Your range of genres is truly diverse: Broken Voices and Her Body are dramas based on true events, Caravan is an arthouse auteur film, Monsters is a pure thriller, and The Bugaboo is a children’s film. Which style do you think suits you best?

Of the ones you mentioned, Monsters came the most naturally to me: the darkness and tension clearly dictated what kind of music should be there. I generally handle serious subjects better—lighter material, like The Bugaboo, is more challenging for me—but Caravan was the hardest. The theme of a single mother and her son with a mental disability was heavy enough on its own, so we didn’t want the music to add to the emotional intensity. Zuzana Kirchnerová, the director, was very concerned about about making it too sentimental. So we went with total minimalism, taking extra care in how we dealt with emotions and creating multiple versions of the music for each scene. In the end, the film has very little music, and what’s there is painstakingly purposeful.

The trailer also features a complex soundscape blending natural sounds, the sounds made by the characters’ bodies, and other elements. How did you coordinate the music to go with it?

I enjoy it when we can work with the sound team to blur the line between sound design and music. One technique I use a lot, especially with Jonatán, is negating the sound of a musical instrument. For example, the sound of a cello consists of the tone produced by the vibration of the strings, plus the parasitic sound of the bow rubbing against them. So we amplify these parasitic sounds and process them further. I definitely have a strong focus on non-musical sounds, but at the core of my film work, there’s usually regular music.

I saw a photo of your studio, which is overflowing with analog synthesizers. Is that your primary means of expression?

Yes, and I also devote a lot of time to sound postproduction. I don’t do it on a computer, instead using various effects and “boxes” that have a life of their own, and letting them guide me. You can do anything you want on a computer, but analogue devices have limitations, and those limitations help me in my work; they give me a framework. The best sound to pair with an image is usually sound that was originally acoustic, even if it doesn’t sound the same in the end as it did at the beginning.

For Broken Voices, you also worked with a chamber orchestra—that’s quite a departure from synthesizers.

I regularly use live strings or woodwinds, but usually soloists or a quartet. Here we had a smaller ensemble, 15 people. Jonatán and I sent our ideas to Tomáš Sýkora, who came up with the instrumentation, wrote out the arrangements, and sent them back to us recorded with software instruments. We told him where to cut and where to add, then recorded it with all the musicians at once at Czech Television. Fifteen musicians is an unconventional format—we didn’t have the budget for a full symphony orchestra, but as soon as we had the opportunity to work with an orchestra, we took it. Everything is dictated by budget. Right now I’m working on a documentary set in the opera world; they offered me 20 musicians from the Slovak Radio Orchestra, so I’ll record with them. But if that offer hadn‘t come up, I wouldn‘t have been able to do it.

Broken Voices takes place in a choir setting, so it has a lot of diegetic music—music the characters themselves are performing. Was it a challenge for you to “match” your music to the choir’s?

Yes, this is why Jonatán and I originally thought our score for Broken Voices would be minimal! But then we focused on the fact that choral singing stays within a narrow frequency range. It’s beautiful, of course, and superbly recorded for the film, but that frequency keeps repeating. So we decided to shape our score “around” the girls’ singing, leaving the space around it empty, for the sake of frequency dynamics.

“In films, I like big musical moments, where the music echoes the story and takes the spotlight for a moment,” you said in one interview. Yet most people think a score should be “invisible.” Do you like it when your music takes the spotlight?

The film as a whole is the main focus, of course, but when the filmmakers and I agree that we see a spot where it could work, having the music grab the audience’s attention every now and then contributes to the dynamics of the work. When I come up with a spot where it fits, I’m happy, and if not, that’s fine too.

What is this documentary about the opera world that you mentioned, and what else are you working on at the moment?

It’s a documentary called Sláva, about the celebrated Slovak opera director Sláva Daubnerová. My music for the film has to fulfill a different role than the opera music recorded for the documentary, while also responding to it. And yet aesthetically my work is the furthest thing from opera you could imagine!

I’m also working on a Czech Television documentary called Anatomy of a Choice, about a couple who find out the child they’re expecting has a serious diagnosis and have to decide whether or not they want to keep it. Then I have another collaboration with Jonatán coming up, a half-documentary, half-feature film about the largest Romani community in Slovakia, titled City of Dreams.

How much of your musical work is currently devoted to film?

Most of it, actually. But I’ve also been doing a duet with the Estonian singer Kitty Florentine; we’re writing new material and touring Europe. I still have lots of bands and musical projects going on. I only get to production occasionally—that’s the hardest work of all; right now I’m finishing up a new album with Katarzia. And Jonatán and I composed a score for the play The Vegetarian, based on the novel by the South Korean Nobel winner Han Kang, at Prague’s Divadlo v Dlouhé. It’s my fourth collaboration with director Kamila Polívková and I’m very proud of the production—all its elements, but especially what the actors deliver onstage. It’s incredible.

How did you get into music? At Jan Evangelista Purkyně University (JEPU), you studied art and design with a focus on interactive installations, multichannel sound art, and video mapping.

I applied to FAMU for the Sound Department and the Center for Audiovisual Studies. They didn’t accept me, so I went to JEPU in Ústí, but I didn’t finish my studies. Even back then, I was already working in music, so I didn’t have time for school, though I did enjoy it there. I really appreciate what I learned there, especially when it comes to thinking about creativity. But originally, I played guitar in [a band called] the Scouts. Then I tried writing my own songs. Someone showed me how to record on a computer, layering guitars on top of each other, then drums and all the other tracks. So I started trying out different programs, and it just took off from there.

One minute, you’re strumming by the campfire; the next, you’re recording with an orchestra. How does it feel looking back?

It’s a great feeling, but it happened gradually. I worked really hard; I earned my success. I know what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and what makes it possible for me to do it. And that I deserve it.