From & Inspired BY

Writer/actor/director/musician/et al Brendon Small would be a legend if he’d stopped with the creation of his Adult Swim animated series, Home Movies, in the early ’00s. Following it up with the heavy metal fantasy comedy of Metalocalypse secured that status for all time when it debuted in 2006. Spotlighting the death metal band Dethklok, whose popularity makes them the seventh-largest economy in...

Playing bass was love at first pluck for Marty Isenberg. His career as a jazz musician began at the age of 12, after losing his father to cancer the year prior. A skilled amateur musician, Marty’s father kept many instruments around the house that he would play for the family. After his death, Marty would pull one of these instruments off the wall and begin teaching himself how to play by reading...

As a boy growing up in Boston, Jon Coco immersed himself in the music of timeless bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Pink Floyd. Tapping into the music of the ‘70s with an impressive vinyl record collection, he started writing original music and dove into performances in the late ‘80s Boston music scene. Invited by an A&M recording studio head engineer to record songs for A&M...

The HBO Max series, Peacemaker, the spin-off from director James Gunn's The Suicide Squad has become a massive hit for the streaming service, and not a small amount of its popularity comes from its deft use of music. However, while much as been made of the series' use of under-the-radar or forgotten rock 'n' roll and hair metal, composer Kevin Kiner's work on the series, alongside Clint Mansell, h...

Pronounced “Voyager 3,” Detroit’s Voyag3r feature keyboardist Steve Greene, guitarist Aaron Greene, and drummer Greg Mastin. Inspired by the soundtracks to vintage horror, action, and sci-fi films, the trio creates experimental rock that owes a debt to pioneers like John Carpenter and shares a kinship with bands such as Trans Am, Teeth of the Sea, and Zombi. Originally directed by and starring mar...

Is this thing on? Sorry about the length of being gone. It's been a thing. But we're back, and this installment of Your Favorite Soundtrack sees us talking with Katlyn Conroy about the soundtrack to the 1974 Brian De Palma film, Phantom of the Paradise. Katlyn is a longtime music and movie fan, and her work in bands such as Cowboy Indian Bear, La Guerre, and her two new projects, Cheery and Dooms,...

Director Matt Hinton's documentary, Parallel Love: The Story of a Band Called Luxury, has a couple of very interesting wrinkles. Not only is the Georgia post-punk band an act you've likely not heard of, the reunited act now features three members who are Eastern Orthodox priests, and director Hinton is part of the band, as well. That's before you get into the fact that Luxury is an often-forgotten...

A project born in Bristol in 2006 and developed in the bohemian dystopia of Berlin from 2009, Antoni Maiovvi walks the line between retro-synth and horror soundtracks for both real and imagined films. Recently, the musician -- who is one of the co-founders of Giallo Disco Records, in addition to his own endeavors -- has released Church of the Second Sun, a collaboration with prog-rockers ANTA, as...

Formed in late 2014 in South Wales, Punk Rock Factory combine everything you love about 1990s/2000s punk rock, and reimagine classic and hit songs like you’ve never heard them before. From Meat Loaf to Disney, nothing is off-limits to them. The band rehearse, write, record, mix, master and film everything themselves in one dedicated space that they affectionately call "The Sausage Factory" and hav...

Sorry for the delay on this episode. I got a promotion at work, live shows are returning, and I have been quite overwhelmed. Rest assured, the podcast is still happening. I just needed to catch up on the things which pay money in order to get around to putting together the next few episodes. So, after much delay, here's our episode on composer Max Aruj. Up and coming Los Angeles based composer Max...

Del Casher may not be a household name, but you've undoubtedly heard his music. He was a member of the famous Wrecking Crew, played on Lawrence Welk, recorded Frank Zappa’s first demo, backed Elvis Presley, and built guitars with Les Paul. His many inventions include the Wah-Wah pedal and the Ecco-Fonic, influencing the development of electric guitar playing. In 1976, Casher was commissioned to wr...

The six-part Netflix documentary series Amend: The Fight for America, is executive produced and hosted by Will Smith and features a number of luminaries including Mahershala Ali, Diane Lane, Samuel L. Jackson, Pedro Pascal, and Yara Shahidi among others, and explores the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution—which, in 1868, promised liberty and equal protection for all persons—as America’s...

Los Angeles native artist Joe Cardamone has lived a few lifetimes while leaving a wiry dent in the global underground music and film scenes. The band that Joe fronted for 17 years, The Icarus Line, formed in East Los Angeles in 1998. Over the course of six albums the punk agitators became an underground phenomenon and the most dangerous punk group of their generation. The cult band the never gave...

Netflix's Kid Cosmic -- from Craig McCracken, creator of the Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends -- follows the adventures of an imaginative and enthusiastic boy who lives with his free-spirited Grandpa in a sparsely populated desert town. The Kid’s dreams of being a hero seem to come true when he discovers 5 Cosmic Stones of Power in a wrecked spaceship. He forms a team of loc...

The new film from director Chris White, Electric Jesus , tells the story of an '80s Christian heavy metal band, 316, and their struggles, trials, and travails trying to make it in a world in which Christians fear metal and metalheads aren't exactly fond of Christians. It's a heartfelt, really truly honest movie that finds new angles in following a struggling band on their first-ever tour, with fan...

Composer Emile Mosseri has, in his short career scoring feature films, worked on some very notable productions. He scored director/producer Joe Talbot's debut, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, has worked with Miranda July on Kajillionaire, and also tackled the second season of the Amazon series, Homecoming. His latest score is for Lee Isaac Chung's Minari, a drama about a Korean American famil...

Acclaimed multi-disciplinary music masters in their own right, Benji Merrison and Will Slater are now creating sounds for the screen together, calling upon their collective experience from a music and arts education, work producing and touring records, as well as composing for Film and Television. Both from the Midlands, UK, their paths first aligned when they were commissioned as a duo to score t...

Gilded Audio , the creative production force behind the podcasts Amy Schumer’s 3 Girls 1 Keith , OTHERtone with Pharrell, and The Pet have launched something entirely different. The Gilded Audio Music Library offers media makers a place to browse organic and beautifully crafted instrumental and atmospheric music to purchase at an affordable price for any creative project (podcasts, films, commerci...

Formed in 2013 in Toronto, Martin Macphail, Dean Rode and Tristan Tarr make up the award winning trio Blitz//Berlin. Since releasing their debut album Distance in 2015, the band has created three critically acclaimed instrumental albums, and composed the original score to feature films, shorts, and movie trailers, including the recent sci-fi horror comedy, Psycho Goreman . Blitz//Berlin's music fo...

I'd like to apologize for the delay on this episode. As we went to record, the trusty Nady six-channel mixer we've been using for the last decade died a quick and horrible death. This necessitated a trip to downtown Lawrence to track down a new mic input for the computer. Big thanks to Guitarma for having the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 in stock (and affordable), letting us get right back on our feet....

This is an episode that's been two years in the making. Can you believe it? We first invited Jon Dobyns to come on the show to discuss his musical project, Alone in the Woods, and his work with the anime soundtrack reissue label, Tiger Lab Vinyl, back in November of 2018, but due to the man's incredibly busy work schedule, it didn't happen until November of 2020. Then we went on our annual holiday...

Royal Dagger Ballet is Tristan Bechet’s first album as a solo artist after Flux Information Sciences, electronic rock duo SERVICES and Sauna Kings. The result is an edgy, opulent and mesmerizing compilation of genre-defying industrial experimentalism. Engaging in modern electronics, synthesizers and drum machines, each track is its different world, some cinematic and melodic and others rhythmicall...

And we're back. Every year, it seems like I hope we're going to keep going through the end of the year, but then end up taking Thanksgiving through New Year's off to deal with the day job. Thanks for waiting. I think you'll be pleased with this episode as our comeback. From 1989-2004, musician Paul Hartnoll was one half of the legendary electronic music duo, Orbital, along with his brother, Phil....

New Wave band Berlin has gone through multiple incarnations during its four-decade tenure, seeing members – including lead singer Terri Nunn – come and go over the years. After Nunn rejoined the band in 1980, the underground success of Berlin's second single led to their debut EP, Pleasure Victim, which spawned the national hit “Sex (I'm A...)” in 1982, followed by “The Metro” the following year....

Established by producer and director Charles Band in 1986, Empire Pictures quickly became notorious for the horror-comedy classics made during its brief but legendary lifespan. With wild special effects, outrageous humour and over-the-top horror action Ghoulies, Troll and TerrorVision were three of Empire Pictures finest works, and each movie featured an unforgettable score by Charles' award-winni...