Screen music, carefully cataloged and argued for.
Cinematic Sound Radio Podcast treats screen music as history, craft, and personal canon. Across flagship countdowns, interviews, and game-score specials, it moves patiently through credits, collaborations, production context, and the music itself.
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Cinematic Sound Radio Podcast is a soundtrack archive in motion. Its focus is film, TV, and video game music, but its real subject is how scores carry authorship, memory, craft, and argument. The program has been associated with the Cinematic Sound Radio Network since 1996, and that long timeline shows in the way episodes handle context. It is rarely rushed. A flagship countdown may pause to explain that the selections are personal, then place composers within a larger 21st-century frame. A game-music special can stretch across two parts, counting through the best scores of 2025 while naming music connected to Olivier Deriviere, Yosuke Koshiro, John Valta, Lorian Testard, Atsuko Asahi, and others. The interview episodes are especially archival. Jason Drury's Talking Soundtracks conversations give guests time to describe process, influence, and production scale in detail. Simon Franglen's Avatar discussion, for example, moves through custom instruments, vocal textures, electronica, soundtrack albums, and the sheer volume of written score. The Stephen C. Smith episodes use Hitchcock and Herrmann as a study in friendship, control, creative trust, and collapse. The result is thoughtful, occasionally dense, and deeply affectionate. It suits listeners who want credits, dates, titles, cue-level observations, and historical framing rather than a quick recommendation list. There is fan enthusiasm here, but it is controlled and specific. The show is most rewarding when it follows a thread from a name or anniversary into a broader idea about what screen music can do. It also keeps multiple formats alive: countdowns, retrospectives, interviews, and themed specialty programs. That variety gives the feed the feel of a small soundtrack station rather than a single-format talk show. Its best moments make the archive feel active, with old collaborations, new releases, and personal taste all sharing the same shelf.
Made for: For film-music devotees, soundtrack collectors, game-score fans, and viewers who remember a scene by the cue beneath it. It also suits curious newcomers who like patient historical framing more than quick takes.
What sets it apart: The show combines long-running archive culture with detailed music-first programming across film, TV, and games. Its strength is the way it lets countdowns, interviews, anniversaries, and production stories build into a serious case for screen music as its own art form.
For over 25 years Cinematic Sound Radio has been playing the very best soundtrack music from film, TV and video games. We feature music from the golden age classic scores of the 30, 40 and 50s, the retro silver age scores from the 60s and 70s, all the way through to the 80s, 90s and the modern-day classics of the 21st century.When tuning in you'll hear interviews with composers, orchestrators, musicians, authors, soundtrack experts and industry insiders. We also do deeper dives into some of the best scores ever composed. And, of course, you'll hear LOTS of great music.We feature 10 unique shows exploring one of the most underappreciated art forms by people who are passionate about the art fo…
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Composer conversations, archival context and personal rankings make screen music legible as craft, history and dramatic storytelling.
Cinematic Sound Radio Podcast listens to films through the music doing their emotional and structural work. Its programming moves between composer interviews, historically framed selections and personal countdowns.
A 3D-printed Pandora instrument gets played on set, and suddenly you are listening past the dialogue.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A detailed Avatar score conversation grounded in craft, continuity, and James Horner's legacy.
Jason Drury and Simon Faglin spend the strongest stretches on the mechanics of the Avatar scores, moving from the 2023 World Soundtrack Award for Avatar The Way of Water to the custom textures Faglin is shaping for Avatar Fire and Ash.
A close look at Vertigo, Psycho, and Torn Curtain in the Hitchcock-Herman story.
Jason Drury keeps the focus on Stephen C. Smith's Hitchcock and Herman book, using the second half of the conversation to trace the major turns in the Hitchcock-Herman partnership.
A compact countdown that gives Joel McNeely and Escape from Tomorrow the most weight.
Eric Woods keeps the countdown moving with a focused look at scores 20 through 16, bringing Hans Zimmer, Joel McNeely, Abel Korzynowski, Michael Giacchino, and Christopher Gordon into the frame.
A Corman centennial shaped by unusual scores, sharp context, and a memorable turn toward The Intruder.
Roger Corman's centennial is framed as a compact tour through music from his films, moving from Les Baxter's end title for The Man with the X-Ray Eyes to David Lee's "The Masked Ball" from The Mask of the Red Death and Herman Stein's main title for The Intruder.
A thoughtful archive tour of rare film scores, composer context, and soundtrack rediscoveries.
Cinematic Sound Radio's Archive Show treats film music history as something worth digging into carefully, moving from Christopher Gunning's original theme to the classic ITV series Proro and Danny Zeltzlin's only film score, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant explain one topic per episode, from the bicameral mind to Boeing's MCAS.
Multi-part dramatized retellings of scandals like OceanGate's Titan and the Lehman Brothers collapse.
Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins dissect Oscar races, new releases, and Hollywood news.
Adam Kempenaar and Josh Larsen debate new releases, classics, and their own film rankings.
Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and Jason Mantzoukas argue their way through terrible movies.
Host Jason Drury presents part two of The Archive, featuring music and insights from film composers.
Host Jack Criddle celebrates the centennial of Roger Corman, born April 5, 1926, with a tribute episode on Cinematic Sound Radio.
On Cinematic Sound Radio's Talking Soundtracks, Jason Drury interviews Stephen Price about scoring Coyote vs.
Eric Woods ranks six 2025 scores, including Mathieu Elvato's London Symphony Orchestra writing for Asterix et Obelix and Simon Franklin's 1,900-page score for Avatar Fire and Ash.
Jason Drury opens with Simon Faglin's place in the Avatar story.
Jason Drury continues his interview with Stephen C.
Eric Woods continues his countdown of the top 25 scores of the 21st century, moving through scores 20 to 16.