The Ego Plum Laboratory of Electro-Musical Instruments is a Los Angeles-based ensemble devoted to bringing impossible, forgotten, and imagined music to life. Led by composer and performer Ego Plum, the Laboratory explores the intersection of early electronic music, animation scoring, experimental pop, surrealism, and obsolete musical technology. Its repertoire includes original compositions alongside works by visionary figures such as Raymond Scott, Jean-Jacques Perrey, Mort Garson, Wendy Carlos, and other composers who treated sound as a form of invention.
Equal parts concert ensemble and living artifact from an alternate electronic age, the Laboratory performs music that was often never intended—or never expected—to be played live. Modern technology recreates the sounds of vintage synthesizers, electronic devices, and unconventional sound-making machines into a theatrical musical environment that can shift from playful cartoon modernism to eerie electronics, mechanical jazz, cinematic spectacle, and full-scale sonic absurdity.
The ensemble also serves as a live extension of Plum’s work in film, television, animation, and immersive entertainment. Its performances may include music from The Cuphead Show!, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Patrick Star Show, Disneyland, and other projects, alongside newly arranged archival works and live scores for experimental film and animation. Past and developing programs have included original live accompaniment to classic Gumby films, tributes to electronic-music pioneers, and a new score for Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s surrealist landmark Un Chien Andalou.
More than a traditional band, the Ego Plum Laboratory is conceived as an evolving musical workshop: a place where the sounds of lost technologies, strange instruments, cartoon logic, and radical musical ideas can be reactivated for a contemporary audience. The result is a performance experience that feels at once historical and futuristic—a concert transmitted from a version of the twentieth century that never quite existed.