Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros / The Deadly Syndrome / Hardly Criminal / Big Waste

Electro-trash, ambient, vodoun, magical-realism shit.

Playing piano since I was four and studied in a musical school for ten years. Though, I always felt that playing by notes and singing in a choir is not enough to become a musician. I needed to be able to play anything I want by ear so, by starting improvising, I've found my own style of playing. When I teach children to play piano or sing, I offer them improvisation right from the beginning. I wish I was taught that way, since until my mid-30s I had hard times to relax and believe in my ability to create my own music. Twelve years ago my husband (@arty-sandler) finally convinced me to record some of my improvisations and we opened this account on SoundCloud - it happened in July, 2012.

You won't find a single particular genre on my cloud: my musical tastes are rather eclectic. Jazz and soft rock are my favorites but I also play blues, classical, folk, middle-eastern, New Age, ambient and others. Piano and vocal are my main instruments but together with my husband we also experiment a lot with different arrangements and orchestrations. 

When we started uploading our music to SoundCloud back in 2012, it was first shy attempts to record my improvisations straight from a keyboard. Many things have evolved since then. Over the years we've grown into a professional recording and composing studio, with a conservatory grand piano in an acoustically treated room and a bunch of microphones and other recording equipment. We scored a few documentaries, short films and animations. This year my orchestral and piano solo works were performed by Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra for Bryan Arias’s ballet show based on “The Little Prince” story. We've published three books with my original scores for solo piano and released twenty original full-length albums (solo piano, multi-instrumental and original songs in various genres) and numerous singles that have been streamed over 70 million times across multiple platforms.

I am glad you stepped by into my musical world and appreciate your comments and following me.

With a Norwegian background heavy on classic synthesizers and vintage tape recorders, film composer, remixer and recording artist Cato Gilmour became fascinated by electronic music and ways to make it at an early age, inspired by artists like Vangelis, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire.

Exploring genres from electronic experimental to pop, Cato performed solo and in collaboration with some of Norway’s leading artists.  Invited to score Norwegian television and documentaries, and after a scrapped release of his debut solo album when the label folded, he was soon dreaming of bigger musical challenges, and LA.  A few years after getting an opportunity to relocate there, he was scoring shorts, documentaries and feature films, then starting to release music as a recording artist, as well as establishing himself as a top composer, remixer and sound designer for feature film and television trailers.

Cato has written music for several feature films including "Stone" (Robert De Niro) and "Smokin' Aces" (Ryan Reynolds), has tracks featured in numerous television shows including “Dexter” (as Eccotonic) and "Saturday Night Live”, as well as the theme for Animal Planet's Untamed and Uncut.  Cato scored risky noir comedy "Mini's First Time" (Alec Baldwin, dir. Nick Guthe, prod. Kevin Spacey) as well as other award-winning feature films and documentaries, including "The Kennedy Detail”, “Truth In Terms Of Beauty” and “Semper Fi: One Marine’s Journey” for 3-time Oscar™ nominee Vince DiPersio, and "Who Killed Johnny" for writer/director Yangzom Brauen (NCIS: Los Angeles, Æon Flux).

Cato scored, sound designed and remixed Nina Simone for the trailer for Netflix’ The Piano Lesson, was the only one chosen to reimagine Vangelis’ “Blade Runner” score for the "Blade Runner 2049” campaign, remixed Guns N’ Roses for Netflix’ “Sweet Girl” and Eivør for the “Game Of Thrones” campaign.  Cato’s music and sound design is heard in over 1,500 trailers including “Smile 2”, “A Complete Unknown”, “Gladiator II”, “Shogun”, “The Irishman” and “Uncut Gems”, as well as in national commercials including BMW, Chrysler, Ford and GM.

In addition to putting out releases under his own name, Cato releases music as schwarzmodul, Circadian Delays, One Carrera Two and Eccotonic, including through his own Kiite Records label.  He is featured on compilations (Pacha Ibiza, Electronic Sound), has collaborated with artists including Robot Koch (as schwarzmodul), Eivør, Wendy Rae Fowler and Hannah Schneider (as Circadian Delays), remixed artists including Alpha, R.E.M., T.Rex, Robot Koch (“How To Get Away With Murder”), The Who (“Need For Speed”) and Kira Skov, and was chosen for Native Instruments’ original “Komplete Sketches”, together with artists like Jlin, Olof Dreijer (The Knife) and Aïsha Devi.

Donovan once hailed Cato’s jazz infused score for “Truth In Terms Of Beauty” as his festival musical highlight while on a panel at SXSW in Austin, Texas, where the documentary film about the life of photographer Herman Leonard was screening.

In recent years Cato has performed live under his own name and as schwarzmodul at events including BL_K NOISE, Triptronics Research, Pulsar and others.

On April 7, 2023, Kiite Records released Imaginary Music vol. I, the first official collection drawing on Cato’s archive of compositions for film and television, including other, thematically inspired tracks. The music, with some tracks featuring soloists / collaborators, is intended to stand on its own, presented without reference to associated film or television productions.  Following this Cato Gilmour has released a further four archival releases of early career recordings, with more planned.  He has a fall 2025 EP in the works for his Kiite Records label and, after releasing several singles and EPs under his Circadian Delays moniker over the past few years, new EP Omni Walk will be available to download through Kiite Records on Bandcamp, and streaming everywhere, from early June 2025.  New releases from Cato's schwarzmodul-project are also in the early stages of development.

Press for Cato:

“During ‘Long Time Coming’ you find yourself holding your breath as it builds, while riding in ‘Kiite Kudasai Sennin’ sounds incredible turned up loud. There’s genuine scale here. It feels like such a vast record, and one that reaps rewards when you crank it up. A track like the sinister ‘Sonus Spiritus’ feels like it could shake you to the core” - Neil Mason, Moonbuilding reviewing Cato’s Imaginary Music vol. I release.

"LA-based artist schwarzmodul produces the kind of glitchy electronics most suited to the industrial decay of the city he has made home. It's a bent form of techno, a soundtrack to "big city machinery and sonorities, dilapidated architecture, circuits, and ghostly faces."         - xlr8r about Cato’s schwarzmodul debut EP.

"This EP isn’t a playlist of instantly gratifying drops and over-stimulation, but something you appreciate by paying attention. I definitely recommend throwing this through your best headphones and wandering around any half-broken industrial district you can find." - Noise Porn about Cato’s schwarzmodul debut EP.

“Composer Cato’s music is solid, too, though it occasionally borrows from the Thomas Newman/”American Beauty” sense of the ethereal.” - Mini’s First Time review, Variety

“There’s all manner of goodness swirling around, dead of night distant vocal snips, tense string sweeps, pounding rhythms.  And the sound, as you’d imagine, is huge.  The louder you dial it up, the better it seems to get.  You’d wager it sounds amazing on a full-blown cinema soundsystem.” - Neil Mason, Electronic Sound about Cato’s schwarzmodul debut EP.

“You have to suck people into the theater and tell a story in two-and-a-half minutes,” Cato added.  “That is so intense and builds so quickly that most music written for the actual movie will be way too long and drawn out” - Cato interviewed by Eric Ducker for The New York Times.

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