Interview With Max Aruj – Composer Of ICE ROAD, LANSKY And CRAWL

By Michelle McCue | June 29, 2021

Composers wear so many hats when composing and depending on what they’re writing for, whether it’s for episodic TV, film, or video games, it can be a juggling act to get the scores and themes just right. These artists painstakingly put care, effort and hours into what music will accompany the visuals on the little or big screen.

Composer Max Aruj is one such musician.  Born and raised in Los Angeles, his previous release is Crawl, produced by Sam Raimi, and directed by Alexandre Aja and the video game Assassin’s Creed – Wrath of the Druids. Aruj recently composed the scores for Eytan Rockaway’s Lansky, in theaters, starring Harvey Keitel, and Jonathan Hensleigh’s The Ice Road, on Netflix, starring Liam Neeson, Laurence Fishburne, Amber Midthunder, Benjamin Walker, and Marcus Thomas.

Coincidentally both films were released on the same day, Friday June 25th.

I recently spoke with Aruj on what he’s learned from composer Lorne Balfe as well as his own unique sound for the alligators of CRAWL, building the musical foundation from the ground up for LANSKY and the long haul on composing for ICE ROAD.

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WAMG: How does it feel to have these films debuting on the same weekend? And was that the game plan originally?

Max Aruj: First of all it feels great. After a year of far less interaction with everybody, friends and family, for both movies to come out on the same day, it feels like a coming out party to back to the world and enjoying movies. That wasn’t the plan originally as Ice Road was supposed to come out in August and then one day I got an email saying June 25^th and I thought what a coincidence.

WAMG: What inspired you to be a musician when you when you were younger, was it marching band, or school orchestra?

Max Aruj: I started out by playing piano, jazz and classical, and then hanging out with my friends where we made a short film in high school about a group of jazz musicians, and I was in it where I was the worst actor ever and I did the music with my friend. I was also playing in rock bands with my buddies and, in my mind, it was the way a kid should get into music and having fun with friends. Sitting at the piano, trying to figure out how, and listening to music the old fashioned way.

The composer and writer-director Eytan Rockaway reunite for Lansky, having previously collaborated on the psychological-thriller The Abandoned.

In LANSKY, David Stone (Sam Worthington), a renowned but down-on-his-luck writer, has the opportunity of a lifetime when he receives a surprise call from Meyer Lansky (Academy Award nominee Harvey Keitel). For decades, authorities have been trying to locate Lansky’s alleged nine-figure fortune and this is their last chance to capture the aging gangster before he dies. With the FBI close behind, the Godfather of organized crime reveals the untold truth about his life as the notorious boss of Murder Inc. and the National Crime Syndicate.

WAMG: The film is in theaters and it has this wonderfully vivid and authentic 1980s look. How did you go about composing for this film as well as collaborating with the director?

MA: From the beginning Eytan wanted to use this palette to set this film apart as far as the score and I think he was absolutely right.   I utilized some 80’s, Vangelis colors as the musical palette, mixed with orchestra. This was a jumping off point as I had to compose themes for the movie, which are classically written, which are tuneful and melodic and we wanted those two worlds to merge. I wanted to create both a sense of darkness and sentimentality to capture both sides of such a complicated figure.  I wanted to make it feel epic like The Godfather.  I also leaned into his Jewish roots by including Jewish colors in the music to reflect Lansky’s identity.

Stream/Purchase: https://smarturl.it/Lansky

WAMG: Before we get to Ice Road, what’s your usual go to instrument when composing? What’s the first thing you hear when seeing the visuals?

MA: By nature I will first sit down at the piano. That’s always been the way to do it and to get ideas down and try things out, that’s my instrument, as I have been learning over the past few years, but when going over themes I have to step away from the piano and I just have to let it sit in my head. I will often go on a walk and whistle it, and then think, that chord change or that one note really bugs me and I know I can make it better and I’ll literally sing to myself to figure it out away from the piano. It’s important because if you’re a proficient enough instrumentalist, you can kind of improvise things sometimes faster than you need to when writing a theme. A theme has to have so much care put into it and given that you are going to repeat it so much you want to make sure that every element is just right.

In ICE ROAD, after a remote diamond mine collapses in northern Canada, a group of miners is trapped with only thirty hours of oxygen. A team of veteran ice road truckers is hastily assembled to come to the rescue. Mike McCann (Liam Neeson), along with his younger brother Gurty (Marcus Thomas), a gifted mechanic coping with aphasia, and Tantoo (Amber Midthunder), a fellow ice road expert whose brother is trapped in the mine, are recruited by Jim Goldenrod (Laurence Fishburne). The crew is tasked with the dangerous mission of driving across an ocean of thin ice in eighteen-wheeler trucks to deliver lifesaving drilling equipment before the oxygen runs out. Unbeknownst to them, there is another threat to their daring plan waiting to emerge from an unexpected place. Forced to conquer a litany of obstacles including stalled engines, cracking ice, and violent pressure waves, Mike and the team race to get to the mine before they end up beneath the ice.

WAMG: Let’s move onto your other film, Ice Road. My mother was a long-haul truck driver…

MA: Really?!

WAMG: …and she was a big fan of the show “Ice Road Truckers” and I know she would have loved Ice Road. Did I notice a music cue where the trucks have their own theme?

MA: Yes there are main themes that are recurring and you can hear throughout. Track 7 has this “hero” theme for Liam Neeson’s “Mike” character and the orchestral music over the truck action sequences and along with the “chugging” motif, yes, the Truck has its own theme.  The movie has a classic structure, so once we had the thematic tapestry nailed down, the rest of the film’s score flowed out. It is a challenge to gracefully shift from action to emotion multiple times over within one scene, but is so rewarding when the picture edit (Douglas Crise) and music go hand in hand. We recorded a live orchestra to get our strings soaring and the brass punchy. It’s a lot of preparation, but so worth it to take the score to the next level.

WAMG: These tracks are thrilling and really elevate the movie. For the songs in ICE ROAD, it’s all Country music. Did you know about these beforehand so that you could compose the score with these songs in mind so they could be woven in?

(All of the tunes in the film feature contemporary country stars interpreting classics of the form including Miranda Lambert’s take on Hank Snow’s “I’m Moving On,” Jason Isbell tackling “All I Do is Drive” by the great Johnny Cash, and Carly Pearce crooning the wistful Kathy Mattea number “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses.” And new classics of the form come from “Rubber Meets the Road,” which finds Brantley Gilbert teaming up with Tyler Hubbard of Florida Georgia Line and “We Got Fight,” a new tune written especially for THE ICE ROAD by Gary Le Vox of Rascal Flatts. A standout track on the album was recorded by Nikki Sixx, Rob Zombie and John 5, who joined together under the name L.A. Rats to produce an alternative/country/rock version of Johnny Cash’s iconic “I’ve Been Everywhere.”)

Stream/Purchase: https://smarturl.it/theiceroad

MA: From the beginning I always knew about this and interestingly enough the deal for the songs was done way before I was onboard. I think they thought it was an opportunity to bring some great country songs into the film and there are some huge artists and I’m honored to be alongside of them in the movie. Some of the songs were set while others were changing right up until the end so I had to change and be nimble and be ready to change the score, but that happens frequently. A song will be in there and then it’s not, but you hope to be in an adjacent key even with a last minute switch.

We recorded it at the end of 2020 and the editor, Nick Fitzgerald and I did a distanced listening session in my studio starting at around 3am in the morning and we edited for about the next nine or ten hours. He had just come on board so it was a great opportunity for him to get to know the score and I have worked with him many times.

WAMG: Moving on to another one of your scores, “Quinceañero”, the musical you did with Justin Floyd. Tell me how did you get to work on this project because I love the Latin themes that run through the movie.

The music is composed by Max Aruj and Steffen Thum, with lyrics by Antonio Sol, and songs performed by cast of the film. The album comprised of eight richly melodic Latin songs, including the film’s focus track “Ve El Momento” (“See the Moment”). The film recently premiered at Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF), as part of its Latinx Inclusion Series, in partnership with Netflix.

In the 20-minute whimsical musical, Gabriel is on the verge of his 15th birthday and dreams of having his own quinceañera, a tradition reserved for girls. When his father – steeped in tradition – sets himself against the quinceañero, the timid boy will have to rally his family to make his dream come true. (TRAILER)

MA:  The best thing about doing film scores is that you get to compose for all these different styles.

Having director Justin Floyd entrust us to bring his vision to life in a new style was both exciting and horrifying. But having an amazing team in Steffen and Antonio, made the process a blast. Additionally, writing a song like ‘Ve El Momento’ was a first – I never thought I’d get to do that, but here we are! I was taken aback when Justin called and wanted me on this project.  It was a challenge but I went to the piano and just started working on it and it’s something you do.

WAMG: I love creature features, always have, and one of my favorites is CRAWL. I just watched it the other night and I have to say when I originally read that Paramount was going to do a killer alligator movie, and then it turns out to be a lot of alligators, I was all in. JAWS is my absolute favorite film and you did for CRAWL what John Williams did musically for JAWS…  your great musical “growls” sound like an alligator.

When were brought onto the project by producer Sam Raimi and director Alexandre Aja?

MA:  I had been a musical professional out of college for 9 or 10 years and when a film like that comes along, and it’s just heaven. It was such a wonderful process. I got brought on very late in the game, I got this call and then before I know it we’re meeting with Sam Raimi and Alexandre Aja. It was a little bit scary but once we got going it was fantastic and they knew exactly what they wanted.

“We want a theme for the alligator that feels medieval and rather prehistoric,” they said, so we had to come up with this theme that you hear throughout and sometimes you hear it even before you see the alligator. We learned a lot about these techniques from JAWS and it was such a well-constructed movie. They we already pretty far in the edit and the movie was locked and we were just able to come in and write the music. They gave us very clear, fixed notes and great direction so we were able to have a blast composing for the movie.

WAMG: With both CRAWL and ICE ROAD you have captured musically what a truck sounds like and what an alligator sounds like, with just a couple of piano notes.

MA: Oh thank you, they were both great films to compose for!

WAMG: How do you like composing for video games as opposed to film? You’ve composed for the Assassin’s Creed universe for the recently released Wrath of the Druids. Scores now for video games and their themes aren’t just throw away music, they have a huge fan base and they’re grand scores.

MA: Yes and especially for a franchise and in particular for Assassin’s Creed and in my opinion, as I’ve worked with the team before, maybe the strongest video game music franchise because they put so much work into those scores and it shows. There is an overall feeling to the score for all the games and with each individual game it evolves. It’s the perfect way to approach the franchise and it’s a different process of working, but the goal is still to write an interesting and beautiful piece of music. With this score in particular there needed to be these ancient sounds and it’s hard to write I this style because once you do a harmony that’s too complicated it just doesn’t feel right.  It took me a month or two to get in the zone because at first my pieces just weren’t right, much discussion with the team and it took some time getting there. Through persistence and patience, we made sure it was a slight departure from the main theme with a new personality.

Listen on Spotify HERE.

WAMG: This past year you wrote additional music on HBO’s His Dark Materials. You’ve composed additional music on Mission: Impossible – Fallout for Lorne Balfe, and on The Crown, for Hans Zimmer and Rupert Gregson-Williams. I’ve spoken with Lorne many times, he’s one of many favorites and so funny. He like you also composes for video games.

MA: Yeah he’s great. I’ve worked for him for many years and have had an absolute blast. So much of what I’ve learned and done in just a few years and have accomplished is because of Lorne. I wouldn’t be able to do so many of the things I do in terms of creativity as well as a professional, if it weren’t for him. Being a film composer is so much more than writing one melody and then stepping away when you’re done. With each movie and even with a video game it’s like writing a symphony – it’s not just 12 singles – it’s an hour of music that’s all connected and needs to evolve. To do multiple projects a year takes a lot of work and focus and after working with someone like Lorne, you learn how to actually do that.

WAMG: Tell me about your upcoming project, the documentary DOES MY VOTE COUNT.

MA: It’s all about the 2020 election and my friend, Emily Karlsson, directs. The documentary is made up of interviews with activists, voters, and politicians in different parts of the country, navigating the uncharted territory of an election during a pandemic, all while seeking to find out what it takes to make the American voter count in 2020. The music is comprised of State’s tunes and American hymns and weaving them into the score, so I’m really excited about that one. It should be released in 2022.

WAMG: With all that you have going on, what’s on the horizon for you?

MA:  I have been working on some songs with some friends so exercising some other artistic muscles. It’s very different, you might spend some time on a score but an artist might spend months on a song and it’s a different approach to music making, especially when there are lyrics and singing and I’ve learned that an artist can’t be rushed. It just doesn’t work for them whereas a film composer is conditioned to be rushed and it happens in the business. It’s a different tempo when working with an artist and it’s a good feeling.

WAMG: You’re also a board member for Vox Artivism, a non-profit organization providing music education through project-based learning experiences for kids. I really think this is wonderful. Are you afforded the time to get into the classroom or go to the schools to talk about the importance of music education, because this sounds like a great organization?

MA: Yes it is and it is run by my friend Brianne and I think when things fully open back up I would love to go into the classroom. I have done a couple of things at my former high school in the past and I hope once Fall rolls around I can get into the classroom because kids love music and the surest thing I know how to do to get people fascinated with music is to play them a scene in a film without music, talk about it, and then with the music. It’s the clearest demonstration of movie magic I know.

Listen to Max Aruj‘s scores on Spotify HERE.

Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaxAruj and on Instagram HERE.