Ryan and Hays Holladay are composers whose practice extends beyond the traditional confines of film scoring. Their work, which spans interactive applications, albums, and narrative film, is defined by a deep-seated instinct for experimentation and a fluid approach that often dissolves the boundaries between sound design, texture, and music. This is most recently evident in their score for Zach Cregger’s acclaimed thriller, Weapons.
The score achieves its collision of jump scares and Lynchian dread through a sonic palette built within SLATE + ASH instruments. The brothers used the sampler-collage engine of SPECTRES to generate unsettling aural illusions and textural beds, while the interactive capabilities of LANDFORMS provided an environment for improvisation and experimental processing. We spoke with Ryan and Hays about this process, exploring how their intuitive workflow and the intentional use of silence combined with these tools to forge the film’s singular sonic identity.
The score achieves its collision of jump scares and Lynchian dread through a sonic palette built within SLATE + ASH instruments. The brothers used the sampler-collage engine of SPECTRES to generate unsettling aural illusions and textural beds, while the interactive capabilities of LANDFORMS provided an environment for improvisation and experimental processing. We spoke with Ryan and Hays about this process, exploring how their intuitive workflow and the intentional use of silence combined with these tools to forge the film’s singular sonic identity.
Your body of work is defined by a fluency across diverse mediums—from film scores to installation sound. How does the inherent adaptability required by this multi-disciplinary practice inform your compositional workflow for Weapons?
RYAN: Hays and I have played in bands together since we were kids. We started making music in grade school, and it was always about creating our own work, learning the skills and the tools of recording, and figuring out how to release things ourselves. So we have always taken our own path. There was a point at which I felt like we were going to playing bands for the rest of our lives, but as we got older and our interests broaden, it became clear that we wanted a broader definition of what a life in music meant for us.
Fortunately, we had a wide range of interests that went beyond just playing shows and producing albums. Around 2009, we started thinking more expansively about what it meant to have a career in music and sound. It started to manifest in ways that took us away from a traditional band-audience-gigging sort of life towards something that was a bit more experimental, installation-based, activation-based, and even software-based. We went through a period of just exploring every weird idea we had and seeing if it made sense to imbue it with music. That process—whether it was creating a sound map of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., or a multi-channel installation in a museum—somehow opened up a new path for us and also kind of lit up our brain in a new way. That was a pivotal moment where we shifted from one way of thinking of our musical lives to another. Scoring, in some ways, was a natural extension of that.
HAYS: To piggyback on what Ryan said, part of that pivot that he described was also a chance to step back. When we were playing live shows and putting out our own albums, you kind of hope that people would catch up to you or embrace what you're doing without compromise. What we learned was that if we created experiences where we're not the full event—like a score for the National Mall or a really interesting activtation on a river—scoring these locations became things that our friends and their friends were excited about attending. I think that lit up our imagination, and it became a new barometer for what's really exciting and what sparks other people's imaginations, as opposed to just the classic release-record-tour model. The scoring aspect allows us to be a part of something greater and someone else's vision. I think that's been part of our trajectory for the last 15 years now—dovetailing into things that are already inspiring and adding new contexts to support them.
Fortunately, we had a wide range of interests that went beyond just playing shows and producing albums. Around 2009, we started thinking more expansively about what it meant to have a career in music and sound. It started to manifest in ways that took us away from a traditional band-audience-gigging sort of life towards something that was a bit more experimental, installation-based, activation-based, and even software-based. We went through a period of just exploring every weird idea we had and seeing if it made sense to imbue it with music. That process—whether it was creating a sound map of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., or a multi-channel installation in a museum—somehow opened up a new path for us and also kind of lit up our brain in a new way. That was a pivotal moment where we shifted from one way of thinking of our musical lives to another. Scoring, in some ways, was a natural extension of that.
HAYS: To piggyback on what Ryan said, part of that pivot that he described was also a chance to step back. When we were playing live shows and putting out our own albums, you kind of hope that people would catch up to you or embrace what you're doing without compromise. What we learned was that if we created experiences where we're not the full event—like a score for the National Mall or a really interesting activtation on a river—scoring these locations became things that our friends and their friends were excited about attending. I think that lit up our imagination, and it became a new barometer for what's really exciting and what sparks other people's imaginations, as opposed to just the classic release-record-tour model. The scoring aspect allows us to be a part of something greater and someone else's vision. I think that's been part of our trajectory for the last 15 years now—dovetailing into things that are already inspiring and adding new contexts to support them.
Your work often exists in the tension between sound art’s focus on texture and space, and composition’s drive toward narrative. How does your initial approach shift when developing a non-linear, interactive piece versus a traditional film score?
HAYS: They both come with unique technical challenges, outside of the creative aspects, which is something that gets overlooked sometimes. With the location-based projects, there are so many unsexy and challenging elements, whether that’s making sure an area of a park has cell reception and writing in a way that accommodates that or just keeping up with the latest operating systems to make sure the experience works as intended. With making a film, especially in the way that we approached the process—which was coming in at the beginning of the post-production—it requires a lot of conforming and changing with the latest edits while still experimenting and finding what the sound of the film is going to be. We were conforming music to picture every day without even knowing if we were going in the right direction, musically.
The film’s fragmented narrative seems mirrored in your compositional process, suggesting a departure from traditional scoring workflows. Could you take us inside those early stages?
RYAN: The process for Weapons was unique in the sense that Zach really wanted to get us in very early. He really wanted to avoid "temp love," so throughout the process, we used almost no temp, which was liberating in a lot of ways. But it also created challenges. Because we came in so early, the film was still evolving. So we were in New York from when they stopped filming and started the edit and stayed for about five months. From the get-go, we were getting early cuts and just starting to write to things that, inevitably, are going to change. The first cut was almost three hours; now it's a little over two. There's a lot that's changing in the picture.
Zach really wanted to show this to an audience as soon as possible, so we were working very quickly to get essentially a full score done in around a month to be able to show at the first test screening. It was a little chaotic in the beginning, but the great thing was, because we did that work on the front end, by the time we were getting into finer cuts, all the big rocks were in place. There was never a moment of, "What is this scene supposed to be?" We were kind of baked into the DNA of the film from the very beginning. It was a great impulse on his part to bring us in that early. Even before the film was shot, we worked with Zach to spot and even score a lot of scenes with early demos. So we had a sense of what the sonic architecture of this film and what the elements were going to be fairly early on.
Zach really wanted to show this to an audience as soon as possible, so we were working very quickly to get essentially a full score done in around a month to be able to show at the first test screening. It was a little chaotic in the beginning, but the great thing was, because we did that work on the front end, by the time we were getting into finer cuts, all the big rocks were in place. There was never a moment of, "What is this scene supposed to be?" We were kind of baked into the DNA of the film from the very beginning. It was a great impulse on his part to bring us in that early. Even before the film was shot, we worked with Zach to spot and even score a lot of scenes with early demos. So we had a sense of what the sonic architecture of this film and what the elements were going to be fairly early on.
Your work often draws from a non-cinematic lineage, citing influences that shape your sense of musical architecture. For Weapons, the foundational palette is built from stark synthetic textures and incisive percussion. How did this specific sonic language emerge in your collaboration with the director?
HAYS: All of those directions were decided on pretty early in the process. The band Can was a big touchstone when we were spotting the script, as was the work of Carter Burwell. We loved these different approaches to percussion and momentum. So I think we knew that rhythm would play a big part in this, even if it didn't quite turn into those influences exactly. The script is so brilliant in that there are all these tonal shifts, and figuring out how that manifests itself musically—and a lot of times how the non-music supports those moments—was really interesting. Getting in front of that before we got to the edit was important. There's genre-hopping in the movie, both musically and thematically, and knowing what to expect when we got there was huge.
The score navigates vast stylistic shifts—moving between moments of eerie, chromatic orchestration and raw, electronic textures—yet maintains a striking sense of cohesion. What was the compositional logic that allowed these disparate worlds to coexist so fluidly?
RYAN: I don't know if we ever had a real philosophy for how we were going to approach it. We knew there were some elements that excited us from the beginning. The use of the harp was an interesting one, and to be honest, it was probably something we thought we'd use more of. There were certain elements that we knew were going to be a part of this: propulsion, rhythmic elements, and finding the right synth combination that didn't feel too retro. Things that felt a little bit otherworldly, but didn't feel like suddenly you're in an eighties horror movie.
Largely, it was a pretty instinctual process. A lot of it was just looking at a scene, looking at a character like James, and being like, "What does this guy feel like?" Zach really didn't want a lot of themes, but we would just kind of say, "What is the sound of this?" For James, the tweaker, I think Zach had the idea, "Let's try an 808 to start with." And then we threw in the sound of keys and a car door—things he might have in his tent. What is the sort of sound world of this guy? We were also thinking, "I can imagine this guy making a little beat in Fruity Loops or something” and that idea kind of gave his chapter a sonic identity that feels totally unique from the rest of the film.
But I will say one thing that I think connected all of us was that we really didn't want to overscore, and I hope we achieved this. We all adore and constantly referenced films like No Country for Old Men and Munich that have no score, and how much they achieved with silence. We all agreed that we would let things happen without a score when we could. There's the moment—and I know we're getting into spoiler territory—but the end of Justine's chapter where the mom comes out with the scissors and walks to the car. We really wanted to do that in total silence. What’s nice is that a lot of people think it is silent. They'll say that scene is done with no music, but in reality, there is a lot going on. We were really trying to get out of the way of it. I think that was the one common theme for all of us; it was almost the "do no harm" approach because there was so much already happening in the film and in the text that the subtext didn't need to do as much heavy lifting.
HAYS: The benefit of working on the same floor as editorial, visual effects, and all that is that Zach was sort of going in between these rooms. When you work with a director and you get notes, it's hard to take a swing at something completely new because they're worried they might lose what they like about something. But the fact that Zach could come in, we could all sit down and just try something left-of-field and immediately see if it works—without having to wait a few days to send off a new mix—allowed us to work really quickly and to try a lot of new ideas, many of which never made the film. And like Ryan was saying, sometimes it just made sense to not have music. Some of the more interesting moments came from that kind of process.
RYAN: To speak a little bit to Zach's involvement, he's an immensely talented songwriter with an incredibly instinctive sense of melody. That said, in a process like this, he doesn't have the time to spend all day in the music room with us. So he would kind of jump between the edit, VFX, and it made it so that one of us was always bringing in a fresh set of ears. We'd be working on something for a while, he’d leave for two hours and come back with a fresh perspective and say, "This isn't it. This isn't the right thing. We need to start over." That can be really deflating to hear, but it's also the truth, and it's better to know it two hours into working on something rather than two days. A lot of composers might spin their wheels trying to get something really fully formed to show a director, and then after they've spent so much time on it, realize they've been going in the wrong direction. Zach's limited time with us kind of helped in that we had someone who was still very much in the mix with us but also brought a little more distance than you’re normally afforded.
Largely, it was a pretty instinctual process. A lot of it was just looking at a scene, looking at a character like James, and being like, "What does this guy feel like?" Zach really didn't want a lot of themes, but we would just kind of say, "What is the sound of this?" For James, the tweaker, I think Zach had the idea, "Let's try an 808 to start with." And then we threw in the sound of keys and a car door—things he might have in his tent. What is the sort of sound world of this guy? We were also thinking, "I can imagine this guy making a little beat in Fruity Loops or something” and that idea kind of gave his chapter a sonic identity that feels totally unique from the rest of the film.
But I will say one thing that I think connected all of us was that we really didn't want to overscore, and I hope we achieved this. We all adore and constantly referenced films like No Country for Old Men and Munich that have no score, and how much they achieved with silence. We all agreed that we would let things happen without a score when we could. There's the moment—and I know we're getting into spoiler territory—but the end of Justine's chapter where the mom comes out with the scissors and walks to the car. We really wanted to do that in total silence. What’s nice is that a lot of people think it is silent. They'll say that scene is done with no music, but in reality, there is a lot going on. We were really trying to get out of the way of it. I think that was the one common theme for all of us; it was almost the "do no harm" approach because there was so much already happening in the film and in the text that the subtext didn't need to do as much heavy lifting.
HAYS: The benefit of working on the same floor as editorial, visual effects, and all that is that Zach was sort of going in between these rooms. When you work with a director and you get notes, it's hard to take a swing at something completely new because they're worried they might lose what they like about something. But the fact that Zach could come in, we could all sit down and just try something left-of-field and immediately see if it works—without having to wait a few days to send off a new mix—allowed us to work really quickly and to try a lot of new ideas, many of which never made the film. And like Ryan was saying, sometimes it just made sense to not have music. Some of the more interesting moments came from that kind of process.
RYAN: To speak a little bit to Zach's involvement, he's an immensely talented songwriter with an incredibly instinctive sense of melody. That said, in a process like this, he doesn't have the time to spend all day in the music room with us. So he would kind of jump between the edit, VFX, and it made it so that one of us was always bringing in a fresh set of ears. We'd be working on something for a while, he’d leave for two hours and come back with a fresh perspective and say, "This isn't it. This isn't the right thing. We need to start over." That can be really deflating to hear, but it's also the truth, and it's better to know it two hours into working on something rather than two days. A lot of composers might spin their wheels trying to get something really fully formed to show a director, and then after they've spent so much time on it, realize they've been going in the wrong direction. Zach's limited time with us kind of helped in that we had someone who was still very much in the mix with us but also brought a little more distance than you’re normally afforded.
The conventional director-composer hierarchy is often dictated by the logistical demands of filmmaking. Your partnership with Zach Cregger, however, seems rooted in a much more integrated and hands-on collaboration. To what extent did that dynamic shape the creative environment?
HAYS: Obviously, the stakes are higher, but it didn't feel dissimilar to when we played in a band. One iteration of our band was very much a studio project where we could all sit down, try things out, pick up different instruments, just experiment. It definitely had a lot of echoes of that, and at its best, it really had that spirit to it. It retained that "anything is possible" kind of idea.
RYAN: One of the gifts that Zach gave us was his ability to create a structure, a cocoon within the insanity of this huge-budget, major studio film, and it kind of inoculated us from the stakes a little bit. So, at its best, it did feel like we were just playing and having fun. I mean, there are times where we'd look up at the screen and it's like, "Holy shit, Josh Brolin is in this movie." But it didn’t feel too different from how we’ve operated since we were kids making music together.
Of course, sometimes you can't help but feel the stakes when you're working next to everybody else who's pushing so hard on making this thing really great. But in a lot of ways, that just drives you to want to make your part as good as theirs. I don't know how many films are done like this, but it was an amazing thing to be on the same floor as everyone else in post-production, because you feed off of everybody else's energy and excitement. Just seeing things evolving, walking by VFX and they're like, "Check this out," and they have a new version of something. That stuff happening in real time and that sort of feedback was a very exciting part of the process. You felt like this was a team effort putting this whole thing together.
HAYS: It really was a blessing how talented everybody was. Like Ryan was saying, each new edit we got, it's like, "Oh, the sound is in, it's so much better." There were new visual treats to see. Everybody was so talented and so committed, but also really fun. They really enjoyed what they do. It was such an honor to be able to work with people like that. And I would say that comes from the top down. Zach really creates that environment that's both hardworking but also one people really fun and experimental.
RYAN: One of the gifts that Zach gave us was his ability to create a structure, a cocoon within the insanity of this huge-budget, major studio film, and it kind of inoculated us from the stakes a little bit. So, at its best, it did feel like we were just playing and having fun. I mean, there are times where we'd look up at the screen and it's like, "Holy shit, Josh Brolin is in this movie." But it didn’t feel too different from how we’ve operated since we were kids making music together.
Of course, sometimes you can't help but feel the stakes when you're working next to everybody else who's pushing so hard on making this thing really great. But in a lot of ways, that just drives you to want to make your part as good as theirs. I don't know how many films are done like this, but it was an amazing thing to be on the same floor as everyone else in post-production, because you feed off of everybody else's energy and excitement. Just seeing things evolving, walking by VFX and they're like, "Check this out," and they have a new version of something. That stuff happening in real time and that sort of feedback was a very exciting part of the process. You felt like this was a team effort putting this whole thing together.
HAYS: It really was a blessing how talented everybody was. Like Ryan was saying, each new edit we got, it's like, "Oh, the sound is in, it's so much better." There were new visual treats to see. Everybody was so talented and so committed, but also really fun. They really enjoyed what they do. It was such an honor to be able to work with people like that. And I would say that comes from the top down. Zach really creates that environment that's both hardworking but also one people really fun and experimental.
The core of the score is defined by a very specific, self-contained sonic world. Yet, you deliberately expanded that palette by bringing in an external collaborator, harpist Mary Lattimore. What was the compositional thinking behind introducing her distinct instrumental voice into the existing framework?
RYAN: We're all such huge fans of Mary's. We have a house venue in my backyard, and she's played at our house. We just love her. Her name popped into our heads very early on when we were talking about the harp as a central instrument. I will say we probably planned to use her more than we ended up doing. We did some recording sessions with her, and only a fraction of it ended up in the film, some of it in more subtle ways than we had anticipated. But she's so wonderful. Just getting to hear her play these parts was inspiring, even if in the end some of them were pulled out. It was so inspiring just to hear her mastery of that instrument. She's the only other player on the score aside from us, so she really did help elevate it, even in the small ways that it ended up in the score.
HAYS: I think Ryan had the idea early on, based on the script. Not to give anything away, but the beginning of the movie sounds like a fairy tale. You have this narration and there's a fable quality to it. I think that was the genesis: what is an instrument that spins you into that universe, where it feels a little bit magical, mysterious, and childlike?
HAYS: I think Ryan had the idea early on, based on the script. Not to give anything away, but the beginning of the movie sounds like a fairy tale. You have this narration and there's a fable quality to it. I think that was the genesis: what is an instrument that spins you into that universe, where it feels a little bit magical, mysterious, and childlike?
A defining quality of the score is the way it dissolves the boundaries between sound design and music, often treating them as a single entity. How did this manifest in your process? Was there a deep integration between the two departments, and in what ways did the sound design actively inform the compositional language of the score?
RYAN: Totally. I think a lot of the sound design felt like score. There are certain things that might sound like sound design and are actually score, and maybe vice versa. There are some jump scares in the film that I think we did a good job creating with the score. But then there was a guy that came in, referred to as the "scare doctor," Kevin. He would change things slightly, visually but also sonically, and be like, "If you had something low-end here, it would be scarier." That might be the only place we had any temp, which was actually inside of our cues. He would put something in that would be like, "This kind of thing would make it a little scarier," and then we would go back and try to match that, just in service of making things pop a bit more.
HAYS: There are moments where just underneath the din of bugs and the sounds of cicadas, there's a little bit of menace. It's just a touch, but you just feel that something's wrong, even though it just sounds like you're outside. I think that stuff's really fun. Hearing the final mix, especially in the theater, I think both those things come together so nicely. There was a hand-off between score and diegetic sound. For instance, in the scene where Justine is walking around the back of the house, Zach really wanted to elevate the sound of the insects, but underneath that was a sort of Lynchian black noise. It serves more of a purpose when she goes to the window and it cuts out; you notice its absence more than the ambience entering. When it's gone, you hold your breath because there's no audio at that point.
HAYS: There are moments where just underneath the din of bugs and the sounds of cicadas, there's a little bit of menace. It's just a touch, but you just feel that something's wrong, even though it just sounds like you're outside. I think that stuff's really fun. Hearing the final mix, especially in the theater, I think both those things come together so nicely. There was a hand-off between score and diegetic sound. For instance, in the scene where Justine is walking around the back of the house, Zach really wanted to elevate the sound of the insects, but underneath that was a sort of Lynchian black noise. It serves more of a purpose when she goes to the window and it cuts out; you notice its absence more than the ambience entering. When it's gone, you hold your breath because there's no audio at that point.
Were there specific instruments or techniques, hardware or software, that you kept returning to, maybe as a motif or just from your toolkit built over the years?
RYAN: Our approach, in a lot of ways, was to do a lot of recording early on here in LA. That was more live stuff, more with analog synths. We love all of Soma's stuff; that's the synth family we gravitate towards the most, largely because they're so tactile and invite a sort of beginner's mind. In the same way SLATE + ASH is with software, it's about approaching it with a playful nature and figuring out what this instrument wants to do today. When we went to New York, we had a more limited palette because of the room and environment we were in, so we relied more on the stuff we'd recorded before, as well as software like yours.
As you do, you find certain sounds that become a big part of the DNA of the score. Two of those… one that we got a lot of mileage out of was a patch called "Skin Storm Inspectors," from SPECTRES which sounds like a snare roll with the snares turned off. It works like a different drum at every different pitch you play. We used that a ton in combination with Orchestral Tools' Monolith, which is an excellent drum library that's so well-recorded - its warm but aggressive without being grating.
HAYS: It's not incredibly common, and I don't know if we'll do it for every project, but we did use Ableton Live, just because of the speed at which we were moving. As a sketchpad, we needed the alacrity that it affords you. That played a big part in the process, not necessarily the sound, but the process of it.
RYAN: We love Ableton to death, and we've worked in many DAWs, but we just love the freedom that Ableton allows for. That said, there are a few things that would be really helpful for people working in media for them to add. But I do think the DAW you're working in impacts your approach to making the music in ways both small and large. I think working in Ableton did affect the sound of this more than if we had worked in Pro Tools or Cubase. It allowed us to experiment quickly and in interesting ways but also had its own set of challenges.
As you do, you find certain sounds that become a big part of the DNA of the score. Two of those… one that we got a lot of mileage out of was a patch called "Skin Storm Inspectors," from SPECTRES which sounds like a snare roll with the snares turned off. It works like a different drum at every different pitch you play. We used that a ton in combination with Orchestral Tools' Monolith, which is an excellent drum library that's so well-recorded - its warm but aggressive without being grating.
HAYS: It's not incredibly common, and I don't know if we'll do it for every project, but we did use Ableton Live, just because of the speed at which we were moving. As a sketchpad, we needed the alacrity that it affords you. That played a big part in the process, not necessarily the sound, but the process of it.
RYAN: We love Ableton to death, and we've worked in many DAWs, but we just love the freedom that Ableton allows for. That said, there are a few things that would be really helpful for people working in media for them to add. But I do think the DAW you're working in impacts your approach to making the music in ways both small and large. I think working in Ableton did affect the sound of this more than if we had worked in Pro Tools or Cubase. It allowed us to experiment quickly and in interesting ways but also had its own set of challenges.
That's a crucial point—the idea that a tool's inherent architecture and philosophy directly shapes the creative result.
HAYS: Yeah, one thing I love about LANDFORMS—and I think you could do it with CHOREOGRAPHS as well—is that we captured all this audio back here in LA and brought it with us. What's so great is being able to bring something that already has a lot of personality and your own ideas baked in, and then see what happens when you drag it into that instance of LANDFORMS. It adds new life and new happy accidents that I feel can only come by marrying something that someone else has made with what you make.
RYAN: One of the early experiments we didn't get to use was that I took a vocal from the movie Night of the Hunter. It has this moment where the young boy is singing to his sister in this boat going down the river. I was able to isolate the vocals and throw them into CYCLES, and it created this super abstract and ghostly chorus of children singing. I was like, "This is perfect." Of course, it didn't end up working in the film, but that sort of thing was only possible because of how quickly tools like yours allows you to get to something new and exciting and find new life in your own samples.
HAYS: One thing I've said to Ryan before is that a lot of software, especially virtual instruments, feels like a shorthand way to get to things that exist or that you've heard before. "I want this kind of trailer drum sound or this should feel like XYZ" and there are patches for all of that. I feel like what makes your products unique is that you're making the next sounds that people will be inspired by. There are so many sounds where you're just like, "I haven't heard anything like this." It's so exciting to explore.
RYAN: With your stuff it’s so easy to get inspired. With the click of two parameters, you're suddenly making something that no one else has heard. It doesn't take long to get into your own territory completely. Put those loops in a different place, change the playhead direction, drop the pitch an octave and suddenly this is something entirely new.. That's what's amazing about your stuff: you make it instantly inspiring but also immediately adaptable and creative for how the artist wants to use it.
RYAN: One of the early experiments we didn't get to use was that I took a vocal from the movie Night of the Hunter. It has this moment where the young boy is singing to his sister in this boat going down the river. I was able to isolate the vocals and throw them into CYCLES, and it created this super abstract and ghostly chorus of children singing. I was like, "This is perfect." Of course, it didn't end up working in the film, but that sort of thing was only possible because of how quickly tools like yours allows you to get to something new and exciting and find new life in your own samples.
HAYS: One thing I've said to Ryan before is that a lot of software, especially virtual instruments, feels like a shorthand way to get to things that exist or that you've heard before. "I want this kind of trailer drum sound or this should feel like XYZ" and there are patches for all of that. I feel like what makes your products unique is that you're making the next sounds that people will be inspired by. There are so many sounds where you're just like, "I haven't heard anything like this." It's so exciting to explore.
RYAN: With your stuff it’s so easy to get inspired. With the click of two parameters, you're suddenly making something that no one else has heard. It doesn't take long to get into your own territory completely. Put those loops in a different place, change the playhead direction, drop the pitch an octave and suddenly this is something entirely new.. That's what's amazing about your stuff: you make it instantly inspiring but also immediately adaptable and creative for how the artist wants to use it.
"I THREW THE VOCALS INTO CYCLES AND IT CREATED THIS GHOSTLY CHORUS OF CHILDREN SINGING. I WAS LIKE, "THIS IS PERFECT."
How has it been to have this sound world, which has been private for so long, finally enter a public dialogue?
RYAN: We all felt pretty early on that this was a special movie. But you never know how these things are going to land. It's not a meritocracy, so you don't know what's going to work with audiences. There are so many great films that just don't find an audience. And more often than not, big swings are not always rewarded at the box office. So we very much hoped that it would resonate, but seeing how much it has resonated has been overwhelming and incredible.
HAYS: I agree. Just working on it, you're like, "This is so interesting, and it's so fun to work with all these people and see it come together” but you just never know. I do appreciate that Zach really wanted to get audience feedback as much as he could. I wasn't there for those screenings, and I only gleaned what he took away from them. But I think he's the perfect marriage of wanting audiences to really enjoy the experience while being uncompromising in his own vision. For that reason, I think that's probably why it is successful. He had a good idea of how people would react in the theater, which I hadn't experienced until the premiere. There were moments that were hilarious that I didn't even know were going to be comedic. It's kind of amazing to experience that.
HAYS: I agree. Just working on it, you're like, "This is so interesting, and it's so fun to work with all these people and see it come together” but you just never know. I do appreciate that Zach really wanted to get audience feedback as much as he could. I wasn't there for those screenings, and I only gleaned what he took away from them. But I think he's the perfect marriage of wanting audiences to really enjoy the experience while being uncompromising in his own vision. For that reason, I think that's probably why it is successful. He had a good idea of how people would react in the theater, which I hadn't experienced until the premiere. There were moments that were hilarious that I didn't even know were going to be comedic. It's kind of amazing to experience that.
Now that the score is available as a standalone soundtrack, how does that process change your perception of the work? Does it take on a new vulnerability when separated from the image?
RYAN: One thing I didn't expect was the intrigue about this film online. The soundtrack came out before the film’s release, and people started to piece things together. The script had leaked, which wasn't great, but people were starting to connect the dots. There's a track on there called "The Swarm," which is from the penultimate scene. It's this beautiful thing that Mary Lattimore played on. Unfortunately, it just didn't work as well as we hoped in the film, and we just have it barely mixed in at the end of the scene. But when it was on the score and people started listening, a lot of people online were saying, "Oh, so this is how they're going to approach it," and pre-judging it, being like, "This is too happy. I wasn't hoping for this." It's wild to see something just get away from you so quickly. I didn't anticipate how much people were going to pick it apart looking for clues for the movie, not just the music.
HAYS: Yeah, we definitely thought a lot about changing the names of cues because we were like, "We don't want to be the ones to spoil this movie before it's out." The score came out about a week before, and it was like, "I don't want that on my hands." That was an interesting part of the process because I kind of assumed that somebody would be going through with a fine-tooth comb and saying, "Oh, we don't want to do that," but they were just like, "Here's the track listing." This movie has so much that you don't want to spoil, and they've done such a brilliant job of withholding in the trailers, marketing, and interviews that it was definitely a bit of a challenge to name these tracks without giving anything away, but still letting people know where they are in the film.
HAYS: Yeah, we definitely thought a lot about changing the names of cues because we were like, "We don't want to be the ones to spoil this movie before it's out." The score came out about a week before, and it was like, "I don't want that on my hands." That was an interesting part of the process because I kind of assumed that somebody would be going through with a fine-tooth comb and saying, "Oh, we don't want to do that," but they were just like, "Here's the track listing." This movie has so much that you don't want to spoil, and they've done such a brilliant job of withholding in the trailers, marketing, and interviews that it was definitely a bit of a challenge to name these tracks without giving anything away, but still letting people know where they are in the film.
That act of releasing a work is a form of relinquishing control—it begins a new dialogue with an audience, and its interpretation expands beyond your own. How does the nature of that dialogue change for you when it occurs on this massive, dislocated scale, as opposed to the immediate, physical exchange of an intimate, live performance?
RYAN: I had a moment about ten years ago where I think I might have even written this down: making music, even with an amazing collaborator like my brother, can be such an isolated pursuit. I knew I wanted to work with more people and not be the only one lifting this thing, whatever that thing is. This is really the ultimate form of that. You are playing an important role, but you are a cog in a bigger machine, and that's an amazing thing to be a part of. Being on the same floor as everybody else working in post, you become very aware of that on a daily basis. Just seeing the film come together, and every day it's getting a little bit better on every front—everybody's doing their part to make this film just a little bit better. Anytime you feel exhausted by the process, you are renewed by the level of talent and commitment that everyone else on this project is bringing. Just to be a part of a massive endeavor with people across all different specialities and talents is a dream.
With a project of this scale now complete, there’s often a shift in creative momentum. What does your current studio practice look like in the wake of this release?
RYAN: Well, we're already starting to work on Zach's next film with him. He's in pre-production on Resident Evil, which will be really fun and very different. We're excited about it. To work on something on this scale and feel so unrestricted—and in fact, encouraged to be as weird and relentless in our pursuit of the bizarre—is surreal. Seeing the success of Weapons is so emboldening because it feels like we don't have to clip our wings in any way. We can just go full force into the bizarre. We're kind of building on the same process with Zach, which is that we start very early, and then we're going to be in the post-production facility again. With Weapons, there was a strike after we started pre-production, so we had a long time to gestate on it. This one is going to happen fast; the film will be out in basically a year, so it's a very accelerated timeline.
"THE SUCCESS OF WEAPONS IS SO EMBOLDENING BECAUSE IT FEELS LIKE WE DON'T HAVE TO CLIP OUR WINGS"
From both of you, do you have a favourite cue from Weapons?
HAYS: I would say when Benedict Wong's character, Marcus, approaches the gas station—both times, but especially the second time—and has his altercation with Justine and Archer. That moment, especially in the theaters, feels really satisfying.
RYAN: That was a cool one because it happens twice, and the cues needed to feel related but distinct. They're called "Gasoline" and "Gasoline II," and I think that was achieved.
The one that stands out to me is "The Flight" on the soundtrack. It's when we finally see what the kids are running. To me, that's the most Basinski that we got. Disintegration Loops meets Ride of the Valkyrie or something. It took a minute to find that one because at first, we were thinking it was going to be very sweeping; we were thinking about a lot of harp, and it just felt like overkill. In the end, it became this very degraded sound that felt like it was constantly slowing down. It was a very simple cue with a lot of space, but I think it's so unsettling and stands out.
RYAN: That was a cool one because it happens twice, and the cues needed to feel related but distinct. They're called "Gasoline" and "Gasoline II," and I think that was achieved.
The one that stands out to me is "The Flight" on the soundtrack. It's when we finally see what the kids are running. To me, that's the most Basinski that we got. Disintegration Loops meets Ride of the Valkyrie or something. It took a minute to find that one because at first, we were thinking it was going to be very sweeping; we were thinking about a lot of harp, and it just felt like overkill. In the end, it became this very degraded sound that felt like it was constantly slowing down. It was a very simple cue with a lot of space, but I think it's so unsettling and stands out.
Interview by Kai Whiston
August 2025
August 2025