Life & Work with Bryan Bindon of Highland Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bryan Bindon.

Hi Bryan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My path into writing music for pictures is quite unconventional. My schooling background is actually in mechanical and motorsport engineering. I completed my undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering in Toronto, Canada and my master’s degree in motorsport engineering in Oxford, UK. Despite my technical upbringing, I’ve always been drawn to music throughout my schooling. I took guitar and drum lessons when I was was young, and eventually found my footing playing brass instruments (Trumpet and Euphonium) in a jazz band during high school, which continued into my undergraduate.

Ironically, moving to England for my master’s degree became the pivotal moment in my journey to becoming a professional musician. While working on my master’s in the UK, I began producing dance music and DJing at small venues. The longer I spent working as an engineer, the more I started releasing my own music and realized that I wanted to pursue it as a career rather than continuing my engineering path.

At the age of 26, I was working as a research engineer at Dyson in the UK when I made the decision to not renew my visa, quit my job, and return to Toronto to focus solely on music production.

For about two years, I worked as a barista at a local cafe while simultaneously producing records for local artists. Eventually, I left my job at the cafe and transitioned to full-time music production. After a few years of producing pop records, which I didn’t particularly enjoy, I decided to explore composing to picture, which felt natural, as going to the cinema was always a weekly event with my family growing up. I made the switch in 2015 and haven’t looked back! Now, I reside in both Los Angeles and Toronto and run a company called Hive Mind Music, a composers collective and score production company.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Rebooting your life and pursuing one in the arts is…..well, it’s not the easiest path to take in life, haha. There were a lot of bumps along the way, many of them financial, many of them creative, many just plain bad luck. I think getting started in film was pretty challenging. A ton of my initial projects were either for no, or low money, many of which never even got finished/released. So trying to build a community, trying to build a reel, while feeding yourself in an expensive city was pretty tough.

Once things got moving it was a bit easier, but COVID and the recent strike really were challenging times that could feel really discouraging in the moment. I think so much of succeeding in this career is a combination of endurance and resilience, and being able to navigate the social situations that set you up for the best chance of success.

So I try to make the most out of harder times where there is less work, by shifting my focus away from the actual writing, and to the other side of the business which is relationship building.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I really like approaching projects with the mindset of world building. I don’t really strive to have a signature sound that is present across all my projects. Instead, I really try to figure out what timbre, what instrumentation, what structure, melodic or not, would really belong in the world that I am creating to support the project I am working on. I always loved the work of Johann Johannnson for that reason, I would hear a score, and say “wow, who did that?”, and would always see it was Johann. He had the ability to be authentically himself musically, while still existing completely in the world the story inhabits. That has been a high water mark for me to always try and strive for. I think my happy place sonically is usually working with synth/orchestral hybrid arrangements. I really like the dichotomy of both worlds, and it gives you a lot to play with thematically when writing. Keeping things minimal, and using contrast between timbres, and silence (Gasp! I know), tend to be tools I use to try to make my scores more impactful. I always like writing the least amount of music possible to support the story, because I think it leaves more space for the viewers emotions and interpretations. I am proud of the scores I am written, both for the Lionsgate TV show “Gray” as well as the Universal Pictures feature “Relax, I’m From the Future” feat. Rhys Darby. I think what I am most proud of so far though, is building Hive Mind. It’s a group of amazing people that I get to work with on every project, and I feel very lucky I have them in my corner.

What matters most to you? Why?
The story, always the story. The reason I got into working on films and TV shows is because I love storytelling. I remember the impact Blade Runner had on me the first time I saw it. The score was like nothing I had ever heard before and it transported me to a different world. The world can be a hard place to live in, especially these days, so if I can contribute to a piece of work that allows people to be transported, to be reflective, to be inspired, to be hopeful, then I feel like I have accomplished what I set out to do.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hivemindcomposers.com
• Instagram: bbindon