Philly film composers The Blair Brothers score ‘The Toxic Avenger’, reunite with an old bandmate

Ten years ago, brothers Will and Brooke Blair were Philly rock scene people just starting to explore the world of film scoring after the breakup of their band East Hundred. They first got attention working on the soundtracks to Jeremy Saulnier’s thrillers Blue Ruin and Green Room. Today, The Blair Brothers are seasoned composers for film and television  incorporating many familiar names from the local music scene on their latest project, the soundtrack their brother Macon Blair’s reboot of The Toxic Avenger.

The film has been on the festival circuit for a couple years and opens nationally this Friday, August 29th; their soundtrack from it releases the same day, and Will and Brooke paid a visit to WXPN Local to talk about their project, their growth as composers, and keeping their ties to their hometown scene strong.

 ”A lot of our sound was developed here in Philly,” explains Will. “The different studios that we returned to, and a lot of musicians from both the rock world, the singer-songwriter world, the hip-hop world, and of course orchestral world, we’ve folded in whenever we can. So that’s become a big part of our sound. It’s who we know, it’s what we know, and I think it’s what sets us apart from a lot of perhaps LA-based scoring projects.”

Brooke adds that there’s a level of enthusiasm working with some of their music scene peers when it’s for a score. “When you say, ‘Hey, do you wanna come on a record on a session?’ …it’s always great to have work, but then to say it’s gonna be a film score, you know, there’s like this level of enthusiasm and commitment that really I think takes it to the next level.”

 Reflecting on how writing a rock or pop song differs from writing a piece of score, Brooke says it’s all about breaking the rigid rules of structure that young songwriters are taught. “Writing to picture, all that kinda goes out the window,” he days. “[The picture] is telling you what it needs and the pacing of it, where the shifts need to happen. So you really have to kind of open up the way that you write.”

Will and Brooke also reflect on several of their Philly collaborators — singer Jillian Taylor of Ruby The Hatchet and Cosmic Guilt, and rapper Reef The Lost Cauze, who created character voices to record the songs by the The Killer Nutz, a numetal-esque band that the villians in the film perform in. This ranged from Reef tracking vocal ad-libs to the band’s theme song “We Are Crazy And Dangerous” and chopping them up with his collaborator, DJ Caliph-Now, to Jillian embracing a demonic backwards-masking “language” to sing in.

The Blair Brothers also talk about recording their scores Philly-style: in gradual stages and from the ground up, in small groups, both in-person and remote. It’s a contrast to the classic LA style of tracking a score with one orchestra, one room, one a week. They also talk about collaborating with folks outside the scene, including a 16-piece string ensemble from Kiev, Ukraine, who recorded by candlelight and generator when their city was invaded by Russia in 2022.

The Blair Brothers also showcased a piece of the Toxic Avenger score on WXPN Local: a spaghetti western-style song called “Juntos,” which features vocals from Beril Guceri, frontwoman of their old band East Hundred. She sings in Portuguese in homage to Luisa Guerreiro, the person performing inside the Toxic Avenger suit, and Will says the session was a treat. “We jumped right in where we left off, you know, what was it, 15-ish years ago? Just a very supportive, let’s-try-anything sort of collaborative process that we were lucky to spend with her  back during the East Hundred years.”

The Toxic Avenger, starring Peter Dinklage, Kevin Bacon, and Elijah Wood, hits theaters nationwide this Friday, August 29th, with The Blair Brothers’ score releasing on streaming services the same day. A vinyl edition of the score is expected to come out this fall, and more information can be found at the movie’s website.