Cyrus Melchor

Cyrus Melchor (born October 22, 1972), also known professionally as Mount Cyanide, is an American composer, multi-instrumentalist and record producer. He began his career by remixing Massive Attack’s Be Thankful for What You’ve Got and went on to produce Bell Biv DeVoe, Blood of Abraham and Old Man Saxon. Melchor is best known for the song "On My Own" from the Silicon Valley (TV series)|Silicon Valley Soundtrack on Mass Appeal Records and for composing the music to the HBO film LFG which was nominated for best score by the Critics Choice Documentary Awards.
== Early Life and Education ==
Melchor was born and raised in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles to mixed ethnicity parents of Filipino, Japanese and Irish Americans|Irish heritage. He took piano lessons and studied violin in elementary school and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
== Career ==
Cyrus Melchor began his career with a remix of Be Thankful for What You’ve Got from Massive Attack's Blue Lines album on Virgin Records. While at Virgin, he produced Honey Dip for R&B trio Immature’s debut album On Our Worst Behavior. He received his first RIAA Gold Record|gold record with Bell Biv DeVoe’s Hootie Mack having produced Nickel which would go on to be included in the group’s greatest hits LP, The Best of Bell Biv DeVoe. Melchor then formed and produced Los Angeles hip hop group Wessyde Goon Squad, a band "rooted in traditional and hardcore hip hop but tempered with various blends of R&B" which caught the attention of Ronnie DeVoe of Bell Biv DeVoe who signed on to co-manage the group along with New Edition manager Brooke Payne. The group released two singles, Crazy and Higher, through Epic Records and 550 Music, respectively. In 1999, he produced Blood of Abraham's Eyedollartree along with will.i.am, Motiv8 and the band themselves . He collaborated with Benyad and Mazik of Blood of Abraham again the following year providing additional production on the song Universal Scientist by Maxim of the English group The Prodigy. The trio concluded their collaborations with a remix of Maxim's single Scheming. 
In 2001, Melchor began recording instrumental music under the name Cyrus Melchor|Mount Cyanide and released the song Antarctica on the Electromatrix surround sound compilation Awaken, which was executive produced by longtime Fleetwood Mac producer Richard Dashut . He continued experimenting with surround sound in 2003 with the formation of Camarillo Blues Triangle, a collaboration with drummer Alfred DiMaio that combined "rock guitar, bass and dark synths." The self titled Camarillo Blues Triangle album was mixed in six channel surround sound and released on DVD-Audio through Myutopia Recordings. The band performed an improvisational noise rock set on the rockumentary 40 Bands 80 Minutes! He soon returned to the Mount Cyanide project and produced The DCW EP and then licensed several unreleased songs to the film Rock Fresh, foreshadowing a collaborative relationship with the director of the film, Danny Lee. 
In 2006, Cyrus scored Coca Cola’s “Parade” advertisement which won him both the CLIO and AICP Award for Original Music. He again returned to writing Mount Cyanide music with Footsteps in the Sky which was featured in the Season 9 episode of CSI "The Happy Place." The song would serve as the title track to the second Mount Cyanide EP. Footsteps in the Sky was released on Josh One's label Boomnote Music in 2010. In 2012, he again won CLIO and AICP Awards for his score of Johnnie Walker's Step Together advertisement. 2012 was a year of firsts as Melchor scored his first feature film with the drama The 10 Commandments of Chloe and released his first full length album, The Home For Better Living. In 2014, he composed the music for a Kia Super Bowl ad starring Christopher Walken. 
Melchor returned to hip hop production in 2016 under the Mount Cyanide name and started collaborating with rapper Old Man Saxon. The duo recorded the song On My Own which landed on the ending credits of the HBO series Silicon Valley and was featured on the show's soundtrack album released digitally and on vinyl by Mass Appeal Records. Mount Cyanide produced the Old Man Saxon EP The Pursuit in its entirety in 2017 . In 2020, Cyrus teamed back up with director Danny Lee and scored The Story of Air Max, Defining Moments with Ozy and The Story of Dunk. He then composed the music for the HBO Max documentary film LFG for which he was nominated a Critics Choice Documentary Award for Best Score. In 2021, he produced the Mount Cyanide EP I Smell A Bomb Coming and most of Old Man Saxon's album Rothkos, Chicken and Waffles. In 2022, Melchor composed the music for the Springhill documentary Who is Stan Smith which was directed by Danny Lee and executive produced by Lebron James and Maverick Carter. 
Category:1972 births
Category:American musicians
Category:American people