Instruments built for the uncomfortable places music has to go.
Designed to disturb
Occult Audio exists because certain kinds of music demand certain kinds of tools — and those tools are rarely found in the same places everyone else is looking. We build instruments for composers who score tension, dread, grief, and unease. For sound designers who need textures that feel inhabited. For anyone who has ever needed a sound that sits just slightly wrong.
Our philosophy is simple: the most powerful sounds are the ones that retain just enough reality to feel familiar, and just enough wrongness to feel threatening. Every instrument we make is built around that idea.
Our instruments are used by composers working in film, television, and games — from major studio productions to independent shorts. If you score the kind of work that keeps people on edge, you’re in the right place.
Where it started
Occult Audio was founded by James Cox — a composer based in East Sussex, with credits across film, television, and games. The instruments grew out of frustration: the tools available for dark, cinematic sound design were either too clean, too expensive, or too locked inside ecosystems that got in the way of creativity.
The first instruments were built for personal use. They were released because other composers kept asking what was being used on the sessions.
“I’ve always been drawn to the uncomfortable edges of sound — the frequencies that feel wrong, the textures that feel inhabited, the atmospheres that make a room feel smaller. Building instruments is just an extension of that. I want to give other composers access to the same toolkit I rely on.”