tomandandy

Tomandandy is an American musical duo from New York City, consisting of members Thomas Hajdu and Andy Milburn. While they are best known for their work scoring films, their portfolio includes music for television commercials as well as television programs, records and art installations. Andy Milburn was born in Texas and went to Princeton University for undergraduate as well as graduate work.

At Princeton, his primary focus was creating computer music and computer music applications. During that time, he contributed to the early computer music system called Real-time Cmix. Thomas Hajdu was born in Canada and moved to the US to work on his graduate studies at Princeton University. Tom has sat on many award juries and chaired and spoken at international conferences about the impact of technology on content including TED, MIT Enterprise Forum and Digital Hollywood.

Milburn and Hajdu moved to New York after Princeton and started collaborating with film director Mark Pellington at MTV and film editors Hank Corwin and Bruce Ashley in the UK. Soon their work was being used in commercials, TV shows, feature films, art installations and record projects. Tomandandy quickly grew and they built a number of recording studios in New York and later in Los Angeles.

At the same time, Tomandandy invested in technological innovations focusing on digital entertainment. A notable project was the MTV "Buzz" series. In 1992, Tomandandy appeared on the Red Hot Organization's dance compilation album, Red Hot + Dance, contributing an original dance track, "Theme From Red Hot & Dance (Gothic Mix)." The album attempted to raise awareness and money in support of the AIDS epidemic, and all proceeds were donated to AIDS charities.

In 2009, Tomandandy won Best Horror Score (runner-up) in Fangoria's Chainsaw Award for their score to The Strangers. In 2020, Tomandandy's Tom Hajdu reflected on The Strangers soundtrack during an interview. "There was a lot of intentionality in mixing strange sounds with familiar sounds! It was a combination of analog, synthetic, and ambient sounds, along with silence, put together in unusual ways.

To create combinations that are not necessarily traditional in that respect, or expected." Source: Article "Tomandandy" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.