1. Ego Plum was born on February 27,1975 and is an American film composer, musician, and performer.
25 Facts About Ego Plum
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Ego Plum has frequently cites The Residents as his initial inspiration to become a performer.
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Ego Plum immediately began composing music on his brothers' instruments and recording home-made demos on Casio keyboards with 4-track recorders.
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Ego Plum is proficient on multiple instruments and yet is entirely self-taught; his biography on the Making Fiends website claims his only formal musical training was completing a tap dance class at East Los Angeles College.
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Ego Plum has listed further influence from punk rock and new wave, in particular Devo, Oingo Boingo and the Dead Kennedys, as well as the work of film composers Franz Waxman and Bernard Herrmann.
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Ego Plum spent most of his twenties working in a cubicle at the University of California, Los Angeles, making music in his spare time as a hobby, with a wish to score cartoons.
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In 1998, Ego Plum began assembling the Ebola Music Orchestra, a ten-piece ensemble including a horn section, strings and accordions as the means of performing songs from Anthology of Infection in a concert setting, with Ego Plum serving as the musical director as well as switching between guitar, keyboards, xylophone and various unique instruments.
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Critical response to the album was largely positive, including "highly recommended" praise from BlogCritics, which succinctly concluded their review with "[Ego Plum]'s got skillz".
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Whilst still working at UCLA, Ego Plum saw a screening of Amy Winfrey's 2000 short film The Bad Plant.
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The film made a strong impression on Ego Plum, who sought out Winfrey to give his Anthology of Infection CD from.
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Ego Plum composed original material for the show and worked with songs written by series creator Amy Winfrey.
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Ego Plum was ultimately not selected to score the series, though has since posted his original demos online.
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Ego Plum continued his work in scoring animated television with the Disney Channel original series Star vs the Forces of Evil, composing the ending credits theme with Daron Nefcy.
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Ego Plum made his debut composing for the stage in 2009 with The Gogol Project, an original adaptation of three short stories by Nikolai Gogol created by the Rogue Artists Ensemble.
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Ego Plum subsequently scored A Noise Withins 2012 adaptation of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol and partnered with the Rogues again writing original songs and music for their 2013 production of Pinocchio.
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Ego Plum composed the music for the new extended queue for Disneyland's The Haunted Mansion, which debuted in November of 2024.
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Ego Plum said that composing music for The Haunted Mansion was "an honor of a lifetime".
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In 2009, Ego Plum engineered and recorded drums and keyboards for the David J-produced Petits Fours, the debut album from Grand Duchy, a project fronted by Black Francis of the Pixies.
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Ego Plum befriended artist and Marilyn Manson co-founder Gidget Gein in the early 2000s, eventually composing original music for Gein's 2004 "Gollywood" art and fashion shows for his Use Once and Destroy Couture fashion line.
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Ego Plum is a fervent admirer of the music and electronic innovation of composer Raymond Scott.
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In 2012, Ego Plum worked with Oingo Boingo guitarist Steve Bartek in arranging a live tribute show held at the Walt Disney Concert Halls REDCAT entitled "Machine Man: The Musical Mayhem of Raymond Scott," which was produced in cooperation with Jeff Winner of The Raymond Scott Archives.
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Bartek, himself a composer and orchestrator for film and television, had previously worked with Ego Plum providing guitar and theremin for The Gogol Projects soundtrack release and currently produces Ego Plum's score for Harvey Beaks.
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Ego Plum has worked on several projects with the Orange County comedy punk band The Radioactive Chicken Heads, receiving credits on their albums Growing Mold and Music for Mutants for additional guitar tracks and songwriting.
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Ego Plum helped produce, arrange and record the debut album from the Chicken Heads garage pop side project the Purple Mums and in March 2015, Plum wrote and directed a three-act absurdist stage play entitled The Radioactive Chicken Heads Tanksgiving Special which premiered at The Steve Allen Theater in Los Angeles, featuring the band performing live music to a comedic narrative featuring guest appearances from actor Dukey Flyswatter, Mike Odd of Rosemary's Billygoat and Hunter Jackson of GWAR.
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In 2012, film director and Oingo Boingo co-founder Richard Elfman announced plans to film a sequel to his 1980 cult musical Forbidden Zone, revealing that Ego Plum would be contributing music and songs in conjunction with original composer Danny Elfman, whose commitments in Hollywood prevented him from dedicating himself to the project full-time.