Michael Stein

Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated Michael Stein, along with his partner Kyle Dixon, are half of the Austin band S U R V I V E who scored the biggest pop culture phenomenon of 2016: the Netflix series "Stranger Things". The duo's dreamy, throwback score helped sell the nostalgic ode to when Carpenter and Spielberg were the tastemakers of the horror/fantasy genre. Series creators The Duffer Brothers fell in love with the band's albums, which spin classic synths into a distinctly modern sound- and the resulting alchemy produced the most talked-about soundtrack of the year that garnered a Primetime Emmy Award win for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music, two Grammy nominations for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, an ASCAP Composers' Choice Award nomination for TV Composer(s) of the Year, and a World Soundtrack Award nomination for TV Composer(s) of the Year. The duo completed work on Stranger Things 2 in 2017, which Pitchfork commented, "while staying true to the series' airtight aesthetic, Dixon and Stein continue to find ways to push beyond." They are working on the third season of the series. 2018 saw Dixon and Stein explore the worlds of Virtual Reality, with the Darren Aronofsky produced VR series, Spheres, written & directed by Eliza McNitt. The episodic run launched at the Sundance Film Festival with Spheres: Songs of Spacetime, which won Best VR at the 2018 Venice Biennale Film Festival. Most recently, Dixon and Stein scored Matthew Libatique's short film A Different Beyond, which was shot using early models of the new Fujifilm X-T3 camera system. Early 2019 brings us three new projects. First, National Geographic's Valley of the Boom, a hybrid documentary-drama chronicling the early days of Silicon Valley. The duo also scored the three-part British series Butterfly, which addresses the sensitive, contemporary issue of gender dysphoria which was recently picked up by Hulu in the U.S. Dixon and Stein had their debut feature film score for Rashid Johnson's dramatic directorial debut Native Son at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.