Dear friends,
Over the past year, we had the incredible honor of participating in a one-of-a-kind collaboration: recording the percussion for the DreamWorks animated film The Wild Robot. This opportunity immediately captured our curiosity, but the actual experience went beyond even our highest expectations.
It all began when our friend and long-time collaborator, Thomas Kotcheff, reached out. He was working on the composition team of Kris Bowers (!) and mentioned they were experimenting with a rather unorthodox idea for the film’s orchestration. The vision was to feature a quirky, earthy, mechanical, and unconventional sound world using found percussion instruments—essentially, anything you can strike, scrape, or shake—as the foundation for the score.
At the time, DreamWorks still needed convincing, so we recorded a demo to pitch the idea. Kris sent us a preliminary cue with percussion samples and descriptions as inspiration. We had a blast layering in sounds from glass bottles, metal pans, cardboard tubes, and more, hoping DreamWorks would share our excitement. Spoiler: they did—we got the gig!
The recording dates were set for the end of May. That weekend was an absolute whirlwind. We loaded a U-Haul with everything from your everyday drums, cymbals, mallet instruments, cowbells, and woodblocks to your not-so-everyday spring coils, coffee mugs, buckets, mixing bowls, chains, a ukulele, an oxygen tank, and nearly every mallet we own. These “instruments,” combined with the 80 or so microphones, filled nearly every square foot of the studio.
We had downloaded over 60 PDFs of percussion scores for the film, each representing anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes of music. Our task was to record it all. It was a challenge, but we couldn’t have asked for a better team of collaborators. Kris, Thomas, and everyone involved in the sessions were a joy to work with, guiding us through the process of bringing this magical score to life. Sometimes we’d breeze through entire minutes of music in one take; other times, we’d spend half an hour hunting for the perfect combination of sounds for just a few measures. We spent nearly 30 hours in the studio, but it flew by in a blink. The whole experience was electrifying, and we’re thrilled not just with the artistic outcome but with the friendships that grew along the way.
The Wild Robot is now playing in theaters worldwide, and it’s truly a spectacular film. We’re incredibly proud to have been part of it. You can also listen to the Wild Robot soundtrack on all major streaming platforms. We hope you enjoy the experience as much as we did.
As always, thanks for reading,
Ian, Jonny, Terry, and Victor