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SN: Can you tell us how Hollowstone Music was first conceived?

NOAH: Dylan was leading a band that combined hip hop with live orchestral elements in a darker tinge, and I was looking for something to do at the time, as a live drummer. We connected immediately, and Dylan was able to accept the fact that I am always right and have much better hair. We discovered that we had a lot in common about what we wanted to do with our careers, and how we are as people. We also had instant musical connection from the start, so we decided to head into the war zone together. It’s been nonstop ever since.

DYLAN: The first instrument that our monkey brains could play were hollow logs and Hollow rocks. You can imagine the kind of work we would be associated with had I called the company Hollowlog Productions so it became Hollowstone. Its really just an ode to the original bumping machine. The drum. Both Noah and I were drummer first before anything else.

DYLAN: I am inspired by silence when it is followed by a big boom. I am inspired by beats when they boom bap and slap crack. I dig the twilight zone, old kung fu movie scores, horror film music when nobody's getting killed, anything with Tom Waits on it, I wish I worked with Elvis though I hate the marketing. I think Chuck D is a baAAAAD Muthaf***. I wish I could sing like Chris Cornell on Outshined, Jeff Buckley on Grace. Tom Jones wore a sock but I like that dudes voice. You ever hear Citizen Copes salvation? That's what I'm talking about! I am inspired by people who were inspired when they wrote that. I think it is better to say that I am in the sound business because popular music lacks inspiration these days for me. So much more to say than that I am a big fan of film trailers. What a brilliant art form that is. Better than the movie 99% of the time. I really dug the old Night Rider theme!

NOAH: I’ve been moved by many, many different flavors of music and artists; from the trench-digging funk of Me’Shell Ndegeocello and Larry Graham to the power pop of Jason Falkner and the Beatles, from the metal of King’s X and old Metallica to the free jazz and bop of Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins, from the Bulgarian Women’s Choir to Seal and Imogen Heap, and many of the cracks in between all of those. What I really dig is music that creates a world instead of merely a song or a television theme, so production is very important to me; some of my biggest musical influences excel at that, such as Trevor Horn, Peter Gabriel, Jon Brion, and Sly Stone. All of these things have paved the way for me to do what I love, and they apply very directly to scoring as well as songs.

NOAH: The cool thing about our situation is that we have power both individually and as a team, which has been incredibly useful in so many ways. We can handle almost anything that a client throws at us. Dylan is not only immensely talented but he’s pretty much the only human being in this business that I would trust with my life, and I feel that that comes through in the music we do together. Usually we’ll split a full show up to expedite the process, though we always try to do the theme together, as our identity as a team really shines there.

DYLAN: Well firstly. Noah is only minutely talented and at nearly a emotional mute. He can be ornery and ill tempered and... No, actually besides the fact that we can basically read each others minds Noah is incredible to work with as I am sure he will tell you. He just has that thang and that thing is the grease. Our clients like the fact that we can get er done. What ever er is as long as Noah listens to everything I say.

NOAH: Actually, this has never been a challenge. Though we both bring different ideas and backgrounds to the table, whoever’s idea works best is usually obvious to the both of us. The times we get snippy are easily handled by Dylan drinking more coffee, and me eating a turkey/avocado sandwich (though Dylan will probably say ham). And, of course, I’m always right (will he actually see this?).

DYLAN: Yes I am seeing this. And yes "Ham".

NOAH: Well, we have done everything from things like Randy Jackson Presents America’s Best Dance Crew to the open for The Freedom Writers film to theme and soundtrack work. From the MTV Music Video Awards and MTV Movie Awards, to many other odd gigs like about 60 hours of History Channel, Discovery, Nat Geo, and A&E scores. We have done commercials like Epson, Coors, Nike and Sony, and many film trailers, all the way down to the first batch of ringtones for the Apple iPhone. We have done every genre you can imagine and we always try to put the Pepper to it. We hope that everyone will actually enjoy it when they see/hear it. I suppose you could say that we aim to produce the Pepper on whatever it is the creative direction calls for.

DYLAN: Yep.

DYLAN: We really enjoy doing themes and series work, where we can get in a stride with the content and the creatives involved; it’s great when you hit that zone. You really get a sense of what you want to do with the score, and how far you can take it. We also love seeing and hearing our work in film; there is little that’s cooler than the silver screen bumping your blasphemous sounds.

NOAH: We’re really proud of how the theme for America’s Best Dance Crew came out. We were given some general guidelines of how they wanted it to be a bit like Stomp! meets hip hop, and we ran with it. We were literally running around our studio banging filing cabinets with mallets, recording our feet in full stomp mode, and rattling and banging almost everything else. We combined that with burning synth and totally modded out guitar, and threw in some tweaked pizzicato strings to finish it off and of course the reversed plute. We think it's great combination of elements that one wouldn't usually associate with each other.

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