Apropos Pollymagoo - I’ve worked a lot with the Slovenian artist Tobias Putrih, and this was one of his first forays into film. We decided to use some sounds that would be loosely associated with the second half of the twentieth century, such as old analog synthesizers and prepared piano. I enjoyed working to picture in a fairly traditional way; at times syncing the music/sound very precisely to the images, drifting in and out of narrative, and from otherworldliness to banality and pastiche and back. This is a film where the architecture itself is a central character.

Food Evolution - Working on FE was a like mining for diamonds: A lot of chipping away, excavation, and exploration, until we found exactly right material. It was necessary to hit the emotional points and drive the narrative without being manipulative. I was lucky enough to be brought on board at an early stage in the editing process, so it was a true collaboration with the director. We approached the music by generating a strand of musical DNA (pictured here) and some variations based on this central theme. This is a somewhat verbose film, so an added challenge was to achieve cinematic support from the music using leitmotif without obstructing or distracting from the dialogue.

Mothertongue - Early on in our discussions, director Teresa Sendagorta and I decided to use a string quartet for the score to MT. But we wanted to treat it in a way that was less reverential and polite than that with which it’s traditionally associated. I decided that the entire score should be played without vibrato, regardless of the musical material, creating a kind of primal, austere and visceral sound devoid of romanticism or sentimentality. I think this turned out to be effective in capturing the pervading sense of melancholy and searching in the film. During the recording session in LA’s Ocean Way studios, something very special was emerging.

La Petite Maison - Working with architect/filmmaker Charlotte Skene Catling was truly enlightening. We wanted to invoke a gesamtkunstwerk, or totally integrated artwork, ‘un-freezing’ the music in the architecture of her Dairy House and the unfolding interior narrative of Bastide’s book, the film’s namesake. There’s a constant interplay between movement and stasis, dreaming and wakefulness, the elemental and the ethereal. When I was gathering ideas for this score, I spent time in the Dairy House, recording some environmental sounds and absorbing its atmosphere. My observation of the house’s interaction with the elements and its evolution throughout each day is reflected in the score.

Just About Us - Contemporary dance has always been an important part of my creative sphere, so I grabbed the opportunity to collaborate with Colombian performance artist Tatiana Barrero, for this live performance at NYC’s Gibney Dance Theater. In creating the sound-score for this piece, Tatiana supplied me with only a sketch of transitions in mood and intensity within timed episodes, some audio samples that she had recorded on train journeys in Japan, and some passages of text taken from Roberto Bolaño’s, Antwerp. I only saw the result of the sound with the choreography for the first time in the live performance and was very pleased that it worked so well! The experimental nature of this project meant that I was able to inhabit a creative zone where serendipity flourishes. Working like this is both exhilarating and precarious because you are always on the brink of spectacular failure. It’s the creative equivalent of extreme sports.