Bobby Krlic

Alongside his identity as the Haxan Cloak, the award-winning producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Bobby Krlic continues to excel at crafting layered, intricate, and powerfully intense sonic palettes. His work behind the boards for the Body, Björk, Father John Misty, and Khalid demonstrated his ability to adapt his distinctive approach across widely varying musical contexts. Simultaneously, he built a thriving career scoring projects for cinema, television, and interactive media. His contributions ranged from the electro-folk-horror atmosphere of the 2019 breakthrough Midsommar to the otherworldly environment of 2021’s Returnal and the quiet yet potent strains of unease running through 2023’s Beau Is Afraid and Beef, all of which highlighted both his versatility and his gift for generating potent emotional climates.

Raised in Yorkshire, England, Krlic absorbed his passion for music from a father who played guitar and a mother who had served as a Northern soul DJ during her teenage years. At sixteen he encountered hip-hop and electronic music, prompting him to begin composing and tracking his own pieces inspired by folktronica. After completing a university program in sound and visual art, he broadened his instrumental range by acquiring an inexpensive violin and cello, teaching himself the fundamentals through immersion in the Dirty Three’s recordings.

During his final university year, Krlic launched the Haxan Cloak project, capturing material in his parents’ shed using only a few microphones, his violin, cello, and laptop. His self-released, self-titled debut EP appeared in 2009. London’s experimental metal imprint Aurora Borealis noticed the recording, licensed it, and offered Krlic a deal. The label’s first issuance under that agreement, the cassette-only Observatory EP, surfaced in 2010. While preparing the initial full-length Haxan Cloak album, he enlisted his former university instructor and Sub Rosa artist Mikhail Karikis, whose choral experiments deepened the already ominous character of Krlic’s music. Issued in April 2011, The Haxan Cloak drew acclaim for its singular voice and foreboding mood.

Krlic joined the Tri Angle roster in 2012, a label also home to experimental electronic acts such as oOooO and Holy Other. That July, Southern Records issued the nearly thirty-minute live piece The Men Parted the Sea to Devour the Water as part of its Latitudes series. His Tri Angle debut, Excavation, arrived in April 2013 and traced the soul’s passage following death; like its predecessor, the album earned praise for merging electronic and acoustic elements.

Following Excavation, Krlic stepped away from the Haxan Cloak name to explore other avenues. Working under his own name, he produced albums including the Body’s I Shall Die Here (2014), Björk’s Vulnicura (2015), and Goldfrapp’s Silver Eye (2017). Additional collaborations encompassed a 2018 cover of Link Wray’s “Fallin’ Rain” with Father John Misty for the Hulu series Castle Rock, the Troye Sivan track “Animal,” and the title song of Khalid’s 2019 album Free Spirit.

During the same period he established himself as a composer for screen and television. Alongside Atticus Ross he contributed to the scores for the 2015 feature Blackhat, 2016’s Triple 9, and Steve Hoover’s 2016 documentary Almost Holy. Solo credits from this era include the USA Network series Shooter, which debuted in 2016, the 2018 Netflix drama Seven Seconds, and Ari Aster’s 2019 film Midsommar. Aster, an admirer of the Haxan Cloak catalog, crafted the screenplay—centering on an American couple drawn into a Swedish pagan ceremony that exceeds their expectations—while listening to Krlic’s music. Beyond scoring the picture, Krlic collaborated with Aster on the ritual music, blending traditional instruments such as the hurdy gurdy and key harp with choral voices. Midsommar’s unsettling authenticity garnered widespread recognition, earning Krlic the 2020 Ivor Novello Award for Best Original Score and a nomination for Breakthrough Composer of the Year at the 2019 International Film Music Critics Association Awards. Additional 2019 scores included the series Reprisal and The Alienist: Angel of Darkness.

Mounting recognition for his compositional work generated numerous assignments in the early 2020s. In 2020 he co-produced Father John Misty’s “To S.” and supplied music for the video game Red Dead Redemption 2. The next year he scored the second season of TNT’s Snowpiercer, the Apple TV+ anthology Calls, and the video game Returnal, a gritty futuristic third-person shooter; his Returnal soundtrack received the 2022 BAFTA Games Award for Best Music and the 2022 DICE Award for Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition. Krlic’s 2023 slate featured further high-profile assignments: a reunion with Aster for the subversive family drama Beau Is Afraid, the near-subliminal tension underscoring Lee Sung Jin’s Netflix series Beef, and the DC Extended Universe film Blue Beetle directed by Angel Manuel Soto.