Dave Porter (Echo)

01/19/24 • 32 min

For nearly fifteen years, composer Dave Porter has been the musical voice of the Breaking Bad universe -- having scored every season of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and the film El Camino for good measure. Now, he plies his penchant for atmospheric, guitar-driven thrills to the MCU, with the new Disney+ series, Echo. A spinoff of Hawkeye, Echo hearkens back to the grittier, more violent climes of the Netflix Marvel shows, centering on deaf Choctaw assassin Maya, played by Alacqua Cox. Last seen betraying and shooting her boss and father figure, Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin, at the tail end of Hawkeye, Maya rides home to her small town in Oklahoma to reconnect with her roots and finish the war against Wilson Fisk that she started back in New York City. To score Maya's blood-soaked journey across Echo's five episodes, Porter made use of his signature mixture of guitar and synths to build a suitably neo-Western noir feel to the series. On top of that, the show incorporates many aspects of Native music and instrumentation, literally giving voice to the legacy of Native women Maya finds herself connecting to throughout her journey. Dave Porter joins us on the podcast to talk about the rigors of scoring for television, the role of music in a show about a Deaf protagonist, and the careful treatment of Native musical elements in his music for Echo. You can find Dave Porter on his official website. All episodes of Echo are currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Marvel Music.

Previous Episode

Paul Leonard-Morgan (The Pigeon Tunnel)

This podcast has had a long and fruitful relationship with composer Paul Leonard-Morgan, the man behind the scores of films like Dredd and Limitless, among countless others. But two commonalities have permeated the scores he's discussed with me: Errol Morris and Philip Glass. For the former, he teamed up to score Amazon's Tales from the Loop; for the latter, he's scored A Psychedelic Love Story among many other Morris docs, many of them alongside Glass. Now, both have teamed up for yet another of Morris' deep probes into an intriguing figure, this time famed novelist John le Carre, the author of books like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Framed as the prototypical days-long sitdown between Morris and his subject, The Pigeon Tunnel takes us through le Carre's childhood and early days with his abusive father, to his time in the spy service, to the ways those experiences informed his legendary novels. In so doing, Glass and Leonard-Morgan had to build a whopping eighty minutes of score, a propulsive effort that keeps the spy-thriller momentum of the doc going with cimbaloms and other features of the '60s espionage caper. And this week, we've got Paul back on the podcast to talk about his collabs with Morris and Glass, and building a score for the most mysterious man in the world. You can find Paul Leonard-Morgan at his official website here. The Pigeon Tunnel is currently streaming on Apple TV+, and you can listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Platoon.

Next Episode

Anthony Willis (Saltburn)

This week, we're catching up with one of the Oscar-shortlisted Best Score nominees -- Anthony Willis' score to Emerald Fennell's lavish, mysterious thriller Saltburn. Fennell's second directorial feature, after Promising Young Woman, is a kind of Brideshead Revisited by way of Tom Ripley and mid-2000s party culture: A mysterious young bloke named Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) follows his irrepressible attraction to fellow Oxford pretty-boy Felix (Jacob Elordi) all the way to Felix's palatial mansion, Saltburn. There, he immerses himself in the hedonistic lifestyles of the ultra-rich, all the while hoping to catch a glimmer of Felix's attention -- or does he? Reuniting with Fennell for his second score with her, composer Anthony Willis crafts a suitably Gothic sound for her idiosyncratic class thriller. Opening with romantic strings, transitioning into classical choir, then electric pianos and additional layers and textures, Willis draws the listener in like one of Oliver's obsessions, before disrupting the film's jagged classicism with rough modern electronic textures and a sense of sweeping orchestral doom. Today, we talk to Willis about all of that and more, including his longtime collaboration with Fennell and his early life as a chorister at Windsor Castle. You can find Anthony Willis at his official website. Saltburn is currently available for rental or streaming on Prime Video. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Milan Records.

If you like this episode you’ll love

Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist

Art is Alive

The Good Place: The Podcast

Switched on Pop

Episode Comments

Generate a badge

Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode

Select type & size

Copy