Aaron MF Olson

Aaron M. Fernandez Olson started playing guitar at around age 10, picking up classic rock bass lines from his uncle Chuck Fernandez. It wasn’t until he attended San Francisco State University, though, that he started to learn the technical side of the craft, eventually graduating with a B.A. in Classical Music History & Theory. Straight out of college he began life as a touring musician, playing bass in the band Cryptacize, and continuing as a multi-instrumentalist to accompany the likes of Tara Jane O’Neil, Chris Cohen, Papercuts, Bart Davenport, SK Kakraba Lobi, Nedelle Torrisi, Nicholas Krgovich, David Pajo, Vetiver and many more. While ingrained in the music of so many others, his solo catalog is equally expansive and versatile. He has released a string of incredibly cinematic synth and guitar-driven music under the moniker, L.A. Takedown (Castle Face, Ribbon Music), and has released a wide variety of albums as a solo artist — from baroque folk-rock songs to new age instrumentals, to synthesizer renditions of Mariachi music. On top of that, Olson co-founded and plays in the Grateful Dead cover band, Richard Pictures, and its offshoot project Mountain Brews, and performs and releases experimental work with his project, The Musical Tracing Ensemble. His mind has always been set on composing for film, though, and after scoring several smaller independent and short-length film projects, he recently broke into the mainstream as the composer for the feature length, Nutcrackers, directed by David Gordon Green and starring Ben Stiller.