THE OCTOPUS PROJECT

Josh Lambert, Yvonne Lambert and Toto Miranda are the co-founders and core members of the multidisciplinary Austin, TX band, The Octopus Project.  Since beginning in 1999, the group has released six studio albums, toured clubs and festivals worldwide, created a series of immersive performance/installation works and composed music for video games, commercials and feature films.  Their latest score - for the Zellner Bros’ film Sasquatch Sunset - follows the titular cryptids through a year in the wilderness, taking inspiration from Popol Vuh, Miles Davis and Italian library music (among others) to create a musical journey that ranges from pastoral mysticism to psychedelic doom with all of the flavors in between.

Though the three knew each other from growing up in Houston, the band began after they all ended up in Austin to attend the University of Texas - earning degrees in film and psychology.  Experiments with home recording and electronic instruments led to the formation of a band to present those ideas in a rock context and The Octopus Project was born.  Starting with their first album, Identification Parade (Peek-A-Boo, 2002), the band began a touring career that has included festival appearances at Coachella, Lollapalooza, the Austin City Limits Festival and tours as handpicked support for artists as diverse as DEVO, Explosions in the Sky and Aesop Rock.  Along the way their live show has developed into an ever-changing multimedia experience fusing sound, light and image into a mind-expanding, face-melting explosion of joyful energy.  

The band’s scoring career grew out of their relationship with David & Nathan Zellner, who they got to know as fellow emerging Austin artists.  The trio began to write scores for the Zellners’ shorts, and the brothers would in turn direct music videos for the band.  2012 saw The Octopus Project’s first feature score work for the Zellners’ film Kid-Thing and video game score work for Thunderbeam (Karakasa Games).  The brothers’ next feature Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (starring Rinko Kikuchi) earned the group a Special Jury Award for Musical Score at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.  2018’s western Damsel (starring Robert Pattinson & Mia Wasikowska) was the band’s next scoring project, which was recorded entirely using period-specific instruments — banjo, saw, wine glasses, violin & acoustic guitar. 

2024 sees the release of their two latest film scores, the Zellners’ Sasquatch Sunset (starring Jesse Eisenberg & Riley Keough) — for which, the band has been nominated for two HMMAs — and the documentary Butterfly In the Sky (dir. by Bradford Thomason & Brett Whitcomb) which presents the story of beloved PBS series Reading Rainbow and its iconic host LeVar Burton.  In contrast to Sasquatch’s craggy, mysterious tones, Butterfly takes as its jumping off point the famous synthesizer intro to Reading Rainbow’s original theme song.  Spinning out from there, the band has created a universe of bright, colorful ear candy that pairs with the inspiring tone of the documentary and the series it depicts — channeling the likes of Mort Garson, Phillip Glass and 70’s PBS shows.

The band recently composed all of the pre-show music for Alamo Drafthouse Theaters across the country & is currently working on The Tallest Dwarf — an upcoming documentary about little people.