In conversation with music supervisor Brett Weyhrich

Music supervision is a storied, crucial, and highly romanticised aspect of the music industry. The role of the music supervisor is to place music to picture, for film, TV, commercial and everything in between. It’s a highly skilled position, requiring encyclopaedic knowledge of both film and music, and it’s a very demanding environment to inhabit. Good music supervision can make an entire film (not to mention make a musician’s career), but only the very best get the high profile gigs. I’ve been fortunate to enter this world, albeit briefly, in my work for an upcoming Maltese feature film due for theatrical release in 2026.

Phantom Limb has a very enjoyable partnership with the music supervision company Freak Scene Music, headed by experienced exec Brett Weyhrich. I admire Brett’s approach to the work, and the open-eared music listenership that he employs. His placements are always classy and scene-elevating, sometimes surprising, and always in careful consideration of storytelling.

Brett and I spoke, via Zoom, about music supervision, record labels, where the two worlds collide, and our respective approaches to our professional lives.

JV: Tell us about your work. What is music supervision to you? What led you to this point in your career?

BW: I do freelance music supervision for entertainment marketing: films, shows, video games, promos, etc. To me, it’s just another facet of the storytelling process. But for trailers especially, it typically needs to try and encapsulate the main arc or spine of whatever you’re selling.

I think the idea of music supervision to me came about when I was young and saw films like Rushmore, Boogie Nights, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting, where you really got a sense of how it could be used to capture so many different elements of the overall story: setting, time period, irony, brutality, empathy; say something the characters want to say but can’t maybe, or make them seem larger than they should be.

Then trailers came on my radar, and some of the really great ones can make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Or else I'm just a sap. So I went to LA and got lucky. Some wonderful and talented people were very kind to me and I got my foot in the door.

How did you get your start in the music business? Was there a moment in your life where you knew you’d be devoted to music not only as a fan, but as the owner of a label/publisher?

JV: I've been playing music since I was a kid, and in bands since I was a teenager. When I was 19 I started a label, and at 22 I began working at an established UK independent label. I've always been drawn to both sides of the music world - as performer and as facilitator. I even "managed" the bands I played in at school, or at least attempted to. I still do, actually. I don't necessarily see the two fields as inherently married, more that I'm happy codeswitching between them. Do you feel a similar split between “creative” and “functional” in your work?

BW: When I’m listening to music, the voice in the back of my mind saying, “oh this could work for something” is always there. I’m always in listener mode though. The gig obviously entails listening to a massive array of music, but that just means more artists and bands and songs to fall in love with (and ideally help get licensed / synced).

It’s a puzzle. There’s a song with lyrics and instrumentation and tone that mirror the subtext and spine of the story without being obvious about it, but what is it? There’s a piece of music that can create the same sense of dread or tension or joy that the characters are going through, what is it?

It’s always a fun game to try and figure it out, especially the initial pulls you do, where it’s open ended and you as a supervisor can offer ideas as to what it could become. Ultimately, it’s got to pass through a lot of checkpoints, but those initial pulls when you’re throwing a lot of different looks at the wall to see what sticks, that’s the best.

JV: Tell us about some artists and songs you have fallen in love with. What are some recent favourites? What are some lifetimers? How do you like to discover music?

BW:

Recent favourites:

Circuit des Yeux - Halo on the Inside

Folk Bitch Trio - Now would be a Good time

Fat Dog - Woof

Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals - A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears (Phantom Limb, baby!)

Loaded Honey - Love Made Trees

Sextile - Yes, Please

The Bug Club - Very Human Features

Sports Team - Boys These Days

Lifetimers:

Flamin Groovies - Flamingo/Teenage Head

Jerry Lee Lewis - Live at the Star Club (w/ The Nashville Teens)

Every album Donald Byrd made with Larry Mizell

Sam Cooke - Live at the Harlem Square Club

The Jesus & Mary Chain - Darklands/Automatic

Funkadelic - One Nation Under a Groove

Discovery: Substack, Spotify, Youtube, Bandcamp, Music Blogs.

How about yours?

JV:

Recent favourites:

Anysia Kym & Loraine James - Clandestine

Patrick Shiroishi & Piotr Kurek - Greyhound Days

Shropshire Number Stations - Recordings of Covert Shortwave Radio Stations (Shropshire & Mid-Wales)

Sleepdial - RV Lights

Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere

CD Noé - Ornamental Hermits

weed420 - Encava de Amor

Angel Snake / Monopoly Child Star Searchers - Snakinist Sand Form / No Jaw Nite Rights

Lippard Arkbro Lindwall - How do I know if my cat likes me?

Jake Muir - Campana Sonans

Gråt Strigoi - The Prophetic Silence

And some lifetimers:

Don Cherry & Terry Riley - Köln Concert

Alice Coltrane - Journey in Satchidananda

Paddy McAloon - I Trawl the Megahertz

Antipop Consortium - Arrhythmia

Charlie Mingus - Mingus Ah Um

Smashing Pumpkins - Gish

Karen Dalton - In My Own Time

Heiner Goebbels - Der Mann im Fahrstuhl

Melt-Banana - Scratch or Stitch

Yasuaki Shimizu - Kakashi

Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabate - In The Heart of the Moon

Women - Women

mewithoutYou - Brother, Sister

BW: How do you discover new music? As an A&R, and for potential new and up and coming artists out there, what do you gravitate towards the most when considering signing an artist?

JV: A lot of different ways. I enjoy platform-surfing (Bandcamp primarily), but, thinking of Phantom Limb's roster, we've discovered artists in a lot of different ways. One of them was previously managed by a football teammate. Others have sent demos. Some we've had to track down through painstaking detective work. Plenty are sent to us by friends and colleagues in the industry.

I'm always in search of music that tells us something new about humanity or the universe, and tells it in a unique way. I've often thought of this in terms of body parts: does the music have teeth; guts; brains; heart etc.?

BW: Are there artists/musicians today inventing new sounds, new genres, or creating things you haven’t heard before?

JV: Absolutely. This is a really crucial part of record label directorship - the search for these musicians and providing platforms for them to do this in a sustainable and recognisable way. We’re just beginning a relationship with the Venezuelan band weed420. I haven't heard much like them ever before; it feels genuinely exciting.

BW: What labels were the most inspiring to you and helped shape the core of what Phantom Limb would become?

JV: In some respects, we try very hard not to point to other labels and to do our work with the flexibility and agility required to navigate independent music in 2025. There are very few practices that remain fixed in our work - everything is (has to be) continuously reevaluated. But there are some labels that we greatly admire (or envy) from afar and some that we consider peers on a similar journey to ours. The latter includes folks such as RVNG Intl., Leaving Records, Métron, Northern Spy / NNA Tapes, Hive Mind, a few others. The former would be Secretly, 4AD, Warp, Domino.

BW: Did you always envision the music and artists you put out to be eclectic and cross multiple genres, multiple continents? Why is that important to you?

JV: We definitely always envisioned this. Even our first handful of releases included experimental theremin, wacky avant-pop, ambient music, and Kentucky-primitive solo guitar. We're big music nerds and the feeling that the label reflects our own restless tastes is energising in a crucial and liberating way. We've always described the label roster as a "picture by mosaic" - i.e. the wider vision is best appreciated by understanding the individual parts.

Do you feel the same about film? Are your tastes broad?

BW: Yeah. I love dark mystery thrillers. I’m waiting for someone to top Silence of the Lambs but also secretly know this is not possible; that might sum it up. But also the world needs more R-rated comedies now more than ever.

JV: What are some classic needle drop moments for you?

BW: Every scene of Boogie Nights. The oner in the opener to Best of my Love. Sister Christian into Jessie’s Girl for the dramatic climax. When the lady dives into the pool as the chorus to Spill the Wine kicks in. Recording star Dirk Diggler singing You got the Touch!

The revenge montage in Rushmore played to A Quick One, While he’s away by The Who. I recently heard Wes Anderson say they planned specific scenes around certain songs and choreographed them accordingly, sometimes using a stopwatch to time things perfectly. It made me wish that everything was made that way.

The Who performing the track in the Stones’ Rock & Roll Circus.

Superstar by The Carpenters in Tommy Boy. Two guys just being vulnerable with each other on a road trip to sell brake pads.

Dragonaut by Sleep in Gummo. Two kids just lording over the wasteland of their dead town

Lou Reed’s cover of This Magic Moment from Lost Highway. As far as slow-mo Femme Fatale entrances go, who better to spell your doom than sweet Lou.

What are your favourites?

JV: Public Enemy and the opening scene of Do The Right Thing. Pretty much any moment of Mean Streets. When the Kinks track comes in at the beginning of The Darjeeling Limited. The Beta Band EP moment in High Fidelity. Dylan's Hurricane in Dazed & Confused. My Bloody Valentine in Lost in Translation. New Order in American Psycho.

But I generally watch film from a fan perspective. I’m sure my perception of it is different to yours. Are you able to watch films as a fan or do you automatically enter professional mode?

BW: If by professional mode, you mean obsessively Shazaming every needledrop… but that’s just as much about being a fan, as well. I will use this question to climb on my music-snob soapbox and say that “Gimme Shelter” by The Rolling Stones should be retired from needledrop use though. I think it’s time, it had an amazing run.

JV: Tell us about Hollywood and the movie business. What attracts you to it? What turns you off?

BW: I get that it’s hard to put butts in seats right now or perpetually and that, in order to do so, you need films with built-in fanbases or IP, but I’m hopeful there will be a resurgence of originality and more freedom given to writers and directors; Sinners being the best argument for this. The amount of amazing indie films being made right now is pretty special though, as well.

JV: What else do you do in your life? How do these practices inform your work?

BW: Dance with the devil in the pale moonlight. He informs all.

Just kidding.

I mostly read, watch a lot of film and TV, try to write, I tried improv comedy this year, mountain biking, make my wife laugh (sometimes), play with my dog Garfunkel; and of course listen to endless amounts of music. I think reading and watching film and TV, understanding narrative arcs and subtext and all that fun stuff helps do the gig for sure. Sometimes I need to deprogramme with ambient music or a podcast.

JV: Where do you see the future of recorded music? Where do you see the future of music supervision?

BW: Just waiting for Apple or someone to create a chip to implant in my brain so I can be in a crowded thoroughfare and yell, “Siri, play Thin Lizzy!”. Honestly though, and fortunately for us, it will never stop, more genres and influences will be blurred together in weird beautiful ways, more platforms to be heard through, and strangely, less people playing their horrible music through backpacks in nature.

The future of music supervision… I imagine more customization, more original music and bigger collaborations with popular artists being made for film, TV, video games, and YouTube content. More cross-promotion and co-partnerships.

And I can imagine easier ways for supervisors and rights holders to connect and license music; and likely AI being used to create more for less, but in a perfect world, ideally as a collaborative tool for very very talented musicians, producers, and composers.

I’m sure the digital age is rapidly reshaping your work too. Are music scenes or music central or indicative to specific cities/locations still important? Do music scenes even still exist? Can a location still shape or inspire unique sounds / artists / bands?

JV: This is a great question. I grew up with "scenes", and some of my favourite artists and records could likely never have existed without the peerage of artists around them or the foundations built by and from community and communal support. I really hope scenes still do exist. They're harder and harder to find and identify now, and maybe that's something we need to address.

BW: What do you envision for the future of live music, touring?

JV: I wish I could say that I foresee health and happiness long into the future. It's one of the last remaining hopes of economic sustainability for a lot of artists. But the ecological effects need urgent reform, unless an artist is profitable enough to afford such changes. And for no valid reason whatsoever visas are becoming more expensive and harder to secure.

But most of our industry is built on live music so it needs to stay healthy. There's no comparable excitement to witnessing great art unfold in front of your own eyes, and I'd hope that even in the digital age enough people feel the same.

BW: I hope so too. What’s the greatest show you’ve ever seen? Who do you wish you could’ve seen perform live and when?

JV: One of my favourites was Last Poets here in Brighton a few years ago. I've been a huge fan forever, and never thought I'd have the chance to see them. They were full of fire, even then. I love watching William Basinski perform. He and I worked together for a few years so I've seen him a lot.

Who else? The Melvins are incredible live; Mayhem frightened the life out of me; Joanna Newsom at the Royal Festival Hall in London some years back.

I'd love to see Metallica. I know they're still playing, but man it's expensive. And their live set is about 3 hours long.

I always ask this question to finish up: how are you feeling about the state of the world? Are you able to disconnect?

BW: I might be too disconnected. I have dreams of starting an unincorporated village that’s purely analog, and we bring back landline phones and have Nokia bricks, but just GPS and obviously… snake. And I'll have the mp3 player chip removed from my brain, maybe. And we pray to Brian Wilson.

JV: I love it. I’d build that utopia.