If you missed it (and odds are you probably did), Tales from the Loop is an Amazon original series that landed on that platform last month. Which, these days, is like a lifetime. So you’re forgive for letting it slip under your radar. But, now that it’s back ON your radar, you really should add it to your list.

Based on the acclaimed art of – and book of the same name by – Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag, Tales from the Loop explores the town and people who live above The Loop, a machine built to unlock and explore the mysteries of the universe – making things possible that were previously relegated only to science fiction.

The show itself is captivating and compelling, but it’s the music that completely draws you in… thanks to the collaborative effort of composers Paul Leonard-Morgan and the legendary Philip Glass.

Just… I mean, here. Watch the trailer and tell me you’re not intrigued. Tell me you didn’t add the show to your watchlist. Tell me you don’t want to hear more of that incredible music.

We sat down with Paul Leonard-Morgan to chat about Tales from the Loop, his collaboration with Philip Glass, why this show (and his music for it) is so unique, and why it’s precisely what the world needs right now.

The soundtrack is now available digitally from Fox Music/Hollywood Records, and the series is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Roarbots: Did you come from a musical family?

Paul Leonard-Morgan: It depends who you speak to. My dad is tone deaf, so depending on who you speak to, I might have his musical talent, or I might have the musical talent of my mom who’s a phenomenal flute player and piano teacher. I like to think that I got my mom’s genes.

Roarbots: When you write music for TV, you work on episodes individually. You might not have any idea where the story is going to go from episode to episode or from season to season. How do you find the right tone and theme at the beginning of a show when there’s so much unknown?

Leonard-Morgan: When you write for a film, as you say, you sit down and watch it, and you have thematic material, and you kind of go, “I can see where that’s going. I can picture this motif working there. That scene working here, and that other scene working there.”

But when you’re working on a TV series, they send you a bunch of scripts – and by the way, I’m awful at reading scripts; I much prefer seeing the actual visuals – but you think, “Well, I guess we’re going to need a theme for that and for this and maybe a motif over here.” But you don’t really know where it’s going to end up, so you can only work on the hour’s worth of television that’s in front of you.

Yet as the series progresses, you’ve set the sound of the show, with a palette of reds and blues and yellows. And since you’ve created a picture with those colors, you know the next picture in the series will have the same kinds of colors. So it’s that palette that really sets the stage for the rest of it.

Photo: Jan Thijs

Roarbots: What was the collaborative process like on Tales from the Loop with Philip Glass? How did that work?

Leonard-Morgan: The collaborative process has definitely been one of the highlights of my life. But that’s not what you meant. [laughs]

As far as the actual process, it was very organic. I went to his studio maybe in March of last year, and we had a chat. I’d met him a few times before, but we had never worked together. So I said, “Well, how’s this going to work? Am I taking your themes and mucking around with them?” I’d never worked like this before. So we just sat down and looked at some wonderful stills from the show and from the book that the show is based on, and we just started writing.

We came up with melodies, and we got on really well. We just started mucking around. And from there, I went back to LA, and we shared ideas. He’d send stuff over to me, and we’d play around with chords and melodies. And we were really on each other’s wavelength. By about episode 2 or 3, we had arrived at the palette for the show.

When it comes to Philip, so many people have tried to imitate him in the past, but there’s absolutely no point as a composer in trying to imitate him. So I just went ahead and did my thing.

We’ve also both worked a lot with Errol Morris. Philip had done pretty much all his early work, and I’ve done all of Errol’s recent miniseries and films, so there’s a really nice tie-in there. Mark [Romanek], the director, really wanted to work with Philip, and my name was also suggested. And they took the two of us and put us in a room together. They didn’t know at the time if it was going to work out, but it did. It was just a wonderful collaboration, and music is so integral to this show.

Roarbots: I understand that one of your intentions for this soundtrack was to create hummable melodies. That’s become a relative rarity in TV and film scores lately. Why was that important to this project?

Leonard-Morgan: The series itself is timeless. It could take place whenever, and it could be shot anywhere. It’s this beautiful barren landscape. The loop itself is the scary thing that goes underneath. But it was brilliant; there’s so much space in this. The scripts are incredible, the cinematography is beautiful, and the pace of it is just so lovely.

And we were encouraged by Mark and others to take advantage of that. Let’s have melodies that people can sing or hum. When I started talking about my idea for a motif for the loop itself, that’s when Philip and I took over. But fundamentally, we wanted to have themes and motifs that would recur during the series because it’s really old-school filmmaking. It’s like the time of Indiana Jones when you could have full-on five-minute suites.

There’s a moment in this – I think it’s episode 7 – where there’s about 20 minutes with no dialogue. And normally people go, “Oh my god, it’s going to be so boring. What on earth?” But it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before!

Roarbots: What are you most anxious for people to see or hear about this project?

Leonard-Morgan: Well, they’re all individual films, so you can watch them out of order. In a normal series, if you watch out of order or if you’ve missed a couple, then you’ve had it. This isn’t something like Game of Thrones where if you fall behind, you’ll never catch up.

Tales from the Loop is like eight standalone films that happen in the same town. It’s about the interconnection of humanity. Episode 4, “Echo Sphere,” is one of the most complete pieces of television I’ve ever seen in my life. But the creative connection between the writing, direction, cinematography, music… it’s just great television.

It’s pure escapism. It takes you to a different world, and it makes you feel good. It’s a total optimistic feel-good kind of series.

Roarbots: That is precisely what the world needs right now. Escapism that is optimistic? What could be wrong with that?

Leonard-Morgan: Nothing! Honestly, so many people when they promote their project, they say, “Oh, it’s the greatest thing ever! It’s so this, so that!” But I put in eight months of work on these eight episodes.

Listen, Nathaniel [Halpern], the showrunner, was like, “What about the end? I want brand-new tracks that begin to come out and evolve during the final 30 seconds or minute of the show.” So basically, we have eight standalone two-and-a-half-minute tracks at the end of every single episode, and they’re all unique!

In the end, we had over 100 tracks, and there are no fillers. Every single one is there for a purpose. Obviously, the music works really well with the show, but it’s also a great standalone experience.

Roarbots: If you weren’t a musician, what would you be doing?

Leonard-Morgan: Sleeping.

Roarbots: Ha! Fair enough. I love an honest answer. Who’s the one composer working today that everyone should listen to?

Leonard-Morgan: Ennio Morricone. His stuff is genuinely timeless. I always thought his soundtrack to The Mission was just absolutely beautiful. Who would ever think to put whistling on a soundtrack? And then it becomes a thing that becomes one of the most ripped-off things ever?

I remember hearing a story about him that he was taken out into the desert for The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. He had to score a fight scene, and the actors weren’t getting the hang of it, so he took a mini orchestra out onto the set and had them play while the actors were fighting away to it. But then the trouble was how was he going to sync it up? He had to re-record it. So apparently, urban legend has it that’s how the click track was developed.

I have no idea if that’s true, but if it is? Morricone, you’re a genius.

Roarbots: I’ve never heard that story before. That’s amazing!

Leonard-Morgan: I swear I didn’t make it up.

Tales from the Loop is now streaming on Amazon Prime and the soundtrack is available here.

Photo: Jan Thijs