Martin Zaltz Austwick

I have been composing and recording music and songs for podcasts since 2007; here is a sample:

You can listen to some samples of my podcast music organised into Themes, Bed Tracks,Full Songs and Live Scores – or it’s all together here.

Most recently:

• Created music for the Mubi podcast’s latest horror-themed season [Oct-Nov 2024].
• Performed songs about science at Nerd Nite Vancouver [Oct 2024]
• Co-wrote and performed music and songs for an hour-long The Allusionist UK live tour [Aug-Sep 2024]
• Performed new songs about renamed constellations as part of the Allusionist live show at Vancouver Planetarium [April 2024]
• Composed, played and sang the live Allusionist piece Souvenirs at Resonate Audio Festival [Richmond, VA, Nov 2023] and On Air [NYC, Feb 2024].
• Composed bed tracks for the latest season of the Mubi podcast, including New Jack Swing, ’00s dance, and ‘60s mod [Jan 2024].
• Created the musical “remix” for the Love and Radio episode Rotting with Style [June 2023].
• The Allusionist: created the music for Tranquillusionist: Gay Animals and Song for Uranus in Uranus [June 2023], contributed music and sound design for Fat (Parts I and II) [May 2023]
• Created and performed live music for Potterless/The Newest Olympian live in Vancouver [May 2023]
• Piano and guitar arrangements of Steve Martin’s banjo instrumentals for the Steve Martin-Adam Gopnik audiobook So Many Steves (Pushkin) [May 2023]

Older work

• Music for Mubi podcast season 2 [Mar-April 2023]
• Theme music for The Last Soviet (Samizdat / Kaleidoscope / iHeart) [Feb 2023]
• Music for Neutrinowatch episode You Can Really Get To Know Someone By Leafing Through Their Diary. Composed a 30 minute suite, and created software tools to select a different sample of it every day; and to remix sections of that sample to create new music [Oct 2022].
• Composer/songwriter and performer on The Allusionist Live: Your Name Here tour (10 dates in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand) [July-Aug 2022]
• Composer on Another Russia (Samizdat Audio/Crooked Media) – theme song and bed tracks throughout the series [July 2022]
• Composed music for “Tranquillusionist: Big Things” [July 2022]; the Allusionist episode “The Egg’s Warning”, using percussion from sampling a Kinder egg [March 2022], and “The Tiffany Problem“, creating an 80s pop banger and a Gregorian chant [May 2022]
• Theme music for Being Luminary podcast [March 2022].
• Generative music with Lily Sloane for the Neutrinowatch episode “Gus by Gus: Musings and Magic“ and composed the music for “Gluteal Strategies” with Jeff Emtman.
• Created music for the Mubi podcast interview with Andrea Arnold (director of “Cow”).
• Released The World Outside My Window – the song with a million variations playing out on the Neutrinowatch podcast – as a digital single [Dec 2021].
• Producer and composer on Rigged (Critical Frequency) [Oct-Dec 2021].
• Music for the Shedunnit limited series, “Queens Of Crime At War“ [Oct-Nov 2021]
• Wrote the music and performed with the Allusionist live at the London Podcast Festival [September 2021].
• Music for Season One of the Mubi Podcast [June 2021]
• Theme for The Romcom Rewrite [March 2021].
• Co-created the pandemic Christmas song Don’t Wait For Me Beneath The Mistletoe with Helen Zaltzman and Jenny Owen Youngs, and co-created Zoom Christmas and Christmas Meat Sweats for the Festive Hit For 2020 episode of The Allusionist [December 2020].
• Wrote the music for all 15 Episodes of Maddie’s Sound Explorers [season 1], a science podcast for young people. Each episode features a piece of music made from the sounds of science, engineering and nature we’ve discovered during the episode, and weaves in the experts we’ve interviewed [August-November 2020].
• Contributed music to the 20,000Hz episodes about Audio Deepfakes [September 2020] and John Cage’s 4’33” [January 2020].
• Audiocraft Podcast Festival – mashup of (mostly Australian) podcast themes for their opening night event [July 2020].
• Wife on Earth – wrote a song about The Bookseller Crow, my favorite independent bookshop [July 2020].
• I wrote theme music in different styles for the Zoom podcast: spaghetti western, 50s scifi, zombie movie, classical, funk, Motown, Hot Club jazz… [March 2019-June 2020]
• Wrote the theme for Vera Chok and Charles Adrian’s “Vera and Adrian are working from home” livestream series [May 2020]
• Wrote scores for episodes of The Tranquillusionist, episodes of the show designed to be particularly soothing and calming [March 2020]
• Theme for The Holiday Season, [December 2019].
• I composed music for Veronica Mars Investigations [2019-2021].
• Wrote the song Apple Tree for the end of The Family Tree – a magic realist drama [2019].
• I recorded the Blockchain Explainer Song and Ethereum for Episode 2 of ZigZag, and their end of Season One reprise, which was written up in the New York Times in 2018 [2018].

• I composed and recorded the score for The Allusionist “Eclipse“, inspired by Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart [2017], and created the score for “Continental” using items in a Moab Bed and Breakfast [2016]

• The Allusionist (theme and music, 2015-)
• Answer Me This (music director and composer, 2007-)

• Zoom (2019-2020)
• Veronica Mars Investigations (theme, other music, 2019)

• Zig Zag (songs, 2018)
• The 90 Minutes or Less Film Festival (theme, 2018)
• The Family Tree (songs, 2017, 2019)
• The Wire Stripped (theme – arranger, singer, musician, 2017)
• Getting Better Acquainted (song, 2017)
• Sex Chat With Vera Chok (theme, 2017)
• Mortified (vocal, 2016)
• The Beef and Dairy Network (song, 2016)
• Hey It’s OK (theme – Glamour Magazine UK, 2016)

• Why Are Computers? (theme, 2013)
• Brain Train (theme, 2012)
• Pappy’s Flatshare Slamdown (song, 2011)
• Sound Women (theme, 2011)
• The Global Lab (theme, 2011)
• Bright Club (theme, 2010)

You can hear instrumental versions of my music on recent episodes of The Allusionist – as well as the theme tune I created.

Live Podcast Music and Performance

• Composer, musician, singer, performer, tour manager and writer:
  • The Allusionist Live: Souvenirs [UK, 2024; audio conferences 2023-24]:
  • The Allusionist Live: Your Name Here [Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, 2022]
  • The Allusionist Live [US, Canada, UK, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, 2017-2019]
• Radio Diaries – Dropped Wrench with Joe Richman [Hearsay Audio Festival, 2019; NYC and Washington DC, 2019]; composer and musician.
• The Bugle [US, 2018]; arranger and musician.
• Radiotopia Live [US, 2018]; musician.
• Third Coast International Audio Awards [Chicago, USA, 2017]; composer, MD and musician.
• 99% Allusional [with 99% Invisible and The Allusionist, USA, 2017]; composer and musician.