Snowball

In 2019 I composed the score for the hit podcast Snowball, which was the 4th season of ABC's true crime podcast Unravel. It won "Best True Crime Podcast" at the 2020 Australian Podcast Awards.

The series is hosted by Ollie Wards, who chronicles how his brother's whirlwind romance with a charismatic Californian con woman ultimately cost his family more than a million dollars. We follow Ollie from his family's sleepy suburban New Zealand on an international investigation spanning Hawaii, the UK and the US.

The theme tune of the series (originally by fellow audio wiz Martin Peralta) was remixed to stunning effect by legit Aussie music legends Flight Facilities. I got to compose all the additional music cues.

I had the great privelege of bringing into the ABC's recording studios Dave Ellis on double bass and Phillippa Murphy-Haste who played saxophones and bass clarinet. They did a fantastic job fleshing out the cues I had written. I was so in the zone on the day that I only spared a thought to capture this grainy photo:

The series became a hit both in Australia and abroad and was ABC's most downloaded podcast of 2019.

I'm deeply proud of how the music turned out and wish more people could hear the cues without podcast script over so I've made them available in the playlist below.

‘I didn’t see it all until it was way too late’: Catching a con woman

Her fantasy personas, wild stories and Californian charms broke hearts and ruined families. But was she really the villain they imagined?

ABC NewsMichael Dulaney