Huge congrats on scoring Netflix’s The Hawk. What does this project mean to you, and what was the writing and recording process like?

Being our first TV show and biggest project in terms of scope and the number of people involved, we were a bit nervous going into it. If I’m being honest, though, I think we produce our best work when we’re just a wee bit out of our depth and love to jump at any opportunity to challenge ourselves. We’re huge fans of Will Ferrell and David Gordon Green, so we put the pressure on ourselves to create something worthy of their senses of humor and whimsy.

We worked most directly with David, the director; DeVoe Yates, the music supervisor; and the music editors, Steve Griffen and James Bladon. David came into the project with fun musical references, ranging from ’70s library funk to ’80s cop-movie scores with a dash of sweetness in between. Some memorable notes we received were, “I want this to sound like a hippo bouncing up some stairs!” or “More ALF, less Seinfeld!” Notes like this, and all the laughter that came with them, made the project a dream job.

We dove in headfirst, working out the instrumentation, composing themes, and crafting the sound of the show over a few months. Once we finished the first episode, which we worked on first, we had a good template for the rest.

Generally, Josh and I work out ideas together in our home studio, while Toto works out stuff at his house. We trade cues back and forth, adding, subtracting, and mixing each other’s work until we all feel like it’s ready to present.

You have described The Octopus Project as three solitary writers who start ideas alone and then trade them around. Has that way of working changed over the years, especially once you started writing for film and TV? Do you approach collaboration differently on a score than you do on a band record?

That hasn’t really changed over the years. Occasionally, we’ll come up with something out of a jam together. Some pieces in The Hawk began with the three of us playing instruments in the room together, but by and large, we prefer to whittle away on our own before presenting to everyone else.

We generally approach scores much like we do a band record: write as much as possible, bring it to the group, tweak for a long time, and put it out into the world. The difference in film is that there are more voices in the room. We bring the directors and producers into the fold, and they become part of our band. Each project has a unique personality because a different “band” is creating it.

It’s nice to defer to someone else for the final say. Making a regular band record takes us forever because we have a hard time deciding when to stop fiddling with things. Hard deadlines and having a boss decide when something is done stop us from overthinking everything and speed up the process.

You’ve had a long-running collaboration with Josh and Toto in The Octopus Project, and you’ve also been collaborating closely with directors on scores like Sasquatch Sunset and Butterfly in the Sky. Have you found the process to be different? How does working with directors compare to your long-term band collaboration?

Every director is different, but we’ve been incredibly lucky with the directors on all of our projects. In many cases, we start as colleagues and grow to become good friends. Trust, a shared aesthetic, and good humor are all important for successful collaborations, band, film, or otherwise.

We became fast friends with David and Nathan Zellner, who directed Sasquatch Sunset, after working on an early short film of theirs over 20 years ago. They aren’t musically trained and articulate musical ideas in interesting ways, which is fantastic! They have an incredible sense of musicality and are great at communicating the feelings they want to evoke, often some variation of “doom!”

Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb directed Butterfly in the Sky, and by contrast, they are both extremely well versed in playing music and know how to talk about things in musical terms, which is also fantastic! They have a deep and varied knowledge of music, so we hit it off immediately and could understand each other with little effort.

Much like bandmates, directors come to a project with a singular point of view that, when combined with others’ points of view, adds up to something much bigger than any of us could have accomplished on our own. It doesn’t matter if they can or can’t play instruments or speak in technical music terms, as long as their vision is clear.

Beginning in 2012, The Octopus Project began scoring films and documentaries like Sasquatch Sunset and Butterfly in the Sky. Did that shift feel like a natural extension of what you were already doing, or did it require a real reset? What was the most challenging part of scoring, coming from a band that writes songs?

Scoring felt like a natural shift. Josh and Toto were film majors in college and scored their own films and friends’ projects back in school, so we were all used to that process. Some of our early band songs began as scores for college film projects.

We think of our music cinematically, and a big part of our live show is the video content that we project alongside the music. Additionally, we started as a largely instrumental band but gradually started incorporating lyrics. Our lyrics tend to skew abstract, giving the listener the opportunity to apply whatever meaning they want, hopefully creating little movies in their minds.

However, writing music for yourself or your band is completely different from writing for someone else’s art. In the band, we can do whatever we want, which is good in that there are no limits, and bad in that there are no limits. I personally love the constraints of having a goal or emotion in mind when working in film. When composing for the band, I wouldn’t necessarily think to write a song about something as specific as a failed golfer who just wants to get back on top, but working in film presents those challenges every day.

Working in film is also a good excuse to stretch out in ways that we wouldn’t in the band. We are constantly consuming music and love so much stuff that doesn’t really fit into the box of The Octopus Project. Film gives us the opportunity to take chances, get dark, get silly, get weird, have fun, and experiment with music in ways that might feel out of place in the band. Should we do an instrumental bluegrass cover of the “Thong Song?” Of course we should!!

We started this band with the idea that it would be an umbrella under which we produce and experiment with music, visual design, fashion, and lighting. We love working together in all capacities.

You’re a multi-instrumentalist who plays the theremin, keys, samplers, glockenspiel, and guitar. Has scoring opened up your instrument palette? Have you explored non-traditional instruments or used traditional instruments in new ways?

Absolutely! For each project, we’re constantly challenging ourselves to see what new things we can incorporate, whether it’s playing an instrument we’re unfamiliar with, manipulating field recordings, sampling non-musical objects and turning them into instruments, or just getting a new piece of gear for inspiration.

For Damsel, I learned how to play the saw, which to me sounds and feels like an analog theremin. The film is a Western set in the 1800s, so we mostly used period-appropriate, non-electronic instruments: banjo, violin, saw, flute, wine glasses… None of us are particularly proficient in any of those instruments, but I think exploring new palettes unknown to us is where the magic lies.

In The Hawk, we sampled the plucking of rubber bands and used that as bass on a bunch of cues. Josh learned how to play tenor sax for the project and broke out his sixth-grade trumpet for much of the score. We also relied heavily on a cello we found at a thrift store and a viola that we found on someone’s curbside trash. Again, none of us actually know how to play these instruments well, but we LOVE to make sounds with them. The characters in the show are audacious and clueless and cheesy, so why would the music be anything else?

For Sasquatch Sunset, much of the score revolves around slowed-down, pitched-down field recordings. We kept thinking, “What would Sasquatch music sound like?” and the answer for us was low, slow, and human-like but just alien enough. We visited the set in Northern California before filming and recorded a ton of sounds in the woods. A large branch banging on a wooden bridge became the backbone of the percussion for a few cues. Toto recorded some ceramic mugs clanging together on a trip to Peru, and we manipulated those recordings as percussion all over the score.

When we were in the woods, we also used a MIDI Biodata Sonification Device to record electrical impulses from ferns, trees, flowers, mushrooms, banana slugs, etc. The box collected those electrical impulses, turned them into MIDI data, which we then turned into music for the film. What an amazing time to be alive!!

Interview by Jocelyn Scofield

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