Music+Sound Awards Winner Spotlight: Sound Designer Rising Star, Wave Studios’ Isaac Matus

Isaac Matus from Wave Studios' New York office was named the 2024 Sound Designer Rising Star by the Music+Sound Awards jury. 

Starting at Wave as a runner at the end of 2018, Bogotá-born Isaac quickly moved his way up to Transfer Engineer, and now sound designer and mixer. He’s since worked with major brands such as Budweiser, New York Life, Nissan, Bubly and Icy Hot to name a few, plus multiple short films and music videos. 

It was his work on a campaign for Toronto’s major paediatric teaching hospital, SickKids, though that convinced the jury. This milestone work in his portfolio involved intricate sound design, paired with otherworldly VFX, a touching message, along with a Billie Eilish song he had to edit. The film demonstrates the power of Precision Child Health, and early diagnosis, in transforming the outcomes in paediatric healthcare. 

Isaac and the team leveraged sound as storytelling shorthand to propel the narrative and create an enticing, sonic world of PCH that illustrated how it enabled SickKids doctors and researchers to search the past, analyse the present, and heal the future of SickKids patients. They used sound design to serve as an auditory indication of what was happening in the story, such as preempting visuals with tell-tale sounds - like rattling wheels of a gurney and the urgent voices in the hospital corridors. They also made the sound of PCH a key element of the soundscape, giving it an unexpected and very specific sonic character. Heavily treated vocals were utilised that felt synthesised, while subconsciously still human, and the sound of organic elements, digitally formatted to create something new, much like the process of PCH itself.

Take a look again and see how his talent shines through. We really look forward to following Isaac’s future work!