This month, the new crime drama, Armed arrived in select theaters, a film written, directed by, and starring Mario Van Peebles. Armed follows the story of Chief (Van Peebles), a former U.S. Marshall, who has fallen on hard times after a raid that went horribly wrong. As Chief struggles to get his life back on track, a former colleague reappears in his life and explains that all of the survivors from his unit are suffering similarly and that there may be a larger conspiracy at hand. Now comes word that the official soundtrack album by the composers and team at Signature Tracks, led by co-founders Russell Howard, Adam Malka, and David Lasman is available on most digital platforms including iTunes and Spotify.
“Mario is extremely hands-on. We worked directly with him when creating and editing the soundtrack,” music supervisor and composer, Adam Malka, explained. “I would go to his house and endlessly watch pictures and demo music to the picture to see what his feeling is, and together we picked all the songs scene-by-scene. The result is something that we are all tremendously proud of and we look forward to the audience reaction.”
“The musical palate has some cool Latin underscores in certain scenes,” continued Malka, “but the score and sound of the film, overall, has an electronic synth sound with vocals that are very haunting like a James Bond film.”
Russell Howard who most notably produced Jay-Z’s Grammy-nominated album The Life and Times of S. Carter before co-founding Signature Tracks said, “Mario has an incredible vision and there is a reason that he is at the top of his game. The talent clearly runs in the family. On the soundtrack, you’ll hear a couple tracks we produced that feature his sons, Mandela and Makaylo Van Peebles, rapping.”
Signature Tracks is one of the most innovative music production houses in the industry, composing for countless high profile projects and networks such as NBCUniversal (Bravo, E!), Viacom (MTV, VH1), A+E (A&E, History), Discovery (TLC, Discovery), Omnicom, and more. “Since our inception, we’ve recruited the highest level composers that had hit records on the radio but wanted a more consistent income stream. And we taught them how to score to content. Because of this, the transition from television to film has been seamless and we’re excited for audiences to hear the score for Armed,” shared David Lasman.
