More of a Comment, Really...

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  

It's safe to say that Eywa has smiled on James Cameron's long-awaited sequel to his 2009 epic Avatar; a mere two months into its run, Avatar: The Way of Water has grossed more than $2 billion, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing movie of all time as of publication (and the third-highest international box office success).   For Cameron, it was a work more than a decade in the making -- and composer Simon Franglen was along for the ride for most of that journey. The London-born Franglen began his musical career as a producer and arranger, contributing to film scores as far back as Dances with Wolves. He was an important collaborator with composer and close friend James Horner for both Titanic and Avatar, and when Horner tragically passed in 2015, the baton passed to him to continue Horner's work building the vibrant, eclectic sounds of the alien planet of Pandora.   Building on the first film's musical palette, which blended standard orchestral flourish with a bevy of world-music sounds, Franglen expands on that work with a much more thematic score, one rooted in the sequel's focus on the Sully family and the new areas of Pandora they would explore in their fight against the colonial forces of Earth. This included everything from Maori instruments and vocal stylings to signpost the new water tribe we meet, the Metkayina, as well as research into whale sounds for the majestic Tulkun creatures we meet along the way.   It's a score as brassy and eclectic as it is voluminous -- Franglen composed nearly three hours of music for the film, ranging from traditional orchestra to unique instruments to vocal work with both choirs and star Zoe Saldana, who provides vocals for the in-universe "Songcord," a vital part of the Na'vi's cultural tapestry.   Together, we talk about Franglen's work on The Way of Water, the challenges inherent in building Pandora's musical palette, and what it was like touring with Barbra Streisand on her comeback tour in the '90s. (Also, Simon talks us through a couple of tracks from the Avatar score in exclusive track commentaries.)   You can find Simon Franglen at his official website here.   Avatar: The Way of Water is currently playing in theaters. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of 20th Century Studios.

For Texan-born composer Chanda Dancy, 2022 feels like a breakthrough year. She's worked in the film and television composing business for eighteen years, an alumnus of the USC Film Scoring Program and the Sundance Composers Lab, as well as projects like Netflix's The Defeated and Everything Before Us. But she's struck gold with several major projects this year... including one that has her on the shortlist for an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. If so, she'd be the first Black woman in the history of the Oscars to receive such long-overdue recognition. That project, of course, is J.D. Dillard's moving, effective Korean War epic Devotion, starring Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell (in his second go-round in the cockpit this year after Top Gun: Maverick) as real-life fighter pilots -- and eventual best friends -- Jesse Brown and Tom Hudner. Charting the course of their friendship over sorties and scuffles within a very racially-stratified US Navy, Dillard's work is understated in its power, anchored by Majors and Powell's wounded, vulnerable performances. And thrumming underneath their interpersonal tensions and the roar of gunfire is Dancy's churning, propulsive score, one that pits steady synths and percussion with whirling high strings to contrast the powerful machines on display with the very human men who fly them. That's not the only iconic project Dancy worked on this year: she also provided the incidental score for Kasi Lemmons' biopic of Whitney Houston, I Wanna Dance with Somebody. Together (just a few hours before her Oscar shortlist inclusion was announced, mind you), Dancy and I talked about the long road she took to get to this place in her career, the classical influences that have shaped her work, and what it meant to her and her orchestras to get the chance to highlight the biggest moments of The Voice's life and songs. You can find Chanda Dancy at her official website here. Devotion is currently streaming on Paramount+, and Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody is currently playing in theaters. You can also listen to the score for Devotion on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Lakeshore Records.

It's hard to think of another songbook in Disney's oeuvre that has put a dent in pop culture quite like Encanto, the latest from Walt Disney Animation Studios. "We Don't Talk About Bruno," "The Family Madrigal," "Surface Pressure," all songs that have topped Billboard charts and dominated TikTok for more than a year now, courtesy of Hamilton scribe Lin-Manuel Miranda. But an equally vital part of Encanto's inviting world, an enchanted casita in which the vibrant members of the Madrigal family live and dream, is the orchestral score courtesy of Germaine Franco.   It's the score that made Franco an Oscar nominee, only the sixth woman in Oscar history to be nominated for Best Original Score (and the first Latina). And now, that same score is up for a Grammy for Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, alongside many of the same big names she competed against for the Academy Award earlier this year: Hans Zimmer, Jonny Greenwood, and Nicholas Britell.   Germaine's score for Encanto is inviting and magical, making expert use of a variety of Latinx instruments and musical styles to fill in the many corners of the Madrigal family tree. Colombian rhythms mix with samba and cumbia, alongside more vital, traditional orchestral instrumentation. It's a melting pot of influences that nonetheless span vast corners of the Latinx umbrella, making for a sound as narratively diverse as it is thematically appropriate.   Now, we welcome Germaine Franco to the show to discuss her score for Encanto and more.   You can find Germaine Franco at her official website here.   Encanto is currently streaming on Disney+. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Walt Disney Records.  

William Gibson is the father of cyberpunk, that most evocative of sci-fi genres -- where technology meets flesh in the neon-soaked worlds of the corporate-run near future. But explicit adaptations of his work have been few and far between: the closest I can think of is the wishy-washy Keanu Reeves vehicle Johnny Mnemonic. The latest, and most sprawling, attempt comes from Prime Video's The Peripheral, based on the 2014 novel of the same name about two siblings in a near-future rural dystopia (played by Chloe Grace Moretz and Jack Reynor) who become unwitting pawns in a game of wits and warfare decades further in the future, across differing timelines.   Westworld showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy port over that show's sense of dour retro-futurism into The Peripheral's sleek, minimalist designs and big ideas about the destiny of humanity. But alongside that sits a tightly-plotted and darkly funny slice of rural-tech thriller, somewhere between Ozark and, well, Westworld, with plenty of portentous omens about the destruction of the world and the dissolution of identity along the way.   It certainly helps matters that the show is scored by this week's guest, Genie and Gemini Award-winning composer Mark Korven. A staple of Canadian horror and sci-fi film and TV, Korven cut his teeth with Peripheral director and EP Vincenzo Natali on films like Cube. But his best-known work is easily his score for 2015's The Witch, for which he helped invent the innovative new instrument, The Apprehension Engine.   His works are crackling, atmospheric pieces that revel in their own discordance, banging and clanging odd instruments together. That approach dovetails nicely with The Peripheral's brutalist sci-fi minimalism, with a hefty drone of synth to soak in the proceedings alongside his homespun methods. On the pod, we talk about the Apprehension Engine, and how he approached his score to The Peripheral.   You can find Mark Korven at his official website here.   The entire first season of The Peripheral is now streaming on Prime Video. You can also stream the soundtrack on your preferred streaming service courtesy of Lakeshore Records.

Welcome to Right on Cue, the podcast where we interview film, TV, and video game composers about the origins and nuances of their latest works.   It's hard to think of a more overt lens through which to satirize the divisions of class more than through food: Fast food vs. haute cuisine, Michelin stars over star-shaped chicken nuggets. Mark Mylod's The Menu is a sizzling satire of the snootiness of fine dining, and the class conflicts it unfurls.   Set on a remote island that's home to one of the most exclusive restaurants in the world, The Menu treats us to a multi-course prix fixe of mayhem centered around high-profile chef Julian Slowik (a beautifully ostentatious Ralph Fiennes). But as the eclectic group of well-off diners sample one conceptually-minded meal after another, it becomes clear there's more than meets the eye for Chef Slowick's menu.   Accompanying each course of the menu Mylod, his cast, and screenwriters Seth Reiss and Will Tracy have set out for us is a cheekily propulsive score courtesy of Hereditary composer Colin Stetson. He lays out ornate soundscapes and unusual instruments (glasses played with chopsticks, pans as percussion) with the same perverse mirth as Fiennes' devilish chef, granting each course, and each sick joke on Chef Slowik's guests, a unique voice. And all throughout lays an arch counterpoint to the kind of chamber-music regalness we aesthetically associate with fine dining.   It's a pleasure to welcome Colin Stetson to the podcast to talk about all these ideas and more.   You can find Colin Stetson at his official website here.   The Menu is currently playing in theaters. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Milan Records.

Imagine a world where pain and pleasure are one and the same, where hellish delights await those who crave the extremities of sensation. That's the philosophical underpinning behind Clive Barker's Hellraiser series, one of horror's most long-running and iconic franchises, centering around the poor unfortunate souls who come across the Lamarchand Box, a mysterious puzzle box which -- when opened -- unleashes the Cenobites, a cabal of deformed hedonists riding the razor's edge of sadomasochistic experience.   It's a series that's run across eleven films over thirty-plus years, the latest being a radical reimagining courtesy of The Night House and Relative director David Bruckner. This time, series icon Pinhead is reimagined as a "dark priest" played by Sense8's Jamie Clayton, who soon haunts a recovering addict named Riley (Odessa A'zion), who crosses paths with the Lamarchand Box after her brother goes missing. It's a film filled with grim delights and no small amount of squicky body horror, as our characters learn firsthand what happens when otherworldly forces conspire to tear your soul apart.   Just as the Cenobites explore the curious intersections between blood and beauty, so does Bruckner's regular composer, Ben Lovett, experiment with different configurations of his musical puzzle box. In addition to his distinctive use of electronic elements and discordant, warped instrumentation, he finds ways to weave in Christopher Young's classic theme from the 1991 original, tying it to Hellraisers of the past while cementing Bruckner's version as its own unique beast.   Now, Ben and I talk about his score to Hellraiser, his collaboration with David Bruckner, and much more (alongside commentary tracks from the score).   You can find Ben Lovett at his official website here.   Hellraiser is currently streaming on Hulu. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Lakeshore Records.

When Outer Wilds was released in 2019, it felt like a casual revolution of not just adventure games as a genre but video game music as a whole. The game is a sprawling yet intimate time-loop adventure in which you play an archaeologist/astronaut in a distant system, solving the mystery of why your sun keeps exploding twenty-some minutes after you wake up. And through its elegant, cozy presentation and the banjo-forward music of BAFTA-nominated composer Andrew Prahlow, it also explored ideas of our own significance in the grand scheme of the universe.   The success of both game and soundtrack led Prahlow back to Outer Wilds for its expansion, Echoes of the Eye, giving him a chance to go back to the camping-out-in-space feel of the original while exploring new, alien territory to match the new ring world your character encounters in the DLC. What's more, he followed up the expansion's soundtrack with "The Lost Reels," which add six extended musical suites that help express some of the complex, post-rock ideas explored in the score -- from the orchestral expansiveness of "Older Than the Universe" to the playful string-quartet drive of "The Spirit of Water."   On today's podcast, I sat down with Prahlow to discuss the big, heady ideas Outer Wilds expresses in both game and music form, his own response to the score's breakaway success, and how it feels to be in consideration for the GRAMMY's first award for video game music composition. (He also takes us through a few tracks from The Lost Reels with some exclusive commentaries.)   You can find Andrew Prahlow at his official website here.   Outer Wilds is currently available on Xbox, Steam, and PlayStation. You can also listen to The Lost Reels on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Andrew Prahlow.

Much has been said and written about just the sheer size and scale (and cost) of Prime Video's new flagship series, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. And for good reason: Amazon's spent nearly a billion dollars on a series adapting arguably the most acclaimed and well-regarded fantasy series of all time, notably opting to tell a story set hundreds of years before Frodo's journey to destroy the One Ring. Instead, Rings of Power is content to slowly build a years-long tale in the Second Age, back when Galadriel was a brash young warrior, the Hobbits were called Harfoots, and Sauron was just a shadow.   A story this sprawling and expensive-looking requires a similarly robust score, one that evokes the sweep of the iconic Howard Shore scores for the Peter Jackson films and sets it apart as its own thing. While Shore composed a haunting title theme, the rest of the score goes to acclaimed composer (and previous guest) Bear McCreary, whose expertise with big-budget television and love of world music sounds adds a welcome variety to the show's sound.   But with the sheer amount of score required for the series, sometimes composers need a little help, and that's where orchestrators Tutti Music Partners come in. Longtime collaborators with Bear since 2009, Jonathan Beard, Ed Trybek, and Henri Wilkinson are the ones who help put Bear's music to paper, interpret where possible, and help produce the score itself.   I was lucky enough to sit down with Jonathan, Ed, and Henri to talk about their working relationship with Bear, what an orchestrator does, and how their role was uniquely suited to bringing Rings of Power's music to life.   You can find Tutti Music Partners at their official website here.   Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is currently streaming on Prime Video. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Amazon.

Welcome to Right on Cue, the podcast where we interview film, TV, and video game composers about origins and nuances of their latest works, as well as select commentaries from some of the score's most important tracks.   This far into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's an undeniable challenge to find new musical avenues to tread, as some of our previous episodes talking to Marvel composers can attest. But just as the Disney+ Marvel series are dabbling in new genres, so too is She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, which is less a superhero action show than an Ally McBeal-styled legal dramedy about Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) and her attempts to balance her high-paying legal career with life as a single woman. (And, of course, the fact she can turn into an invincible green giantess at will.) As such, She-Hulk demands a milder, more contemplative musical palate than you might expect from the smash and crash of a lot of Marvel works.   That's where Irish composer and orchestrator Amie Doherty comes in, underscoring the series with a sprightly, nimble score matching the quick-witted chicanery of Jen's antics with the bold, brassy fanfare of a superhero series. And this week, she joins me on the show to talk about her beginnings as a Sundance Composer Fellow, working within the Marvel ecosystem, and taking diverse musical swings at the many different cases and chases we see every week (with some exclusive track commentaries along the way).   You can find Amie Doherty at her official website here.   She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is currently streaming on Disney+, and you can listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Marvel Music.

Of all the actors to get a John Wick-ian action vehicle, Allison Janney might just be the last one on your list. And yet, here we are with Anna Foerster's Lou, the straight-to-Netflix action thriller starring the West Wing legend, now transformed into a former CIA fixer who's given up the life for an isolated existence on a remote coastal island. But her skills are needed once more when her neighbor (Jurnee Smollett) comes to her in the middle of a rainstorm for help: Her daughter's been kidnapped, and her dangerous ex-husband (Logan Marshall-Green) is the culprit. Together, the two must track them through the mud-soaked forest, Lou calling on her particular set of skills to do one last bit of good.   It's a dark, grimy, psychologically complex thriller, with its crackling corners illuminated by Nima Fakhrara's richly textured score. The Iranian-born composer has worked on everything from video games like Detroit: Become Human to ad campaigns for Balenciaga. His work is characterized by his incredible use of synths and staggered, rhythmic vocals. His score for 2019's Becky, another action thriller involving a transformed character actor (Kevin James), is a muscular, primal scream of a score. Lou follows in a quieter permutation of that tradition. Clacking percussion, halting vocals, and tape-scratch elements from 1980s cassette recordings all culminate in a haunting sound that feels like the lost memories of an aging warrior.   And today, we've got Nima Fakhrara on the podcast to talk about his musical history, his experiences on Lou, and the innovative techniques he used to bring the score to life. (We'll also hear a few exclusive track commentaries from the score.)   You can find Nima Fakhrara at his official website here.   Lou is currently streaming on Netflix You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Netflix Music.

We finally get to talk about a video game score for the first time in the podcast's history! And yet, we're still intimately connected to the realm of moviemaking considering the subject material: Immortality, the new game from Sam Barlow, who made Her Story and Telling Lies.   Keeping with the interactive-movie brief of those previous games, Immortality is a time/genre-spanning mystery that tasks you with poring over the raw footage of three films starring a young actress named Marissa Marcel, who disappeared without a trace. By jumping from clip to clip between these films -- late-'60s erotic religious thriller Ambrosio, 1970s detective film Minsky, and 1999 showbiz tragedy Two of Everything -- you peel back the layers of Marissa's fate, and explore the very nature of media as a means to achieve eternal life.   For this project, Barlow enlisted the aid of twice-Emmy-nominated composer Nainita Desai, who also scored Telling Lies, to build the musical world of Immortality. Rather than scoring to genre specificity, Desai built three major themes exploring unique ideas spread among the three films: religion, life, and art. And, of course, she finds ways to subvert and play with those ideas, giving her lush, suspenseful orchestrations a feeling of cohesion while guiding the player through the emotional journey we share with Marissa.   I was delighted to have Nainita on the show to talk about her journey, her influences, her unique working relationship with Barlow, and the cinematic influences she drew from as she stitched these three celluloid worlds together. (Plus, stay tuned for track commentaries breaking down these motifs in greater depth.)   You can find Nainita Desai on her official website here.   Immortality is available to play on Steam, Netflix Games, and Xbox (free on Day One if you have Game Pass) You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Lakeshore Records.

As the Emmys swerve just around the corner, I wanted to take a look at one of the year's best shows -- Showtime's Yellowjackets, which is currently up for three Emmys, including Outstanding Drama Series. The witty, darkly comic series tracks the trials and traumas of a high school girls' soccer team stranded in the mountains by a plane crash, and the ways their situation ripples through into the future of the survivors decades later. It's a (literally) killer showcase for its cast, including Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, and Juliette Lewis as adult versions of the crash's few remaining survivors. And the story is filled with amputations, poisonings, blood sacrifices, and explosions -- and that's only in one-half of the show's time-hopping tragedy. With its heady mix of Lost and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it's easy to see why it's getting so much praise. One hardly-undersung element, ironically enough, is the score courtesy of Craig Wedren and this week's guest, Anna Waronker. A veteran of the LA  alternative/indie scene, Waronker made her bones as frontwoman of alt-rock band that dog, she soon moved into film and TV composing with films like Josie and the Pussycats and, most recently, shows like Hulu's Shrill. Those grungy alt-rock roots are in full force in her and Wedren's work on the Yellowjackets, personified in its earworm of an opening title track, "No Return." This week, I'm here with Anna to talk about coming up as a composer, how her riot-grrl sensibilities translated to film and TV scoring, and the subversive approaches she and Wedren took to Yellowjackets (as well as her solo work for fellow Showtime comedy I Love This For You. Both Yellowjackets and I Love This For You are currently streamable on Showtime. You can also listen to the score for the first season of Yellowjackets on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Lakeshore Records.

While Apple TV+ is home to some of the biggest shows on TV -- your Teds Lasso, your Severances -- some of its best, most beguiling shows and miniseries don't get talked about nearly as often. Among those hidden gems is The Essex Serpent, the six-part adaptation of the novel by Sarah Perry, starring Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston.   Set in turn-of-the-century England, The Essex Serpent follows Cora Seaborne (Danes), a recently widowed Londoner, who sees her newfound freedom as the perfect excuse to pursue her love of science. That pursuit takes her to the Essex countryside, where a small town has been besieged by what's been reported to be a massive serpent. Some, including the town pastor (played by Hiddleston), doubt its veracity, but the town itself is convinced, and Cora's arrival just puts more fuel on the fire.   It's a scintillating, romantic, deeply textured series about the thin lines between science and mysticism, and the reasons we might believe in one or the other. Aiding the show's foggy atmosphere is its beguiling score courtesy of Oscar-nominated composer Dustin O'Halloran and Icelandic composer Herdis Stefánsdóttir -- a heady mix of string combos and acoustics, blended with textured sounds that evoke the rush of sea air and the twist of rope. There are shades of O'Halloran's score for Ammonite, which we've spoken to him on the pod about before, mixed with a tinge of the fantastic as airy instrumentals give way to darker, moodier modes.   I sat down with Dustin and Herdis to talk about all these elements and more.   You can find Dustin O'Halloran and Herdis Stefansdottir at their official websites.   The Essex Serpent is streaming in its entirety on Apple TV+. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Apple Music.

Welcome to Right on Cue, the podcast where we interview film, TV, and video game composers about the origins and nuances of their latest works and select commentaries from some of the score's most important tracks.   What do you get when you throw Brad Pitt onto a fast-moving train with a bunch of eclectic assassins, an army of yakuza, and an arch sense of humor? Turns out you get Bullet Train, the latest high-concept action thriller from John Wick co-director David Leitch. Simply put, it's a gonzo mishmash of action influences, from anime to Jackie Chan to, well, John Wick, with a storytelling style as anarchic and tonally playful as that descriptor sounds. Leitch and the cast aim for capital-r Ridiculous with every intricate fight scene, from a brawl in the train's 'quiet car' to extended riffs on Thomas the Tank Engine.   Rather than feebly attempt to wrangle that insanity into a sedate, consistent score, composer Dominic Lewis revels in the chaos, crafting what he calls a "concept album" of tracks that bob and weave amongst the rogue's gallery of colorful hitmen that comprise the film's cast.   The results are as muscular and propulsive as they are archly funny, Lewis hopping and skipping from hard rock to traditional Russian and Japanese musical modes to covers of the West Ham football team's official anthem. Whatever you feel about Bullet Train's very specific wavelength, the score is a joy to listen to and holds your hand through each zany jump in time, tone, and temperament.   We were lucky enough to sit down with Lewis for a good long while to break down his score for Bullet Train -- how a long scoring process aided in his sense of experimentation, the pinballing influences behind each of the characters, and how his own history of musical mentors helped prep him for opportunities like this one. (Plus, he helps us break down several of the score's craziest tracks.)   Bullet Train is currently playing in theaters, and you can listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Sony Music.

Welcome to Right on Cue, the podcast where we interview film, TV, and video game composers about the origins and nuances of their latest works and select commentaries from some of the score's most important tracks.   Today, we're talking about Spiderhead, the Netflix Original Movie that premiered last month, starring Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller, directed by Joseph Kosinski (who's already flying high this year with the whirlwind success of Top Gun: Maverick). But where Maverick is all massive, big-screen spectacle and Tom Cruise at the literal height -- or, rather, altitude -- of his powers, Spiderhead feels more akin to the kinds of thinky, patient sci-fi spectacle Kosinski is known for.   It's an eerie, unsettling film, with a suitably quirky score to match, courtesy of Kosinski stalwart Joseph Trapanese. The composer is no stranger to this show, having discussed his score for Netflix's fantasy series Shadow and Bone with us, and he's been busy since, taking over for season 2 of Netflix's The Witcher, Prisoners of the Ghostland, Project Power, and more. Now he's returned to the show to discuss the delicate balance of haunting vocals and electronic elements that make up his minimalist score for Spiderhead and how they weave throughout the film's yacht-rock-heavy soundtrack.   After the interview, Joe talks us through some track commentaries from the score.   You can find Joseph Trapanese at his official website here.   Spiderhead is currently streaming on Netflix, and you can listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Maisie Music Publishing.

While Netflix is firmly in the grips of Stranger Things fever, another, more quietly affecting horror series made waves through the back half of 2021 -- Mike Flanagan's haunting, meditative horror-drama Midnight Mass, about a small, deeply religious seaside town beset by a series of miracles. First, a new, charismatic pastor (Hamish Linklater) takes over the local church; then, a young girl paralyzed all her life suddenly gains the power to walk again. But before long, we learn the deep, dark secrets of Father Paul, as well as the mysterious creature who came with him, and the perverse lengths the town will turn just to get a whiff of its ungodly gifts.   Like so many of Flanagan's projects, it's a riveting tale that uses the aesthetics of horror to tell deeply personal, psychological stories. Midnight Mass ruminates on, among other things, the heady mix of grief and faith, the power of religious fervor, and the lengths to which we'll go to stave off the unrelenting specter of death. It's maybe his most personal project -- it's a story he's waited decades to tell -- which makes it fitting that his longtime composers, Andy Grush and Taylor Newton Stewart (otherwise known as The Newton Brothers), came along for the ride, having worked with him on nearly every project since 2013's Oculus.   The score is steeped in the show's Catholic milieu, comprised primarily of repurposed hymns, lovingly recreated and accentuated by the Brothers' understanding of Flanagan's mission. And together, we chat about their longstanding relationship with Flanagan, Andy's deep relationship to Catholicism, and how those dynamics informed their approach to crafting a score as significant for its moments of quiet awe as its sense of atmospheric horror.   You can find The Newton Brothers at their official website here.   Midnight Mass is currently streaming on Netflix. You can also listen to the score for Midnight Mass on your preferred music streaming service (or vinyl!) courtesy of Waxwork Records.

On Friday the 13th, 1980, humble housewife Candy Montgomery killed her friend Betty Gore with an axe, slashing her 41 times in her friend's home. The resulting case was a lurid tale of infidelity, suburban malaise, and bizarre self-defense claims (which actually got Candy acquitted). It's the framework for Hulu's latest limited series based on a true crime sensation, Candy, a five-part miniseries that ran earlier this month starring Jessica Biel as Candy and Melanie Lynskey as Betty. Conceived by showrunner Robin Veith, Candy plants us firmly in the low-key terror and isolation of suburban housewifedom, with both Biel and Lynskey's characters bristling against the deadening monotony of the middle-class American Dream, especially for women who've been told to aspire to that existence their whole lives. Jabbing at the viewer's subconscious throughout all five episodes is the tense, discomforting score courtesy of composer and instrumentalist Ariel Marx. A quickly rising star thanks to tense scores in works like HBO's The Tale and the 2021 cringe comedy classic Shiva Baby, Marx's scores are punctuated with atonal, textured strings and woodwinds, constantly clawing at the carpeted edges of the subconscious to see what lies beneath. For Candy, Marx's killer command of unease is in full force, from the helter-skelter back and forth between piano and string in the eerie title sequence to the droning synths and electronic elements that spike through the veneer of normalcy Candy has set up for herself. Marx sat down with me the week of Candy's airing to discuss her history as an instrumentalist and her love of strings. But most importantly, we break down the fundamental components of the "oppressive sameness" of Candy's spine-tingling score. You can find Ariel Marx at her official website here. You can watch all five episodes of Candy on Hulu. You can also listen to the score for Candy on your preferred music streaming service.

Films about sex are rare, films about porn even rarer. And when they do arrive, more often than not they're one-handed, moralistic tales of the subjugation and exploitation women experience in the porn industry. Ninja Thyberg's Pleasure, which we reviewed out of Sundance 2021 and is hitting wide release in America today, is more nuanced and complicated than that. Following a newly-arrived transplant from Sweden named Jessica (Sofia Kappel), who's landed in LA to break into porn, Pleasure refreshes by viewing this star-is-born narrative through the female gaze, and a surprising frankness about the need for consent and the complex power dynamics that happen for women in porn. Yes, there are the leering, predatory men for whom Thyberg's camera acts as their eye, gazing upon Jessica (who enters the industry under the nom de plume Bella Cherry) with all the ravenous hunger of the Big Bad Wolf. But as she learns more about her boundaries (and which ones she'll have to break to make it), Thyberg allows Bella to find a sense of power and assertiveness from time to time. Rather than vilifying or valorizing the adult film industry, Pleasure simply becomes a frank, dreamlike character study of how one woman navigates it, and finds her own avenues for pleasure and confidence even as it threatens to consume her.   Aiding that is the idiosyncratic score from Swedish composer Karl Frid, one half of the fraternal duo Frid & Frid with his brother Par. An experienced hand at Swedish film and television, Frid takes to this score with remarkable grace and inventiveness, charting Bella's voice between the twin poles of sacred opera and head-banging hip hop -- two contrasting sounds that operate as distinct expressions of Bella's own voice and confidence, intertwining in some of the film's most eye-opening moments.  Centering female voices in the score, whether through soprano Caroline Gentele's operatic tones, or rapper-singer Mapei's aggressive, empowering lyrics, helps craft a musical universe within Bella's psyche, as well as the complex, morally grey universe of Pleasure.   Frid sat down with me to talk about how he was introduced to the project, finding that balance between the film's complex, contrasting tones, and locking down the spiritual narration of Bella's journey through the twin voices of the music.   You can find Frid & Frid at their official website here.   Pleasure comes to theaters May 13th. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Frid & Frid and Sony Music.

One of the most heartening things about Disney+'s run of Marvel TV shows is that they seem to be an interesting staging ground for new ideas, the exploration of new communities, and -- most importantly for our interests -- new artists to reach broader audiences. That's certainly the case with Marvel's latest series in the MCU, Moon Knight, which sees Oscar Isaac as Marc Spector/Steven Grant, a pair of dissociative identities sharing the same body, which also happens to be able to summon the spirit of the Egyptian god Khonsu and turn them into the avenging superhero Moon Knight.   The series itself is a brisk, fun Indiana Jones-type adventure, wafting between breezy action sequences and more sobering explorations of the trauma of mental illness, child abuse, and more. But given its Egyptian setting, it's heartening that the vast majority of the talent both in front of and behind the camera are Egyptian, from its director Mohamed Diab to composer Hesham Nazih, a veteran film and TV composer with reams of accolades and more than twenty years of experience in Egyptian media.   For Moon Knight (his first English-language score), Nazih crafts a score that is both indebted to the gee-whiz adventure influences of the show itself and the cultural markers and musical identity of Egypt itself, combining the two into a unique musical synthesis that echoes the balancing scales Marc and Steven have to achieve in order to make themselves whole. Egyptian instruments combing with Arabic-language choir and the bombastic, brass-heavy sweep we expect of superhero blockbusters to create something that feels wholly new, while avoiding the cliches of most Western scores set in the Middle East and North Africa.   For the podcast, Hesham was lovely enough to sit down with me (on the first day of Eid al-Fitr!) to talk about transitioning his robust skill set to Marvel, weaving his own influences within the score while avoiding stereotype, and how his score fits in with the show's use of mahgraganat (a budding genre of exciting, fist-pumping protest music making waves in Cairo the last few years) in the musical fabric of the show.   The entire first (and only?) season of Moon Knight is currently streaming on Disney+. You can also listen to the score for Moon Knight on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Marvel Music.

How do you put music to the multiverse? Especially when the multiverse includes sights as strange as rocks with googly eyes, people with hot dog fingers, and heads exploding into glitter? That's the challenge experimental band Son Lux faced when composing the whirlwind, two-hour score for Daniels' latest film, Everything Everywhere All at Once. Building on the devil-may-care absurdity of their previous works, like the music video for "Turn Down for What?" and 2016's farting-corpse buddy movie Swiss Army Man, Daniels starts their newest work simply -- a middle-aged Chinese immigrant (Michelle Yeoh) stresses about losing her laundromat and pleasing her visiting father. But before long, her distant husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) informs her that he's from a different universe, and she's the only person who's able to stop a chaotic force of destruction from destroying the multiverse as we know it. Kung fu fights, slapstick, and drama-filled confessions follow, spanning a million different genres, modes, and senses of humor. Keeping up with such whirlwind intensity in the score is no small feat, but it's one that LA-based experimental trio Son Lux leaned into with aplomb in their first feature film score as a collective. Comprised of founder Ryan Lott and collaborators Ian Chang and Rafiq Bhatia, Lux's sound to date feels airy, ambient and cosmic, albums like their Tomorrows trilogy already capturing some of the kaleidoscopic grandeur Everything Everywhere needs. And indeed, the score itself matches that dynamism, as zany and nostalgic as it needs to be in the needs of the moment while still maintaining a cohesive throughline. Now that the film's been out for a few weeks, I sat down with Son Lux member Rafiq Bhatia to talk about the film's soundtrack, Daniels' unusual collaborative processes, and the challenges of building a house around a single chair... metaphorically, of course. You can find Son Lux at their official website here. Everything Everywhere All at Once is currently playing in theaters everywhere. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of A24 Music.

In a world where so many people have learned to start working from home the last couple of  years(and many still do), the phrase "don't take your work home with you" has become ever more dubious. But what if you could really leave it all at the office -- not just your work, but your memories of doing that work? That's the eerie premise of Apple TV+'s latest series, Severance, a Ben Stiller-directed corporate satire that imagines a company that allows its employees to undergo an experimental procedure to cleave their memories in twain. One of you, the "Innie," only remembers the time you spent in the office; the other, the "Outie," gets to live their off-work hours blissfully unaware of the stressors or responsibilities of the job.   It sounds nice in practice, but for the Innies who actually work for the Lumon Corporation, it's a special kind of existentialist hell, where all they know are the four white, antiseptic walls of their office. And it's a place that Mark (Adam Scott) and the other three members of his department will have to navigate, as they work to figure out what their real lives are like and discern what they're actually doing for Lumon.   Severance is easily one of the best shows of the year thus far, flitting effortlessly in tone between horror and workplace comedy and haunting character drama thanks to Stiller's stylish, unpredictable direction.   Aiding the feeling of banal claustrophobia the show engenders is the score by Emmy-nominated composer Theodore Shapiro, who's scored just about every comedy you ever loved in the 2000s (13 Going on 30, Dodgeball, Jennifer's Body). But his versatility really shines through in his work with Stiller, especially here, where the existential emptiness of Lumon, and the Innies' lives in it, is personified by ominous descending piano melodies and mind-mending instrumental distortions.   I was lucky enough to sit down with Teddy to talk about Severance, the challenges of TV scoring, stepping out of the comedy wheelhouse, and finding the right, restrained sound for such a complicated show.   You can find Ted Shapiro at his official website here.   Severance is currently streaming on Apple TV+. You can also listen to the score for Severance on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Endeavor Content.   qcLMwdMXGXnrdWZvMjqB