Dave Porter (Echo)

For nearly fifteen years, composer Dave Porter has been the musical voice of the Breaking Bad universe -- having scored every season of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and the film El Camino for good measure. Now, he plies his penchant for atmospheric, guitar-driven thrills to the MCU, with the new Disney+ series, Echo.

 

A spinoff of Hawkeye, Echo hearkens back to the grittier, more violent climes of the Netflix Marvel shows, centering on deaf Choctaw assassin Maya, played by Alacqua Cox. Last seen betraying and shooting her boss and father figure, Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin, at the tail end of Hawkeye, Maya rides home to her small town in Oklahoma to reconnect with her roots and finish the war against Wilson Fisk that she started back in New York City.

 

To score Maya's blood-soaked journey across Echo's five episodes, Porter made use of his signature mixture of guitar and synths to build a suitably neo-Western noir feel to the series. On top of that, the show incorporates many aspects of Native music and instrumentation, literally giving voice to the legacy of Native women Maya finds herself connecting to throughout her journey.

 

Dave Porter joins us on the podcast to talk about the rigors of scoring for television, the role of music in a show about a Deaf protagonist, and the careful treatment of Native musical elements in his music for Echo.

 

You can find Dave Porter on his official website.

 

All episodes of Echo are currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Marvel Music.