Midsommar Soundtrack Will Be Released Two Days After the Film Comes Out

MovieWeb

By B. Alan Orange

Published Jun 19, 2019

Bobby Krlic aka The Haxan Cloak composes this summer's highly anticipated horror ritual, Midsommar.

Midsommar, the anticipated film from Hereditary director Ari Aster, is getting a soundtrack release on July 5th from Milan Records. The film, which dives deep into Swedish folklore and a kind of technicolor paganism, asked for a sonic universe that was both insular and oddly timeless-something by turns darkly ritualistic and deeply beautiful. The score created by Bobby Krlic aka The Haxan Cloak, achieves that.

Krlic has been releasing his own often-harrowing electronic music for the better part of the past decade under the moniker of The Haxan Cloak. It was his solo output that led to working with Aster on this new film: Aster had heard Krlic's work and wrote the whole script entirely to his music.

In addition to the more traditional underscore, Krlic was also responsible for the music that exists within the narrative of the film itself, the music that the characters play and sing inside the film. The script was written so the characters would have these wordless, atonal, ritualistic songs. So, Aster and Krlic developed a vocal language for the characters in the film to sing and sourced all traditional Nordic instruments, like such as a Hurdy Gurdy and a Key Harp, to record with.

"Trying to live up to the expectations of a director who wrote the script to my music was an intimidating task," says Krlic "but in the end I believe it's been the most rewarding and deeply educational experience I've ever had. Not only was working with Ari Aster an honour, but the work was a true collaboration."

While The Haxan Cloak has taken a bit of a breather, Krlic collaborated with Oscar-winning film composer Atticus Ross on a number of films, including Almost Holy and Michael Mann's Blackhat. Krlic also scored a number of TV shows such as Netflix's Seven Seconds and USA Network's Shooter.

In Midsommar, Dani (Florence Pugh) and Christian (Jack Reynor) are a young American couple with a relationship on the brink of falling apart. But after a family tragedy keeps them together, a grieving Dani invites herself to join Christian and his friends on a trip to a once-in-a-lifetime midsummer festival in a remote Swedish village. What begins as a carefree summer holiday in a land of eternal sunlight takes a sinister turn when the insular villagers invite their guests to partake in festivities that render the pastoral paradise increasingly unnerving and viscerally disturbing. From the visionary mind of Ari Aster comes a dread-soaked cinematic fairytale where a world of darkness unfolds in broad daylight.