Definitely one of the most impressive composers from Erik K Skodvin's excellent dark label Miasmah, even if Kreng's best work to date, L'Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu, narrowly missed the decade, Grimoire alone would almost have been enough for Belgian musician Pepijn Caudron to secure a spot on this list, with its esoteric mixture of piano/strings based dark ambient, percussive horror-like imaginary soundtracks, darkjazz wishcraft and droning phantasmagorias, utterly frightening and filled at the same time with the infinite sadness of eternal damnation.
However, the compilation of theatrical and TV soundtracks Works for Abattoir Fermé 2007-2011, alternately haunting, distressing, sorrowful and over-the-top, was another must-have, and the beautifully dreadful The Summoner, an ode to deceased friends made of harrowing low-frequency drones, fateful doom guitars (on the title-track featuring metal band Amenra), resigned piano chords and Penderecki-like swarming strings, increased again the range of his roller coaster crescendos.
A sense of contrast pushed even further on his last soundtrack to date for the movie Camino, a quite preposterous but visually interesting survival flick set in the Columbian jungle where a photo reporter tries to escape a bunch of fake missionaries after she captured the truth about their traffic. From the modern classical sensitiveness turning ambiguous and haunted, to the dissonant string and brass menace, through drone shivers, funereal organ, synthetic anthems and the nighmarish bursts of electro-industrial tension during the chase scenes, Kreng did a great job managing to bend the picture's requirements to his own musical obsessions and textured pits of darkness, magnifying this B-movie' atmosphere like only a few composers like Morricone would have been able to.
Lately, Pepijn Caudron teamed up with like-minded German musician Yair Elazar Glotman to assemble the late Jóhann Jóhannsson's posthumous soundtrack for the action/horror thriller Mandy starring Nicolas Cage and featuring Sunn O))) on guitar, released last month... but what i'm really hoping for is a follow-up to The Summoner before the end of the decade, to make me regret not having put him much higher on this list !
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