How ‘Airwolf,’ ‘Knight Rider’ and John Carpenter Influenced the Music of ‘Super Giant Robot Brothers’

variety.com:

Jon Burlingame editorWhen Oscar-winning animation director Mark Andrews (“Brave”) called his old Pixar pal Alex Mandel about his latest gig, “Super Giant Robert Brothers,” Mandel was 6,700 miles away in New Zealand managing projects for special effects house WETA.Mandel, whose other creative side happens to be classically trained composer, dove into Andrews’ new project and created more than three hours of music for the series now airing on Netflix.“Super Giant Robot Brothers” is a 3D animated action-comedy about massive metal robots destined to save the world from invading kaiju – giant monsters from space – while trying to overcome their own sibling rivalry.

Andrews, a drummer who used to jam with guitarist Mandel at Pixar events, suggested the musical style: synthwave. Synthwave combines heavy metal with ’80s synthpop, adding ’90s production elements for a retro-meets-modern approach that reminded Andrews of the Japanese animated series he watched as a kid.“It’s very John Carpenter,” Andrews says, referring to the horror director who often scored his own movies with synthesizers. “All those ’80s shows, especially action shows like ‘Airwolf’ and ‘Knight Rider,’ had these great synth scores.

I wanted synths and guitars and drums.”Mandel’s initial reaction was: “Robots? Kaijus? I’m in. It’s got battles, but there’s also so much psychology in this,” he adds, citing the clever premise that has a girl genius create one robot when she’s 3 and another when she’s 13, becoming “like a teen mom” with her two squabbling boys at different developmental stages.“It moves from this story about two brothers to become this epic struggle of evil empires, so the music reflects that,” the composer explains.