Today it is with great pride and pleasure that we share a project we have been working on at Eraserhood Sound. For the past year, Vincent and Maxwell of EHS have been creating the underscore to the newest animated series on PBS KIDS titled Carl The Collector. To say that it has been a joy and an honor would be an understatement.
Created by award winning illustrator (and world class vinyl collector) Zachariah OHora, Carl The Collector is a show about a group of friends who work together to overcome obstacles both big and small, all while celebrating neurodiversity. Main character Carl is an autistic raccoon, and his friends (some of whom are also neurodivergent and some of whom are neurotypical) always have his back. It is the first show on PBS KIDS to feature main characters on the autism spectrum, and it couldn’t come at a better time. Empathy, kindness, and compassion are the bedrocks upon which the show is built.
When Zach approached us to score the music to his show several years ago, the first thing he told us was that he did not want us to make “kids’ music.” He wanted a sophisticated soundtrack to match the complex, nuanced emotions that children experience every day. He was a huge fan of Ribelle Di Mare, and he asked us to provide our signature synth & soul stylings to the world he was creating. We riffed on our shared love of Vince Guaraldi and his iconic, jazzy, existential work for Peanuts, and how it would serve as a spiritual reference point for us. We listened to LPs by Azymuth, Larry Coryell, and Cortex, and picked out moods and sounds that we could incorporate into the show.
Finally, last November, we began our new journey in earnest. Diving in head first, we have been packing each episode with our deepest and wildest ideas, pulling from soul, funk, R&B, rare groove, library, Brazilian, jazz, hip hop, boogie, New Wave, and so much more. Every episode is crafted by hand from scratch, written, performed, recorded and mixed here by Vincent and Maxwell at Eraserhood Sound.
Carl The Collector will air weekdays at 8:30am on PBS, plus 14 episodes are available to view on demand via the PBS KIDS app now. Whether young or old, neurodivergent or neurotypical, there is something to enjoy for everyone.
A special shout out to the teams who make this show possible, including the production team Spiffy Pictures, the animation team Yowza Animation, audio by Big Yellow Duck, and of course PBS KIDS for putting such a special show on the air. Finally, a thank you to the creative mastermind himself Zachariah OHora for bringing Eraserhood Sound into the Fuzzytown universe to provide some synth & soul.
