DIE HEXEN approaches scoring as a form of excavation, digging into a film’s psychological soil to exhume the trauma, memory, and lore buried within its strata, immersing viewers in the world of the film with a dynamic blend of music and sound design.
Mentored by Grammy-winning engineer Geoff Foster (Hans Zimmer, Bjork), DIE creates unique sound worlds by layering obscure instruments, transforming them into something completely bespoke to the director's vision. Their toolkit is as rare as it is evocative, combining raw sounds with ancient and modern orchestration—a vast sonic palette ranging from Bronze Age horns and quartz crystal percussion to sophisticated electronic textures and the world’s only black Apprehension Engine (“The Nightmare Machine”).
“Die Hexen’s disquieting score is the scariest thing in the movie.”
DIE’s acclaimed score for Aislinn Clarke’s Fréwaka attests to their boundary pushing reputation as a composer and sound artist, with its use of primitive ancient horns, flutes, mangled percussion, gnawing strings, ethereal vocals, drones, groaning synth, and pump organ along with innovative sound design to create a sinister, unrelenting and claustrophobic score.
World premiering the iconic Locarno Film Festival, Fréwaka won DIE their first Irish Academy Award in 2025—their forth nomination since 2020. This followed their 2024 win for “Best Original Score” at SITGES, making DIE the first non-male to win both awards for scoring a feature film.
In 2025, DIE received the Royal Television Society (NI) Award for scoring the BBC/Virgin Media series Video Nasty, also landing DIE their fifth IFTA nomination, and was nominated for PRS for Music’s NI Creator of the Year prize. They were also nominated for “Best Original Composition in a Feature Film” at the 2025 Music+Sound Awards for Fréwaka.
In 2026, DIE scored the Docs Ireland-winner Lesbian Lines, a cinematic ode to an underground helpline, and Banshee, which won “Best Horror” at the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts, among other acclaimed projects. DIE was also selected as the only composer to represent Ireland at the 2026 Camille Awards (European Film Composer Awards) in the feature film category for their groundbreaking work on Fréwaka, and served as Screen Composers Guild of Ireland’s Artist-in-Residence at the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris.
DIE’s other notable credits include: Inside, the Valley Sings (2024), an Oscar-longlisted short documentary about solitary confinement; Double Blind (2023), the IFTA-nominated horror thriller; and You Are Not My Mother (2021), Kate Dolan's IFTA-nominated folk horror. A member of Screen Composers Guild of Ireland, The Ivors Academy, WFTV, AWFC, and Primetime Network, DIE has won commissions for their work from The British Film Institute, Screen Ireland, NI Screen, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, UK Games Fund, Scottish Documentary Institute, and The Wellcome Trust.
Their work has performed at, among others: the Toronto International Film Festival (Midnight Madness), Locarno Film Festival, SITGES Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, and Sheffield DocFest—all of which hold Oscar, BAFTA, or BIFA affiliations. Their work has also featured at Tribeca Film Festival, Palm Springs International Film Festival, and Edinburgh Film Festival—each Oscar-qualifying for short films—alongside Dublin International Film Festival, Galway Film Fleadh, Cork International Film Festival, Foyle Film Festival, and Tampere Film Festival, which are all both BAFTA and Oscar-qualifying.
Additional screenings include the New York Museum of Modern Art, Aesthetica Film Festival (BAFTA-qualifying), Norwich Film Festival (BAFTA-qualifying), Gerardmer Fantastic Film Festival (France's premier genre festival), with further appearances at Edinburgh, Dublin, Cork, Galway, Foyle, and Aesthetica.
Other commissioned scores include the 2021 Galway Film Fleadh-winning and Oscar-qualifying film Saul & I by dir. Jon Beer (2021, Out of Orbit/NI Screen); IFTA and DIFF-winning documentary Welcome to a Bright White Limbo by dir. Cara Holmes (2019, Invisible Thread/Screen Ireland); the self-made IFTA-nominated, DIFF Discovery Award and ÉCU-winning EL HOR (2018, Out of Orbit/Scottish Documentary Institute); the Grand Prix Prize-winning CIFF and Oscar long-listed film STIGMA by dir. Helen Warner (2019); and Venice Shorts, Assurdo Film Festival & Short Sweet Film Festival-winning horror EYE EXAM by Dir. Aislinn Clarke (2020, Shudder, Disney, Hulu).
DIE HEXEN also composed, performed, arranged, and produced the soundtrack to the Raindance Discovery Award-nominated, Galway Film Fleadh & Irish Film London-winning debut feature A Bump Along the Way by Dir. Shelly Love (2019), which premiered at TIFF and opened the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
Other recent collaborations include: Junk Ensemble’s The Veiled Ones (2021), a dance theatre production by Megan & Jessica Kennedy that explores witches, transformations, and the powerful relationship between grandparent & grandchild (World Premiere, Dublin Fringe Festival); and Onar, a sci-fi fantasy game and ongoing commission by UK Games Fund/NI Screen in collaboration with Rewind Play Games.
DIE has also won nominations for Best Composer and Sound for three consecutive years at BAFTA’s Underwire Festival for the short film Pollen by Dir. Helen Warner (2016) and DIE’s own AM I DEAD (2017) & EL HOR (2018), as well as winning a Royal Television Society Innovation Award (2016) for Out of Orbit’s BAFTA-winning #WEAREYOU campaign.