Right on Cue

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.