Ego Plum

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Ego Plum
Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation(s)Film composer, multi-instrumentalist, record producer
Years active1996–present
Websitewww.egoplum.com

Ego Plum (born February 27, 1975) is an American film composer, musician, and performer. He is best known for his work on

Kamp Koral, SpongeBob SquarePants, Jellystone!, Making Fiends and Harvey Beaks
.

Early life

Plum's earliest music influences trace back to the scores for

Pee-Wee's Playhouse created by Mark Mothersbaugh, Danny Elfman, and The Residents. His interest in The Residents was developed further, when two years later, at the age of 13, Plum's older brothers took him to a performance of "Cube E", a three-act stage show by The Residents. Plum has frequently cites The Residents as his initial inspiration to become a performer. "I became convinced that music could be weird, subversive and meaningful", he spoke of The Residents' influence, "I knew that one day I would be doing something similar". Plum immediately began composing music on his brothers' instruments and recording home-made demos on Casio keyboards with 4-track recorders.[1] Plum is proficient on multiple instruments and yet is entirely self-taught; his biography on the Making Fiends website claims his only formal musical training was completing a tap dance class at East Los Angeles College.[2]

Plum's other musical influences include

Carl Stalling's arrangements of Raymond Scott's music for Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. He has listed further influence from punk rock and new wave, in particular Devo, Oingo Boingo[3] and the Dead Kennedys, as well as the work of film composers Franz Waxman and Bernard Herrmann
.

Career

Early career

After making the rounds as a drummer in the Los Angeles punk scene, Plum's first break came in 1996 when he contributed several songs to the soundtrack of Blood Slaves of the Vampire Wolf, a no-budget independent horror film directed by Ed Wood regular Conrad Brooks. The following year, Plum self-released his debut album Anthology of Infection, Vol. 1, a compilation of instrumental pieces written and recorded between 1990 and 1997, establishing a website promoting his music and offering his composing services to amateur filmmakers. A second compilation of newer instrumental material, Anthology of Infection, Vol. 2, was released in January 2000 to positive reviews, with Razorcake calling it "simply amazing" and Style Weekly praising Plum as "truly adept at songwriting".[4]

Plum spent most of his twenties working in a cubicle at the University of California, Los Angeles, making music in his spare time as a hobby, with a wish to score cartoons. This want for scoring animation was one of the inspirations behind his first album, 'Anthology Of Infection Volume One' [3] In 1996 he composed the score for a film titled Blood Slaves of the Vampire Wolf, which his first credited role.[5]

Ebola Music Orchestra

In 1998, Plum began assembling the Ebola Music Orchestra, a ten-piece ensemble including a

BlogCritics, which succinctly concluded their review with "[Ego Plum]'s got skillz".[6]

Television

Whilst still working at UCLA, Plum saw a screening of

The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. Plum was ultimately not selected to score the series, though has since posted his original demos online.[8]

Plum continued his work in scoring animated television with the

C.H. Greenblatt, the creator of Cartoon Network's Chowder. Upon signing onto the show, Plum successfully negotiated the use of a 40-piece orchestra to record the series' music, making Harvey Beaks the first Nickelodeon show and one of the very few animated cable series to utilize a full orchestral score.[1][9]

Stage

Plum made his debut composing for the stage in 2009 with The Gogol Project, an original adaptation of three short stories by Nikolai Gogol created by the Rogue Artists Ensemble.[10][11] The Gogol Project opened at the Bootleg Theater in Westlake to critical acclaim, winning Plum a 2009/2010 Ovation Award for Music Composition for a Play.[12] Plum subsequently scored A Noise Within's 2012 adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and partnered with the Rogues again writing original songs and music for their 2013 production of Pinocchio.[13][14]

Collaborations

Over the course of his career, Ego Plum has collaborated with many independent and high-profile musicians and composers. One of his more prolific partnerships has been with David J, bassist for the gothic rock bands Bauhaus and Love and Rockets. In 2007, J was hired to score independent filmmaker Ramzi Abed's Black Dahlia-inspired feature The Devil's Muse when Abed introduced him to Plum's demos after Plum expressed to Abed a desire to help work on the film. According to J, he was "enormously impressed" by Plum's music: "All lush film noir atmospherics, Rotaesque strings and what sounded like the fever dreams of Raymond Scott. I had a partner in crime!".[15] After working together on The Devil's Muse, Plum subsequently co-composed and performed on several musical projects with J, including the 2006 re-release and re-recording of J's album V for Vendetta and his 2011 stage play The Chanteuse and the Devil's Muse and its soundtrack accompaniment.[16]

Black Francis

In 2009, Plum engineered and recorded drums and keyboards for the David J-produced Petits Fours, the debut album from Grand Duchy, a project fronted by Black Francis of the Pixies. In December of that year, Plum accompanied J for a five-song set with Black Francis as part of an all-star benefit show at the Echoplex in Los Angeles, performing guitar, banjo and ukulele on covers of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy", Daniel Johnston's "Some Things Last a Long Time", the Pixies' "Monkey Gone to Heaven", "In Heaven" from Eraserhead and Mott the Hoople's "All the Young Dudes".[9]

Gidget Gein & Steve Bartek

Plum befriended artist and Marilyn Manson co-founder Gidget Gein in the early 2000s, eventually composing original music for Gein's 2004 "Gollywood" art and fashion shows for his Use Once and Destroy Couture fashion line. Following Gein's death in 2008, Plum digitally released these compositions as a soundtrack album, also featuring snippets of an in-studio jam between Plum and Gein.[17]

Plum is a fervent admirer of the music and electronic innovation of composer Raymond Scott, and in 2012, he worked with Oingo Boingo guitarist Steve Bartek in arranging a live tribute show held at the Walt Disney Concert Hall's REDCAT entitled "Machine Man: The Musical Mayhem of Raymond Scott," which was produced in cooperation with Jeff Winner of The Raymond Scott Archives.[18][19] Bartek, himself a composer and orchestrator for film and television, had previously worked with Plum providing guitar and theremin for The Gogol Project's soundtrack release and currently produces Plum's score for Harvey Beaks.

The Radioactive Chicken Heads

Plum has worked on several projects with the Orange County comedy punk band

GWAR.[20]

Danny Elfman

In 2012, film director and Oingo Boingo co-founder

IndieGoGo campaign in May 2014, preliminary music by Plum and Elfman has been used in several promotional videos.[22]

Discography

Solo releases

Filmography

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