Geekscape Interviews: Mac Quayle, ‘American Horror Story,’ ‘Mr. Robot’ Composer, Loves Synths

My absolute favorite thing about Mr. Robot, the new USA series about a vigilante computer hacker on a journey to take down the biggest corporation in the world, is the music.

Reminiscent of The Social Network crossed with a dystopian/horror movie, the unnerving soundtrack is an huge highlight for the series. The series’ composer, Mac Quayle, is a rising star in the soundtrack world. Having worked in collaboration in movies like Drive, Contagion, and Spring Breakers before going solo on American Horror Story: Freak Show and now Mr. Robot, Quayle’s distinct style often evokes the darker nature of music with high-tech, synth-heavy sounds.

A few weeks ago I had a chance to speak to Mac Quayle, recently nominated for a primetime Emmy, about his career, from his beginning all the way to American Horror Story and Mr. Robot.

Whether or not you win your Emmy, what was your first reaction to getting that announcement?

Mac: I was really excited. Really excited. Kind of beyond my wildest dreams to be included with such great composers.

What was your inspiration into getting into music? What did you listen to that made you go, “You know what? I can do this.”

Mac: Well, it started with my parents putting me in the church choir when I was six. And it wasn’t really my choice. They just put me in the choir. And that was my introduction to learning music. And I’ve just sort of been on that path ever since.

Was there anything that you listened to later in life that just kept that momentum going?

Mac: I don’t know about one particular piece of music. I’ve certainly listened to a lot, been inspired by a lot of different people along the way. There’s so many, from different phases of life. But some early influences, I’m going to say Devo, Ultravox, New Order, Peter Gabriel…

Really, Peter Gabriel?

Mac: Yeah.

I don’t know why that surprises me. I think that’s kind of cool.

Mac: Yeah, I was a huge fan of his years ago.

What led you into doing soundtracks and movie scoring? I’m not well versed in music, but I know enough enough that it’s a different path than, say, performing like Peter Gabriel. What led you to do movie scoring and TV scoring?

Mac: In a way, it’s like a second career for me. My earlier career in New York was working more in the music business, as a musician, producer, dance remixer, and I did that for a number of years, until the early 2000s [when] the music industry started to find itself in decline and a lot of the work I was doing was drying up. So I decided it was time to move to Los Angeles, and I had a vague idea of getting into scoring, but I wasn’t totally clear. I moved out here in 2004, and I met some people, and I ended up getting my first job working on a TV show called Cold Case, as an additional composer.

I remember that show.

Mac: It was a great opportunity and I learned a lot, and I found that… It seemed like a good fit for me. That was the new direction that my career was taking and I followed it.

Speaking very broadly, soundtrack scoring is more often than not kind of categorized in two different ways. There’s the character theme, and then there’s a piece for a particular scene or moment. Do you personally have a preference for writing one kind of piece over the other?

Mac: Not really. I’m more about whatever works. For me to do a theme for a character, then that’s great, and if it’s more just about a particular scene or a particular feeling, then I’m all for that as well. And sometimes I’ll write a theme for a character and it ends up getting used for that character and other characters. And it works. And so I’m like, “Okay! It works.” That’s all good. I’m basically about whatever works.

What piece of composition do you think has worked the best, the one that just came together almost flawlessly?

Mac: Well, there’s been many, but recently the first piece of music that I wrote for American Horror Story last year, which was actually what got me the job. That piece of music, something about it, it came together not effortlessly, but it wasn’t that difficult to write and it just really seemed to fit the scene. They loved it. They hired me, and then variations of that piece got used so much throughout the entire season, it became a very useful piece of music and components.

This was last season, right?

Mac: Yes. Freakshow.

Your work is noticeably what I’d call kind of like a techno-thriller. You did the soundtrack to Contagion, Drive, I can imagine a hacker out of a William Gibson novel. Even when you use traditional, non-electronic music, they’re very intense and heavy pieces.

Mac: Yeah, I definitely gravitate towards that. On those films you mentioned, I worked with Cliff Martinez, and that’s certainly a bit of his sound and so it was kind of [us] both gravitate towards that.

Is there any reason why you gravitate towards the sound? Or do you just find it works for the material you’re composing for?

Mac: It does tend to work for the projects that I’m working on and that’s part of the reason that they asked me to do it, because they know that’s something that I do. And I also, I’ve just always loved synthesizers. I got exposed to my first synthesizer when I was maybe fifteen. And it just kind of blew my mind. And then I’ve just ever since been obsessed with the synthesizer. I love playing with them, I love how they sound. Now, what you can do with computer technology and all the virtual synth… It’s just an unlimited palette of electronic sounds at your fingertips.

I think one of your most stunning pieces, in my opinion, is your most subdued. It’s in Contagion, when we find out that the strain originated from the bat and the pig. That specifically, do you remember that one, if you remember anything about that … What went into the making of that piece? Because that, to me, … That was just awesome.

Mac: Thank you. And I do have to clarify, that is Cliff Martinez’s score, and I did work on that piece but it’s a collaboration with Cliff. I can’t take credit for it. That piece, I remember it, it was a very strange piece, pulsing, electronic pulsings…

It’s subdued. It’s a reveal. It’s like, “This is what happened.” It’s so stunning.

Mac: Here’s some of the mechanics. This is how film scoring works, sometimes. We had written a piece that was similar to that for another scene in the film. And when we got to the bat and pig scene, we took that piece that we’d written for the other scene, and we put it up against the picture, and it seemed to be a good direction. And so I modified the piece of music to fit the bat and pig scene. So it was not so much like this grand design of, “Oh, what’s the best thing for bat and pig? Let’s write this piece of music.” It was, “Here’s a piece we’d written for another scene. It seems to almost work for bat and pig. I’ll modify it so that it does work.” That’s how that … It’s a little more boring than, “Oh I decided that this pig sound would be really good if I had an electronic pulse.” But that’s just the truth. That’s really how it came up.

What is the most vivid memory you have attached to anything you’ve written? What can you listen to, and remember something that’s totally not related to the movie or TV show?

Mac: When I listen to Drive, that I also collaborated on with Cliff. When we finished that film, we were mixing it at his studio for maybe ten days straight. And during that time he had just bought this espresso machine, and we were… the mixes were basically fueled by this espresso machine. And it began this sort of obsession that I’ve had ever since, with espresso. [laughs] And so that soundtrack is always tied to my love of espresso now.

That’s actually really funny to me. The Drive soundtrack is haunting and so many other words, but to you, you just think “Oh, lots of coffee.” That’s hysterical.

Mac: Maybe not so much during the writing of it. It was the mixing, when the espresso [kept] us going for those long days.

What can you tell me about your time on American Horror Story? I know a lot of fans of that show. What was that experience like?

Mac: It was really a dream come true. And it was a dream that I didn’t even know I had. I had not watched the show before I was hired. It was on my list. I had heard great things about it but I had not seen it. And if you had asked me, “What show do you think will be a great show for you to work on?” That would not have been on the list.

It would seem out of your style, out of your general forte, at first glance.

Mac: But when I found myself working on it, I was about a month in, and all of a sudden it felt like my whole life had been leading up to that point. I was just using all these different skills, and musical styles, and all these things that I had never really been able to come together on a project before. It was great. I was kind of amazed. It caught me by surprise.

The season finale to Mr. Robot airs on USA Network on September 2 at 10pm ET.