BAFTA award-winning and Billboard/MTV VMA nominated composer Jesper Kyd first started writing music for visual media in the European ‘demoscene’. At 19 he became part owner of a video game company which later evolved into IO Interactive, the studio behind the Hitman series and Freedom Fighters. Renowned for creating unique scores with a diverse array of live instrumentation and manipulated sounds, Kyd’s immersive soundtracks feature a mix of styles ranging from the iconic orchestral/electronic hybrid scores for the HITMAN series (British Academy Award for Original Music) and anthemic choral score for FREEDOM FIGHTERS (GameSpot Best Original Music), to his four evocative, brand defining scores for Ubisoft’s history inspired ASSASSIN’S CREED series (ACII voted most popular theme music) and the post-apocalyptic / sci-fi themes of the BORDERLANDS series.
Kyd also created the faded Americana acoustic score for Undead Labs’ STATE OF DECAY, the fastest selling original game on Xbox Live Arcade, and the surreal fantasy score for the action-adventure DARKSIDERS II, created by comic book writer/artist Joe Madureira, which garnered numerous critic accolades including Entertainment Weekly’s “Most Played Best Songs of 2012,” Machinima’s “Top 5 Songs of 2012,” “Best Video Game Score of 2012” and “Top 10 Best Video Game Scores Ever” from Minnesota Public Radio.
In television Kyd composed a variety of music styles for METAL HURLANT CHRONICLES, the live action science-fiction series based on the popular comics anthology “Métal Hurlant,” also known internationally as “Heavy Metal”. Spanning from 1960s cold war drama to distant future, fantasy to medieval, METAL HURLANT CHRONICLES stars Michael Biehn (Aliens, The Terminator), John Rhys-Davies (The Lord of the Rings), Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner), James Marsters (Buffy The Vampire Slayer), Joe Flanigan (Stargate Atlantis), Michael Jai White (Spawn), Darren Shahlavi (Arrow), Scott Adkins (The Bourne Ultimatum), and Kelly Brook (Smallville). The second season debuted in the US on SyFy and was broadcast across 80 countries worldwide.
Most recently Kyd scored Crytek’s Sony VR and Oculus Rift virtual reality game ROBINSON: THE JOURNEY, the #1 Chinese fantasy/sci-fi movie CHRONICLES OF THE GHOSTLY TRIBE (based on the best-selling Chinese novel “Ghost Blows Out The Light”) directed by Lu Chuan (City of Life and Death, The Last Supper) and the Warner Bros. series MORTAL KOMBAT X: GENERATIONS directed by Garrett Warren. His iconic themes continue to be heard in the ASSASSIN’S CREED video game series including ASSASSIN’S CREED CHRONICLES, ASSASSIN’S CREED UNITY, ASSASSIN’s CREED ROGUE and ASSASSIN’S CREED SYNDICATE (Ezio’s Family Theme).
Kyd is currently scoring Undead Labs’ STATE OF DECAY 2, Joe Madureira’s BATTLE CHASERS: NIGHTWAR and Webzen’s MU LEGEND.
