I listened through a lot of your music, and I love your unique compositional voice.  I’d love to hear more about your journey to your sound- what has it been like?

Well, thank you so much!   I never planned to create my own signature sound, it just happened intuitively. I‘m very interested in sound in general and in exploring the spatial aspect of music. I love to create soundscapes and experiment with distance and nearness.   I have a background in classical composition, but as a guitarist I played in bands from an early age as well. So I think both influences melt together into my music.

Your EP “Spirit Awake” is absolutely stunning.  I am curious what inspired the record, and what your creative process looked like when you were writing it?  I’m noticing a lot of ethereal, gorgeous textures in your work, have you got some context for how you achieve such palettes?

Thank you!  “Spirit Awake” is a small selection of pieces that I wrote in between my film projects.  And I guess this was a way to express the things that I wasn’t able to express in my other projects. To produce “Spirit Awake” gave me a sense of calm and peace. It’s also special for me because I returned to my prior instrument, the classical guitar, after not playing it for quite a long time. So, it’s kind of like a new beginning as well.  A lot of the textures are created with guitar pedals. I send every kind of signal through them and then wonderful things happen. Some of my favorite pedals are the Super Ego + and the T Rex Replica.

Within the music and film music world, do you have any composers you look up to or really admire? 

So many!!  I’ve always been an admirer of Alexandre Desplat, Bruno Coulais, Annette Focks, and Thomas Newman.  At the moment I’m inspired by Alex Somers, Adrianne Lenker, Phoebe Bridgers and Max Richter.

Curious what sort of projects you enjoy working on best, can you give us some insight into what your happy place of composition is?

I don’t have a genre, I’m solely committed to. I like to choose projects that I’d enjoy watching. Something I’m very drawn to is character driven indie fiction like “Ladybird”, “Call Me By Your Name”, or “Promising Young Woman”.   If I love the project I’m working on, I am in a happy place unrelated to a specific topic or genre.

As a solo artist, do you feel your music differs from your film music?  Or are they synonymous with each other? 

They definitely differ, at least to some level. As a film composer I can be very flexible and I’m able to shift the style and tone to the way the film needs to sound. My solo music is more like a kind of self care and exploring new things that I sometimes use later in films as well.  Of course, when working on film soundtracks, I’m very delighted if I’m allowed to bring in my own ideas and sounds.

Have you got any news or upcoming projects you are very excited about?

Yes, there‘s a new Warner Original TV series ALMOST FLY directed by Florian Gaag, produced by Wiedemann & Berg, for which I contributed a part of the original score. It just premiered in German speaking countries and will be released in 61 countries very soon.  At the moment I‘m about to finish a documentary by Oscar nominee Dror Moreh and I’ll be working on a few other great films next but unfortunately I’m not allowed to tell you more.

Check out the AWFC profile for Freya

Interview by Connor Cook