Cornel Wilczek is Adding Tonality to the Voice of Horror
Inside the studio of Cornel Wilczek, exploring the tools, textures, and ideas that shape his music, alongside our latest podcast where he breaks down his approach to the score for Together.
Cornel Wilczek’s career is anything but static, with three AACTA Awards and credits on 16 feature films and 17 TV series. What really stands out is the wide range of his work. He’s just as comfortable scoring an intimate newsroom drama like The Newsreader as he is shaping the sound of a global hit like Clickbait or pushing horror into unsettling new directions with A24’s Talk To Me. Whatever the project, his music carries a signature tension, somewhere between acoustic warmth and electronic edge, that feels both crafted and instinctive.
Originally from Adelaide, he moved to Melbourne in 2000 to study with experimental figures Philip Brophy and Philip Samartzis, an influence that steered him away from convention and toward a more exploratory approach to sound. Not long after, he founded Electric Dreams, a South Melbourne studio that’s grown into one of Australia’s most awarded music houses. For all its success, the appeal of the space lies in its details: custom synth builds, bent and reimagined acoustic textures, and an ongoing fascination with how technology and human performance can blur into each other.
