Paul Haslinger

Paul Haslinger is an Austrian composer and electronic musician known for his involvement with legendary German group Tangerine Dream, as well as his countless film, television, and video game scores. During the 1990s, he also released a few solo albums, including World Without Rules (1996) and Planetary Traveler (1997), that explored various ethnic influences as well as industrial, dark ambient, and trip-hop. Since the late ’90s, he’s been a sought-after soundtrack composer, with notable projects including the Underworld film franchise and the television series Halt and Catch Fire. He has collaborated with Nona Hendryx, Jon Hassell, Lustmord, Fennesz, and many others.
Trained at the Academy of Music in Vienna, Austria, Haslinger graduated straight into active work in the European music business, first recording with Hypersax, culminating in his joining Tangerine Dream in time for the recording of Underwater Sunlight (1986). Haslinger brought a certain amount of structure to the band’s compositions, resulting in some of the more improvisational elements being jettisoned; the change in direction shaped the progress of the group into the ’90s.
Haslinger remained with Tangerine Dream until the end of 1990, pursuing graduate studies in music between recording dates and live tours, appearing on more than fourteen albums, regular and soundtrack, before his departure (a fifteenth album, the soundtrack to The Park Is Mine, appeared in 1992).
In 1991, he began a collaboration with Lightwave, a French experimental group. He relocated to Los Angeles at the same time, eventually creating a studio that he dubbed “The Assembly Room.” His pace of work has never slackened — several albums with Lightwave, the release of 1994′s Future Primitive (under his surname only), and 1996′s World Without Rules are the tip of the iceberg. Haslinger has provided music for everything from interactive CD-Rs (such as his 1997 soundtrack to animated short film Planetary Traveler) to convention openings. He has also developed his own unique musical processes to help drive his creativity and lead him into interesting musical directions, with the Coma Virus album Hidden (1996) displaying some of the results of these “Assembly strategies.”
Haslinger began scoring short films in the late ’90s, in addition to programming and arranging film scores by Graeme Revell, including The Siege, Pitch Black, and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Starting with 2000 HBO film Cheaters, Haslinger scored several films by director John Stockwell, including Crazy/Beautiful and Blue Crush. He began scoring video games with 2005′s Far Cry Instincts for Ubisoft Entertainment. Haslinger’s music for Showtime series Sleeper Cell was nominated for an Emmy award in 2007. Other notable soundtracks Haslinger has composed include Death Race (2008), Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009), The Three Musketeers (2011), Underworld: Awakening (2012), Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016), and the AMC series Halt and Catch Fire and Fear the Walking Dead. In 2019, Haslinger and Peter Baumann (another Tangerine Dream alumnus) collaborated for the first time since their unreleased Blue Room project dating back to the early ’90s and released a self-titled album under the name Neuland. Haslinger released a neo-classical solo album titled Exit Ghost in 2020. ~ Steven McDonald & Paul Simpson