Podcast 192: Benjamin Wynn (Deru)

Art + Music + Technology

When my friend Tom Hall first introduced me to the music of Deru, I was immediately drawn in. It was the combination of complexity and structure that I love in ambient work, but it was also unabashedly electronic and had edge that I liked.

But I got a surprised when I did a little digging around, and found out that Benjamin Wynn, the man behind Deru, was also deeply entrenched in the music-for-TV world, having done music and sound design (with his partner Jeremy Zuckerman) for Avatar - The Last Airbender, Kung-Fu Panda - Legends of Awesomeness and others. A couple of Emmys speak to the quality of that work.

In addition to that (!), he is also one of the founders of The Echo Society, a composer's collective that is gaining traction by producing a concert series that pushes people's perception of classical music concert - and modern music.

All of this points to an amazingly efficient music and sound producer, and one that is able to work within - and embrace - many different sound environments. In our chat, we talk about how each of these opportunities presented themselves, but also how he is able to pull off all this work, and to keep such a high level of quality.

I'm a fan, but I'm also fascinated by someone with this kind of process and one that is so consistent with their work. I learned a lot in this, and I hope you do too.

Enjoy!