Right on Cue

This week, we talk to composer Siddhartha Khosla about his twisting, mercurial score for Hulu's Only Murders in the Building, co-created by John Hoffman and Steve Martin.

It's a charming, unassuming murder-mystery-comedy series buoyed by career-best work from Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Selen Gomez, and as many twists and cosmopolitan affectations as the podcasts on which it's styled. And underneath it all is Khosla's score, a plinky, minimalist affair that makes sneaky use of circular motifs and chamber-music strings to weave its characters around the show's upper-crust New York environs.

Singer/songwriter for the band Goldspot, Khosla is also a three-time Emmy-nominated composer for his work on NBC's This Is Us, and has also scored Looking for Alaska and films like Queenpins. And now, he joins us on the podcast to talk about Only Murders in the Building.

Only Murders in the Building is currently streaming on Hulu. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of 20th Century Studios.

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The latest film from director Edgar Wright, Last Night in Soho, is a time-twisting psychological thriller about a young woman named Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) who moves to London to enter fashion school. Once there, though, the sheltered Ellie finds herself haunted by dreams in which she's transported into 1960s Soho, viewing the young life of an aspiring singer (Anya Taylor-Joy) and the impending doom she may be hurtling towards. It's a film as informed by 1960s British gangster movies and kitchen sink dramas as it is by Italian giallo pictures and psychological horror, which fits Wright's innately cinephiliac style. References to the films of Ken Loach and Michael Powell abound, alongside the swinging '60s soundtrack with tracks from Cilla Black to Dusty Springfield. But alongside those groovy crate pulls is an atmospheric score courtesy of today's guest, Oscar and BAFTA-winning composer (and regular Wright collaborator) Steven Price. He's scored works from Joe Cornish's Attack the Block to Wright's own The World's End and Baby Driver. His most famous work is likely Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity, for which he won an Academy Award and cemented himself as an idiosyncratic composer whose works blur the line between incidental score and sound design. Now, he joins me to talk about the eerie, time-warping score for Soho. You can find Steven Price at his official website here. Last Night in Soho is currently playing in theaters. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Back Lot Music.

Throw a rock at an LA-based thriller, and you can hit any number of stylistic signposts: neon lights, fancy cars, pumping dance clubs, androgynous threats in the night. But in Netflix's Night Teeth, the LA thriller gets some fresh blood - literally! - in the form of a sprightly, energetic vampire flick that still beats with the oddly warm heart of a John Hughes film. Night Teeth follows a young college student (Jorge Lengeborg Jr.) suddenly saddled with the responsibility of chauffeuring around two young women (Lucy Fry and Debby Ryan) for a night of debauchery. But naturally, it turns out they're vampires, and he's caught in the middle of a coup amongst the city's blood-sucking factions. To keep up with director Adam Randall's pulse-pounding style, Night Teeth makes great use of electronic, synth, and hip-hop music, anchored by an endearingly droning score from composer partners Drum & Lace and Ian Hultquist. Together, the pair have scored works like Apple TV+'s Dickinson and NBC's Good Girls. Now, they bring their significant experience with textured, layered synths and hypnotic beats to Night Teeth's neon-soaked menagerie of mayhem. Together, the composers sat down to talk to me about their long road to getting the gig at Night Teeth, the complicated process of working around temp tracks, and treating their score like a mixtape for the characters' wild, supernatural night in LA. You can find Drum & Lace and Ian Hultquist at their official websites. Night Teeth is currently streaming on Netflix. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Milan Records.

Grammy and Golden Globe-nominated composer Harry Gregson-Williams is no stranger to director Ridley Scott: First working with his brother, the late Tony Scott, on films like Enemy of the State and Spy Game, Gregson-Williams began working with Ridley on Kingdom of Heaven, and has scored several other films with him since (including his sprawling score for The Martian).

But his latest score -- one of two with Ridley this year; he'll be providing the music for House of Gucci in a couple months' time -- takes them from the Red Planet to 14th-century France in The Last Duel, which is currently in theaters this weekend. Telling the story of the last true royally-sanctioned duel in medieval French history, Scott's latest is a Rashomon-like fable that flits between the perspectives of the three people involved: brutish knight Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon), libertine squire Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), and Jean's wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer), whose alleged rape by Le Gris brings the two former friends to blows.

While the score taps into the big, spectacular motions we'd expect from the director of Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven, Gregson-Williams' approach plays with perspective in much the same way the film does. Themes overlap and warp depending on who's telling the story at any given moment, and certain scenes are scored in vastly different ways as we see them through new eyes. The medieval musical trappings are there, from countertenor voices to Gregorian chant evocative of the Catholic Church, whose reach informs much of the film's drama. But they also shake things up with guitar, taiko drum, and a host of other unconventional instruments that hone in on The Last Duel's intriguing streak of modernity -- a sharp reminder that the shame and pressure Marguerite experiences as a result of her speaking out against her rapist is hardly the stuff of history.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Gregson-Williams to talk about the unconventional modes of The Last Duel's score, his long working relationship with Ridley Scott, and what we might be able to look forward to in House of Gucci.

The Last Duel is currently playing in theaters, and Harry Gregson-Williams' soundtrack is available on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of 20th Century Studios.

Film scores don't often chart, but when they do, it's for good reason. In 2011, that happened to the piercing, airy, enigmatic score for Nicholas Winding Refn's neo-noir Drive, starring Ryan Gosling as a nameless Hollywood stunt driver turned getaway driver. It was a minimalist throwback to the car-based crime films of the '70s and '80s, fueled by Refn's own arthouse aesthetic and Gosling's stoic performance.

But even more than Gosling's scorpion jacket, it's the music of Drive that endures in the pop culture consciousness a decade on. When the score came out, it reached #4 on the iTunes charts and reached the Billboard 200. Much of that is due to the classic synthwave tracks by Kavinsky feat. Lovefoxxx ("Nightcall") and College feat. Electric Youth ("A Real Hero"), to be sure, but it's also down to Cliff Martinez's moody, atmospheric scoring.

Martinez, a Grammy-nominated composer (and former member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers) who's worked most notably on the scores of Steven Soderbergh, pulled out some of his eeriest, most interesting work for Drive. Analog synths dance with a mysterious instrument called the Cristal Baschet to help sell the '80s-tinged mood.

For the film's tenth anniversary (and on the eve of the soundtrack's rerelease on vinyl courtesy of Lakeshore Records), I sat down with Martinez to talk about his early days as a composer, how it feels to have a film score actually make the charts, and what exactly a Cristal Baschet is anyway. (Also, listen for a very surprising cameo from an out-of-breath Nicholas Winding Refn. I kid you not.)

You can pick up the Drive Original Motion Picture Soundtrack 10th Anniversary Edition vinyl courtesy of Lakeshore Records.

Given the sprawling nature of the decade-old Marvel Cinematic Universe, it makes sense that Phase Four would be dedicated to breaking apart the house they've built and changing around the pieces to see what happens. We've had alternate realities with WandaVision and Loki, of course, but Disney+'s latest, the animated What If...?, is a pure alternate-universe thought exercise. Overseen by Uatu the Watcher (Jeffrey Wright), What If...? escorts us through an anthology of stories that plays merry hob with the Marvel universe as we know it, placing old heroes in new contexts and giving us a side of these superheroes we haven't seen before.

What if Peggy Carter took the super-soldier serum? What if Thor grew up an only child? What if Black Panther villain Killmonger saved Tony Stark's life? These are the settings for What If...?'s nine episodes, often telling alternate versions of the stories we already know or plopping familiar characters in all-new settings.

Such scope, married to the need to touch base with Marvel's existing musical catalog, needs the deft hand of someone like veteran composer Laura Karpman. A five-time Emmy winner (and Grammy winner for the album Ask Your Mana), Karpman has written scores for film, TV, video games, documentaries, and more since the '90s -- a major feat given that female film composers were even rarer now than they were today.

In order to advance the cause of gender parity in film composing, Karpman co-founded the Alliance for Women Film Composers and is currently the first female governor of the music break of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Most recently, she (along with co-composer Raphael Saadiq) was nominated for an Emmy for their work on HBO's Lovecraft Country.

On this week's podcast, Karpman talks to me about her early days breaking into the world of film composing, the creative freedom working with Marvel's open hand and resources provides, and the unique challenges of forging your own musical mosaic from the shattered glass of the Marvel Universe.

You can find Laura Karpman at her official website here.

What If..." is currently streaming on Disney+; you can listen to episodic soundtracks from the series on your music streaming service of choice, courtesy of Marvel Music.

What lengths would you traverse to let go of your traumas? That's one of many premises swimming around in the hazy ether of Hulu's new series Nine Perfect Strangers. Created by David E. Kelley and based on the book by Liane Moriarty, the series follows nine people drawn for one reason or another to a mysterious wellness center called Tranquillum, led by an equally mercurial resort director plated by Nicole Kidman.

Some of them are reeling from the suicide of a family member, like the Marconis, including Michael Shannon's Napoleon; others, like Samara Weaving and Melvin Gregg's wealthy influencer couple, bristle against marital problems neither of them can articulate. But as they all gravitate toward one another at this private retreat, they learn to surrender themselves to the ministrations of Tranquillum's all-too-perfect staff... even as they become lab rats in an experiment they can't possibly see coming.

Swirling around the show's star-studded cast, which also includes Melissa McCarthy, Bobby Cannavale, Luke Evans, and more, is the score by Oscar-nominated composer Marco Beltrami (3:10 to Yuma, The Hurt Locker), alongside Emmy-nominated composer Miles Hankins (Being Serena). The two have worked together on several projects over the years, among them several projects by Nine Perfect Strangers director Jonathan Levine.

Together, we chat about the origins of their collaboration, what draws them to working with Levine and trying to find the sound of the mysterious Tranquillum and the diverse characters that inhabit it.

You can find Marco Beltrami and Miles Hankins at their official websites.

Nine Perfect Strangers is currently streaming new episodes Wednesdays on Hulu. You can also listen to the score for Nine Perfect Strangers on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Endeavor Content.

In the wake of Avengers: Endgame, the MCU has been taking bigger chances in Phase Four with smaller, lesser-known heroes, especially ones from communities not often represented in Hollywood. With Marvel's latest, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, we get the live-action film adaptation of '70s Marvel's answer to Bruce Lee, a superhero-flavored martial arts picture teeming with Asian and Asian-American representation. It's one of the more clearly-staged action films in the MCU, courtesy of Asian-American filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton, most known for quieter indie flicks like Short Term 12 and Just Mercy. The fights are inspired as much by Ang Lee as they are by Stephen Chow and Jackie Chan, with stars Simu Liu, Tony Leung, and others holding their own in impressive, frenetic action scenes. And at its heart is a tale of familial obligation, grief, and the need to forge your own path while also recognizing what came before you. To juggle this melange of tones and cultural touchstones, Cretton brought on his house composer Joel P. West, who crafts one of his biggest scores to date. In prior works like Short Term 12 and Mercy, West's work is small and intimate; here, he brings out all the big-money orchestral work Marvel cash can muster, tinged with just enough Asian influence in style and instrumentation to feel specific without exoticizing the setting (any more than a story about magical dragons and mystical arm bracelets can be, at any rate). West joins us to talk about the strange road to Shang-Chi, treading those cultural lines carefully, and what it feels like to score something this bombastic. You can find Joel P. West at his official website here. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is currently playing in theaters. You can also listen to the score for Shang-Chi on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Marvel Music.

Central to the horror-film feel of Nanfu Wang's new COVID-19 documentary, In the Same Breath, is the eerie, evocative score courtesy of Emmy-nominated composer Nathan Halpern. A prolific scorer of feature films, documentaries, and limited series alike, Halpern has brought his idiosyncratic approach to films as diverse as Chloe Zhao's The Rider, Swallow, and Minding the Gap. His upcoming scores include the Darren Aronofsky-produced thriller Catch the Fair One, and now, he joins us to talk about In the Same Breath, the differences in documentary and narrative film scoring, and more.

You can find Nathan Halpern's official website here.

In the Same Breath is currently streaming on HBO and HBO Max.

In the Grand Theft Auto-like world of Free City, Free Guy's Guy (Ryan Reynolds) gets to while away the days as an NPC in his hyper-violent video game world with a host of licensed music, courtesy of Mariah Carey, Digital Underground, Frankie Valli, and more. But the incidental score to Shawn Levy's surprisingly charming adventure film comes courtesy of this week's guest, frequent Levy collaborator Christophe Beck.

The Emmy-winning composer of Ant-Man, Frozen, and more, Beck worked with Levy to flesh out the more emotional character beats of Free Guy, while the licensed music did the work of building the game's sonic world. The results are sprightly and charming, Beck's full orchestral sound blending Guy's more innocent, hapless joie de vivre with the hard-hitting action that comes when he finally breaks free of his shackles and joins the game's world.

For the podcast, Beck sits down with us to talk about the unique joys and processes of composing Free Guy's score, how he blended the real and video game worlds, and the challenges of trying to record orchestra sessions in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Free Guy is in theaters now.

You can find Christophe Beck at his official website.

Free Guy's original score is currently available on Spotify and other music streaming services.