2019 best new music composer
A film composer and co-director, Austin Ray grew up on the Californian/Mexican border. Musically, her natural style is cinematic and atmospheric, yet melody-driven. It evokes images of hidden pathways, wide-open spaces, and forgotten history using a blend of real instruments and electronics. She has scored commercials for BMW, Amazon, United Nations, Wildlife Conservation Society, etc. Her original music can be heard in “Into the Silent Sea” (dir. Andrej Landin) and “Chiaroscuro” (dir. Daniel Drummond), which have won the Student Academy Award and BAFTA Student Film Award, premiered at Telluride Film Festival and Palm Spring Int’l Short Festival, Vimeo Staff Pick, among others. In the documentary realm, she has composed shorts starring NBA basketball star Blake Griffith for Players’ Tribune, along with Island Earth, a feature documentary on the issue of GMO’s. Her co-directorial debut, “The Listening Box”, which she additionally composed, was honored by the Directors Guild of America and was a Semi-Finalist at the Student Academy Awards, along with the Austin Film Festival [Audience Award Winner] and Savannah Film Festival [HBO Best Student Short Winner]. In 2019, she received the Kinsale Shark Award for Best New Music Composer and was selected for The Society of Composers & Lyricists’ 2020-2021 Mentor Program. In late 2022, her debut instrumental Artist EP "Minerals" released, inspired by the natural landscapes and elements that ground us and artists akin to Ólafur Arnalds, Ludovico Einaudi, Enya, and Hania Rani. In collaboration with Canadian neoclassical label enjou, she’s released multiple singles, including “Océan” and “Voix de Gaïa”. Austin is a member of AWFC and SCL.
COMPOSER REEL
A highlight reel featuring selected film music work from award-winning shorts / television pilots, and documentaries.
SPLICE Sound pack
This Splice pack is a collection of musical elements & sound design in the genre style of Ambient Americana inspired by and as a love letter to this unusual landscape of the Salton Sea. The steady rise of ambient music (Brian Eno, Enya, Jon Hopkins) and neo-classical artists (Ólafur Arnalds, Hania Rani, Ludovico Einaudi) influenced this pack just as much as alt-folk musicians like Bon Iver, Hermanos Gutiérrez, Ryan Beatty, Hovvdy, or Americana artists like Colter Wall and Lainey Wilson.
In this pack you’ll hear atmospheric piano and textural soundscapes weave into an acoustic, country palette of instruments. Not full-on Western, but modern and mature, earthy yet elevated. This pack will complement any soundtrack or song with nostalgic, melancholy, or heartfelt tones or imagery of wide open spaces. Recorded at Splice’s LA Sound Factory studio, you’ll hear pedal steel guitar with the talented Tyler Nuffer (touring musician for Lizzy McAlpine & Ryan Beatty) which gives the pack an emotionally expressive ambient and melodic sound. Upright bass and cello were played by the global and gifted musician Miles Jay (as heard on the Peaky Blinders score and touring with Beats Antique). The strings help build a cinematic foundation. It's rounded out by felted piano, guitar, synths, and a variety of her own harmonizing vocalizations, ethereal rises, humming, plus whistling to give the pack a human sound.