The fearless sonic experimentation of composers Evgueni and Sacha Galperine is proving equally at home in mainstream and arthouse cinema — not to mention last year’s surprise hit TV series Baby Reindeer.

“It’s strange, making music for a project that comes from someone’s intimate experience,” says composer Evgueni Galperine, as he reflects on creating the soundtrack for Netflix’s breakout hit Baby Reindeer, which he considers one of his favourite music‑making experiences of 2024. The small British mini‑series, now a multiple Emmy award‑winner, came seemingly out of nowhere and became a hot topic in pop culture discourse, fuelled by the frenzy of fans taking a little too much interest in the show’s drawn‑from‑reality characters and who their real‑life counterparts may or may not have been.

His brother Sacha, with whom he composed the score, adds: “It gives us more responsibility, because we have influence over someone’s intense, real‑life experience. It was a very small project initially and we really believed in it. We met the wonderful team and [showrunner/lead actor] Richard Gadd, who was so excited and vulnerable at the same time — he needed to tell his story.”

When the Galperines were tasked with writing the score, their focus was simply on how best to infuse a disturbing and complicated story with music. Evgueni explains: “Deep wounds, hidden desires, and intense emotions are all great food for music, so it was inspiring, but it was also a challenge because the psychology in the series is so complex. It was our first experience of working with someone who is not only a showrunner, but is also the person who lived this story in real life, so it was very interesting to see how he received the music; he was always comparing his real feelings from the past, and mixing them with his opinion as a showrunner. This kind of artistic collaboration was very new for us because it was the first time we had done something as personal as Baby Reindeer. And then there was the rewarding surprise of seeing this niche project become a worldwide phenomenon.”

Marvel Calling

The Galperines ended the year with another riveting score, sharing composing duties with Benjamin Wallfisch, on Sony and Marvel’s Kraven The Hunter. Brought in two‑and‑a‑half months before the final mix of the film, the Galperines had their work cut out for them. “Our goal was to try to do something new, sound‑wise, but at the same time, because it was a Marvel film, we knew that it was meant for a very large audience. So the challenge was quite exciting: how to keep our style and our tools, while at the same time make it more epic and more direct,” says Evgueni.

The brothers once again went into the project with a vision: “to use instruments like they were the voices of some strange animals”. Evgueni elaborates, “We were looking for instruments, and ways of playing them, which [bring to mind] animal voices and cries, because the hero is very connected to nature and to the animal world.”

Sacha adds: “We used unconventional playing styles for the orchestral instruments. For instance, there’s an important theme of the father, played on a contrabassoon, with a lot of breath noise. With the cello, we had the harmonics played in a very fierce tremolo, so you don’t really know what you’re listening to, but we used it a lot because it brings a good, heavy sound.”

The electric cello, with plenty of saturation and overdrive, is another sound that features extensively, and for which they called upon musician Ilia Osokin, who, Evgueni tells us, “has a lot of pedals, just like an electric guitar”.

The score also features guitars, virtual synths like FXpansion’s Strobe2, and several Moogs. Evgueni tells us, “We were trying to make the synthesizers sound like organic instruments and the organic instruments sound like synthesizers, to create a hybrid mix.”

The siblings were not worried about introducing such a high level of experimentation to the very mainstream Marvel universe. As Evgueni explains, “We think that even a large audience can totally accept being surprised and not having to listen to the same sounds and the same colours. Most of the time, in Hollywood films, you have a very common colour — orchestral, with a little bit of synth and percussion — but you can take that from one film and put it in another and nobody will [notice] the change. Coming from European cinema, we feel that by adding epic and direct melodies, we can still keep an unexpected approach and when it’s unexpected, the audience can be moved even more. It’s less comfortable, so it surprises you and when you are surprised, you are more vulnerable and more emotionally captive.”

Classical Meets Contemporary

The siblings are fluent in the language of music, having spent their early years in Ukraine and Russia, where they began formally studying classical music at a young age. In 1990, they moved to France, where Evgueni studied symphonic composition and electro‑acoustic music at the National Conservatory (CNSM), while the younger Sacha excelled at violin performance at the Conservatory of Versailles before turning to rock and electronic music.

You can hear their eclectic influences in their musical palette: minimalist arrangements, soaring vocal choirs, traditional orchestration, delicate acoustic guitar lines, evolving leitmotifs, gritty distortion, pitch‑shifting drops... the Galperines employ an acoustic and electronic toolkit with ease, making sounds from both styles work effortlessly together. It’s all sound, and it’s all fuel for experimentation.

Of their early experiments with sound, Evgueni recalls, “At around 20 years old, I got very interested in electro‑acoustic music, which is a kind of electronic music with a little bit more of a classical approach; it’s experimental, but with a lot of dramaturgy and maybe closer to modern classical music than to pop electronic music. This area was created by French composers from the ’60s, like Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, who were experimenting with the first synthesizers. I learned how to transform sounds, how to work with synthesizers, and create sounds even with the most primitive synthesizers, like the DX7, or a Roland Jupiter.”

Sacha adds: “I started a little bit later than him, because I’m a little younger, and right away began with the computer and plug‑ins. I fell in love with all the possibilities of the electronic effects on the computer and realised that you can really transform a sound. You can just tap your phone, make a little percussive sound, and then, with well‑chosen effects, transform it into anything: a drone, a lead instrument, a synth sound, a low sound...”

Among Sacha’s favourites are FabFilter’s Timeless 3 for vintage‑sounding tape delay; distortion and filter effect Driver by Native Instruments; XLN Audio’s RC20‑Retro Color to add a warm vintage recording vibe; sound...