Eric Penna is a musician, composer and producer living in Los Angeles, CA. After many years playing in bands and touring internationally, his musical focus shifted to film and television contributing tracks to programming such as:
Hulu's Shut Eye
MTV’s Catfish
Viceland's Vice Does America
Intel’s Becoming with Johnny Knoxville
CBS' Undercover Boss
MTV's True Life
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee
MTV UK's Sing it in Song
The Vice Guide to Film
MTV's Suspect
Hamilton's Pharmacopeia
Gordon Ramsay's 24 Hours to Hell and Back
Flip My Food
Vice Essentials
Being a fan of all things retro, Penna has amassed a collection of vintage recording equipment allowing him to fuse the sounds from the past with modern production value and fidelity. One recent example is his version of Phil Phillips’ classic track, “Sea of Love” with vocals from actress Troian Bellasario (of Pretty Little Liars) featured in the forthcoming film Surf Noir.
In a search for the musical fusion of new and old, The Mary Pickford Foundation enlisted Penna's help in creating modern soundtracks to the old silent films being restored in their massive archive for re-release. This collaboration has yielded two short films this year and a full length for completion next year.
As a producer and recording engineer, Penna has helped shape albums and songs for artists such as So Many Wizards, Samira’s Infinite Summer, Sadgirl, Easy Love, Carter Tanton and many more.
Still active as a performing musician, Penna fronts the instrumental surf-psych band Trabants whose recent album, Nel Cuore di Una Terra Selvaggia, is a full-on Spaghetti Western opus in the vein of the great Italian maestros of the 60’s such as Ennio Morricone. Released, through Lolipop Records, the album paved the Way for the band’s first European shows. As a sideman, he tours Occasionally with planet earth's longest running Modern surf band, The Insect Surfers, backing up power pop legend Paul Collins and Seattle's vintage noir pop act Prom Queen.
An avid record collector, Eric produced and compiled a cd for London-based re-issue label Ace Records called CYCLONE! -GALLIC GUITARS A GO GO of never before re-issued European 60’s garage music first heard as part of Mukta Mohan’s morning radio show and the Molotov Cocktail Hour both on L.A.’s KXLU.
Recent releases/ projects:
A recent, modern re-score of the Mary Pickford film, “So Near, Yet So Far” (1912)
Hear the recently released album, WANDER FEELER by the band Easy Love, released by Loantaka Records. Produced, Recorded and Mixed by Eric Penna