Producer Duo Crush Effect On Scoring Transformers: EarthSpark

Electronic producer duo Crush Effect, made up of Jesse Molloy – best known for playing sax for Panic! At The Disco – and David Veith – who play keys for Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe – chat to Headliner about their first foray into score composing with new animated series Transformers: EarthSpark, now streaming exclusively on Paramount+.

Many years after the end of the war between the Autobots and Decepticons, young humans Robby and Mo Malto are struggling to adapt after moving from Philadelphia to the small town of Witwicky, Pennsylvania. When they find a strange object in a cave, it grants them mysterious robotic cyber-sleeves and gives life to Twitch and Thrash — the first ever Transformers to be born on Earth. With new threats on the horizon, such as the mad scientist Mandroid and the Decepticons still at large, the Maltos work together to keep each other safe and find their place in the world while learning what it truly means to be a family.

Much like the lore that birthed this latest manifestation of the ever-popular Transformers franchise, both Molloy and Veith’s individual experiences in live music and production runs deep. Between them, they have produced with some of the biggest names in the world of music.

Having worked together under the name Crush Effect for nearly a decade, the pair were ready to embark on a new challenge. As seasoned touring musicians with their respective acts, and both growing up in the ‘80s, Molloy and Veith’s musical influences draw a number of parallels.

“I've always been really fascinated and intrigued by not only playing music, but the aspect of sound and writing it too,” Veith begins. “And so to bring all those elements into this project, which is very synth-heavy, and invokes all these childhood memories, was totally a dream come true. The writers, producers and directors at Nickelodeon gave us a lot of free rein creatively.”

Music has always played a huge role in the Transformers identity, so taking on the task of composing the score for EarthSpark – Crush Effect’s first big project of this kind – didn’t come without its pressures.

“Originally they wanted more of a traditional orchestral sound,” Veith continues. “And then some time later they changed the musical direction, giving us Tangerine Dream, Wendy Carlos’ Tron score, and some of the Atticus Ross Watchmen stuff as reference. It was very much up mine and Jesse’s alley, as we’d done a lot of that stuff before.

“The only real suggestion they gave to us musically was to try to punch up; it’s a kids show, but when there’s drama, they let us go as hard as we liked on the intensity of the score. They didn’t want it sounding light or corny in any way, so we definitely took that to heart when we started working on the show’s sound.”

The resulting score for Transformers: EarthSpark remains true to its roots – synth-laden and very cinematic, while pulling sounds from the worlds of cyberpunk and electronic dance music.

“The sounds of the ‘80s have become so prominent in modern music, so in a moment there could be a dark bass drone, and in the next some delicate or warm pads,” explains Molloy. “It was about bringing these elements and textures into each scene with lots of simple layering, filters and automation. It’s a very thematic show, so when things get dark so does the music, and we created recurring themes for different characters in this hybrid world.”

With both Molloy and Veith working remotely, it made practical sense for them to keep things in the box to make sharing sounds and ideas a more malleable process. They were very much conscious of keeping things in the MIDI world with plugins, giving them the ability to shoot cues back and forth to each other with ease.

“When we got the show, we stocked up on a lot of the sounds and plugins that we knew we wanted to use,” Veith recalls. “We made sure we both had the same template, and then started building channel strips and patches and all kinds of sounds for certain characters and scenes. The way we were able to share them back and forth definitely made it easier to build a world together for the show.”

In building said world, Crush Effect ensured their use of digital sound processing tools was focused and meaningful. One of the most essential plugins throughout the process, Molloy tells Headliner, was oeksound’s soothe2.

“Soothe2 is just fantastic when creating textures and layers – I use it all the time and it is so impressive,” he says. “If a synth has a bright 2K or 3K then you can just throw soothe on there without necessarily having to use an EQ, and it makes it sound more ear-friendly. I find it to be one of the most valuable plugins for sound design – it really helps with glueing the overall mix together, whether that’s drums, synths, vocals, or even your master bus. It’s an incredible thing to have in the tool belt for scoring and production.”

Veith agrees in that soothe2 serves as a huge time saver, with the ability to identify problem areas quickly and fix them transparently:

“Everything is bussed out into sonic groups – drums, basses, different types of keyboards, orchestral stuff, guitars – and on each one of those buses is a soothe that just sits in the template,” he reveals. “You can dial it in to taste as much as you want. The thing I love about it is that it just does its thing without you having to mess with it much. We have to work so fast between the writing, producing, mixing, and then the stemming out, so plugins like this are a godsend for sure.”

While Crush Effect’s music has been featured in various film and TV projects over the years, Headliner was curious to find out how composing an original score from scratch for Transformers: EarthSpark stacked up.

“We’re still using the same writing, production and mixing skill sets that we’ve developed together for the last 10 years, as they lend themselves really well to the sound of the show,” continues Veith. “The sonic aspect was familiar; the new challenge was, when writing to picture, things aren’t graded out like in dance music, so we had to figure out how to twist and turn emotionally to help tell the story in a better way with the music, sometimes in a very short space of time.

“We’ve worked together for a long time on a variety of projects, whether that’s writing for ourselves as Crush Effect, producing and writing for lots of singer-songwriters in Los Angeles, or doing work for hire on commercials. So Jesse and I have a really nice musical shorthand – we tend to like and respond well to the same types of music so it just works really well.”

“I think it's unique to have a partnership like we do, where we find so many similarities in our interests,” Molloy adds. “When we have a mission at hand, we're like kids in a candy store to get after it. When we get time together in the studio, sometimes all of a sudden we realise we’ve just been talking for four hours! There’s definitely some intuition there though, and we've always been on the same wavelength creatively. It’s something I find really enjoyable about our partnership.”

Transformers: EarthSpark is available to stream on Paramount+ now.