Perfectly timed with the return of the hit series comes the release of Foundation: Season 3 (Apple TV+ Original Series Soundtrack) featuring themes by renowned composer Bear McCreary and score by Sparks & Shadows. The soundtrack will be available digitally day-and-date with the series’ third-season premiere on Friday, July 11 on Apple TV+.
Based on the award-winning novels by Isaac Asimov, Foundation chronicles a band of exiles on their monumental journey to save humanity and rebuild civilization amid the fall of the Galactic Empire. Set 152 years after the events of season two, the new season of Foundation continues to build its intricate universe as old and new characters clash in a potentially deadly game of intergalactic chess. Three-time Emmy Award winner Cherry Jones (Succession, The Handmaid’s Tale) and Academy Award winner Troy Kotsur (CODA) join the Foundation cast for season three.
McCreary and the Sparks & Shadows team sought to complement the elevated stakes of season three’s otherworldly intensity and intrigue with a myriad of new sounds, voices, and instruments, all the while continuing to reflect upon past seasons’ beloved themes.
“We’ve honored the musical DNA of earlier seasons, but the score for the third season turned darker, grittier, more primal,” says McCreary. “Where the previous chapters of Foundation gazed outward, painting on a vast, galactic canvas, this season drills inward—into the psyches and destinies of its central characters, as they march ever closer to the inevitable. Our music mirrors this descent. We are all grateful to be a part of this remarkable narrative universe.”
“In its third season, Foundation casts a new and formidable shadow across its cosmic stage: the Mule, a mutant of eerie power,” says co-composer Etienne Monsaingeon of Sparks & Shadows. “The Mule bends minds to his will through a mysterious and singular instrument: the Visi-sonor. Imagining the sound of this alien instrument was at the heart of our musical challenge this season. It had to be unearthly. Guttural. Hypnotic. A sound that unsettles, strips away the listener’s defenses.
“We combined the feral brass of the ancient Celtic instrument the carnyx, the haunting strings of the yaylı tanbur, spectral theremins, vocal manipulations, and layers of synthesizers, all intricately woven and distorted. What resulted was neither wholly acoustic nor electronic—a hybrid soundscape that felt unearthed rather than composed.”
Foundation: Season 3 (Apple TV+ Original Series Soundtrack)
pre-save/access the album here
Track Listing:
- The Second Foundation
- Rossem
- The Mule
- Ignis Love Story
- Novacula
- Toran & Bayta
- Border Betrayal
- Mycogen
- Day Trip
- The Sacratorium
- Total Eclipse
- Vault Breach
- Dawn Rises
- In the Heart of Us
- Brother’s Wrath
Beyond film and television, McCreary is currently preparing to embark on the third leg of his Themes & Variations world tour with four late-July dates in Australia, featuring stops in Melbourne (The Forum, July 23), Sydney (The Enmore Theatre, July 24), Brisbane (Eatons Hill Hotel, July 25) and Perth (Astor Theatre, July 28). McCreary began the tour with ten dates throughout Europe, and recently concluded the North American portion covering six major cities from New York to Chicago. Tickets for the Australian concerts can be purchased at https://bearmccreary.com/events/.
ABOUT BEAR McCREARY
Emmy and BAFTA Award–winning composer and recording artist Bear McCreary began his career as a protégé of legendary film composer Elmer Bernstein, before bursting onto the scene scoring the revered series Battlestar Galactica in 2004. Since then, McCreary has won three Emmy Awards, including two for Disney’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and has won twelve International Film Music Critics Association Awards, including the award for Score of the Year in 2024, his second. Project highlights include The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Amazon); Foundation (Apple TV+); Outlander (STARZ); AMC’s global phenomenon The Walking Dead; Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures’ Godzilla: King of the Monsters; and Netflix’s Academy Award–nominated documentary Crip Camp (produced by Barack and Michelle Obama). McCreary’s celebrated scores for Sony PlayStation’s blockbusters God of War and God of War Ragnarök have earned him two BAFTA Awards and two Grammy nominations. In 2024, McCreary released The Singularity, a hard-rock concept album featuring legendary rock talent including Slash, Serj Tankian (System of a Down), Corey Taylor (Slipknot), Rufus Wainwright, and more.
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ABOUT SPARKS & SHADOWS
Sparks & Shadows Inc. is a multifaceted entertainment company founded by Bear McCreary. The company functions as a full-service music production studio, record label, publishing entity, and general headquarters from which all of McCreary’s projects are developed.
Sparks & Shadows is also the moniker for a dynamic composer collective of talented young artists, handpicked and mentored by McCreary, whose work can be heard in the hit Apple TV+ series Foundation, Netflix’s Masters of the Universe: Revolution, the recent Disney+ megahit Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and more.