, mythological tale of revenge that required a huge, bombastic sound suffused with Nordic muscle. Stephanie Economou, fresh off previous Valhalla DLC The Siege of Paris, took to that assignment with her signature gusto: She recruited black metal band Wilderun to contribute tracks and give her an education on the genre itself, her frequent collaborator Ari Mason to contribute vocals, and the show-stopping title theme saw her collaborating with Assassin's Creed musical titan Einar Selvik. It's a pulse-pounding, immersive score that's as big as its game, and Economou sat down to talk with us the week before the Grammys to discuss the building of that score, how it dovetailed into her growth as a composer, and how it feels to be the first female Grammy nominee for Best Original Video Game Score. You can find Stephanie Economou at her official website here. Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok is currently available to play on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Lakeshore Records.
2/24/23 • 38:06