For Isla Monstro, though, we weren’t chasing modern production so much. Steven pointed me toward Burning Spear and Weekend at Bernie’s II, and in my research I also found my way to Club Paradise, along with a handful of other assorted gems. A lot of these films had become hard to track down. They weren’t streaming or available for purchase. Luckily, my local library had some of them on DVD, and I found another at my town’s last standing video rental store.
The big challenge was building an orchestral score with Caribbean elements and figuring out where those worlds met. The movie is absurd and hilarious, but it also gets deep and intense. There is a real story under all the island chaos, and the score had to be able to follow that. It needed to party, but it also needed weight.
The thing that unlocked it was the vibe of the steel drums.
Once I found the right steel drum sounds, and figured out how to play them inside the orchestra, the score started to make sense. It could feel tropical without getting thin. It could be playful without giving up the drama. That balance became the sound of the movie for me.
I built the album with vinyl in mind. Side A leans into the party side of the score: reggae, soca, island rhythms, all kicked off by the original TV theme. The soca influence is older and more ’80s than modern, with keyboard stabs and bright rhythmic hooks that feel like they came from another era. I also threw some big fun moments from the score on Side A, like “Brown Out to This Looks Safe,” which starts with a nod to Detroit techno and ends as a gruesome horror cue.
Side B moves deeper into the emotional score. The Caribbean colors are still there, but the cues get bigger, darker, and more intense until you come out the other side unscathed and on the winning team for once.
“The Love Theme from Isla Monstro” is its own beast, closing out the first side.
Steven always knew the love scene needed a full ’80s-style ballad. Not a small romantic cue. A real ballad. The kind of steamy ’80s love song built for sunset shots and the smell of burnt oil—or, in this case, a jellyfish and the Creature from the Black Lagoon frantically flailing into the night. Gigi Edgley sang it with total sincerity and sultriness, with really fun ad libs that took it to a whole other level. With Jonathan Bartz’s additional orchestration, it somehow became sweet, gross, and weirdly moving at the same time.
Most of this score is me performing: guitars, bongos, talking drums, castanets, clav, finger cymbals, didgeridoo, theremin, slide whistle, synths, more whistles, and a lot of drums. I wanted it to feel played, quirky, a little slapdash, and dangerous. We spend so much time as a society quantizing everything that sometimes I like the mistakes, the humanity of the recording.
When the score gets especially big and orchestral, that’s Jonathan Bartz. He added orchestration using samples that captured my themes with that old Hollywood sound. I’m forever in his debt for finding me.
I produced, mixed, and mastered the album myself.
Isla Monstro gave me room to write music that could be funny, sincere, groovy, dark, beautiful, and completely ridiculous, sometimes all in the same cue.
I hope you enjoy your time on the island as much as I have.
Try not to touch anything.
