Release Date: 12/31/11

• Rhythm and lead guitars on “I Know It’s Over”

Description: The Smiths were one of the U.K.’s brightest pop acts of the ’80s, with singer Morrissey setting his witty and emotionally honest lyrics against Johnny Marr’s serpentine, arpeggiated guitar lines. This tribute smartly avoids trying to mimic the band’s singular charm, aiming to redefine the songs as if they’d always been part of each performer’s catalog.

“…An awesome cover-compilation!” - Paste Magazine

Preview this album at American Laundromat Records.

WhereAreTheCures.org is dedicated to educating all Americans about the current state of the medical research enterprise, the barriers that are slowing the delivery of patient treatments, and the innovators who are challenging the status quo.

It provides a meeting place where patients, their families and all others can learn more, collectively raise their voices and gain momentum for change.

I was asked to develop the soundtrack for this infographic movie. I wanted the music to help create a feeling of urgency and then hopefulness to go along with the motion graphics that were created by Benish Design. We tried several different musical directions before settling on the pieces in the final version.

Emulating Yahoo’s Content Optimization and Relevance Engine (C.O.R.E.) this visualization reveals how Yahoo’s technology delivers personalization and optimization to their more than 700 million users, giving them “must read” stories that are interesting and relevant.

I created all the music and sound effects for this visualization tool, and did the same for Yahoo’s Mail technology visualizations.

You can check out both interactive visualization tools here.

The site allows visitors to interact with 3 levels of data, including exploring all candidates running in a particular state, those running in a specific district, and the individual details of each candidate.

Each of those views can be filtered based on the visitor’s views on the 12 key issues. As visitors rank the importance of 12 key issues, the lawn signs respond by jumping forward and back to show the similarity of their candidates.

I designed all the sound and music for VoteEasy.org, and worked closely with Periscopic while the site was being developed.

The Ogilvy Agency and American Express licensed this instrumental, originally titled “Drunken Whistler”, for the Amex Blue ad campaign. The song originally appeared on Luna’s “Close Cover Before Striking” EP. We worked with Ogilvy to edit and modify the  tune for the spot, and the “bubble” sounds were added specifically for the commercial, to emphasize the feeling of fluidity and flexibility.

Luna was asked to do the entire soundtrack for this movie, which stars Aaron Eckhart, Thomas Jane, Paulina Poritzkova, and Mickey Rourke. We had to do quite a few styles of music for the picture as well, including some that were quite different from what we were accustomed to. Some of the source references for the score included Nine Inch Nails and The Prodigy, for example. I wrote the music for this scene, the opening sequence in the film. The director, Skip Woods, wanted something a little ironic and “lite” to go along with the scene, and this was the slightly tongue-in-cheek, muzak-esque result. We had a lot of fun recording it.

“Standard King” is a short film by director Renny Maslow. The film was part of a series of films produced by eBay, which were called “eBay-sodes”. The only requirement for the director and script was that at some point in the film a computer screenshot of the ebay website should appear. Other than that, the story could be about anything. The main character in the film, shown in this sequence, purchases a “PEZ” candy dispenser on eBay because the seller says it has special powers to make someone strong, confident, and irresistible. After eating one of the candies before bed, he awakens the next morning and is convinced that it has worked. He goes to work, brimming with confidence. – I composed all the music in the film, and this is the main song. I wanted this song to transition from a tentative, mysterious and sad drone into a nice, slightly sentimental but uplifting pop music vibe. Plus it had to have a slight touch of goofy humor to it as well. This is one of my personal favorites of music-to-picture scoring I’ve done.

“Ghost Ray” is a short film by director Dominic DeJoseph, who has shot several feature-length films and music videos, and worked extensively with REM, among other bands. This film was an official selection of the 60-second Film series competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008. I decided the music had to be a little creepy, and more in a drone-y, avant-garde vein, but needed to finish off in a slightly lighter and playful tone to contrast with the imagery. We were both quite pleased with the pairing of the film and the music. I’ve worked with Dominic on several projects, including composing music and doing the audio-post and mixing for two of his feature-length documentaries “Johnny Berlin” and “Johnny Berlin 2 – Notes from the Dumpster”.