| Birth Name: | Charles Alexander Clouser |
| Birth Date: | 28 June 1963 |
| Origin: | Hanover, New Hampshire, United States |
| Instrument: | Keyboards |
Charles Alexander Clouser (born June 28, 1963) is an American keyboardist, composer, record producer, and remixer. He worked with Trent Reznor for Nine Inch Nails from 1994 to 2000, and is a composer for film and television; among his credits are the score for the Saw franchise and American Horror Story. Clouser was nominated for two Grammy Awards for Best Metal Performance in 1997.
Clouser was born in Hanover, New Hampshire; his father, K. Danner Clouser (1930–2000), was a professor at Dartmouth College and Pennsylvania State University.[1] He attended Middletown High School in Pennsylvania and graduated from Hanover High School in 1981.[1] He is also a graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts; he earned a degree in electronic music in 1985.[2]
Clouser plays keyboard, synthesizer, theremin, and drums.[3] He also does music programming, engineering, and mixing. He co-worked with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (1994–2000) for several projects. Before he worked with Nine Inch Nails, he was in the alternative band Burning Retna with former L.A. Guns guitarist Mick Cripps and fellow Nothing Records employee Sean Beavan. Clouser also was a member of the band 9 Ways to Sunday, which released a self-titled album in 1990. Clouser has remixed artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, White Zombie, Rammstein and Meat Beat Manifesto.
In 2004, Clouser produced the Helmet album Size Matters. Consisting mainly of collaborations between Clouser and Page Hamilton, it was intended to be a Hamilton solo album. The first release from the collaboration, known as "Throwing Punches", appeared on a soundtrack in 2003 for the film Underworld, and was credited as a Hamilton track. Clouser created one of FirstCom music's master series discs, only sold for commercial use, in the late 1990s.
Two songs programmed by Clouser were nominated for Grammy Awards in 1997: White Zombie's "I'm Your Boogie Man" and Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper's "Hands of Death (Burn Baby Burn)", the latter of which Clouser also co-wrote and mixed.
He worked with Trent Reznor on the soundtrack of Natural Born Killers, helping record and produce a new version of "Something I Can Never Have," the original version of which appeared on Nine Inch Nails Pretty Hate Machine album. Clouser's remix of Zombie's "Dragula" can be found on The Matrix soundtrack. Another Zombie track remixed by Clouser, "Reload", appears on The Matrix Reloaded soundtrack. He produced the unfinished Hamilton project Gandhi. In 2001, Clouser formed the supergroup Revenge of the Triads with Jason Slater and Troy Van Leeuwen, although they later disbanded in 2002 without releasing any material.[4]
Clouser provided the live synth for Alec Empire's "Intelligence And Sacrifice" tour in 2001. He appears in the Moog documentary about electronic-music pioneer Robert Moog and composed the song "I Am a Spaceman" for the original soundtrack of that movie.
Clouser has also worked as a film and television composer, scoring the entire Saw series of films.[5] He was the "top choice" for scoring the first film of the series, as director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell are both Nine Inch Nails fans and they used remixes of the band's songs for the temp score. Clouser said, "They wanted progressive, underground music that was kind of underground, and they were looking to inject that flavor in the score."[6] He has also scored films such as Deepwater (2005), Dead Silence (2007), Death Sentence (2007), and (2007).[7] [8] On television, he was the composer for the TV series Las Vegas (NBC), for which he won a BMI TV Music Award,[9] [10] Fastlane (Fox), and Numbers (CBS).[11] [12] Additionally, he composed the theme song for those shows as well as American Horror Story (FX).[13] [14]
Clouser married his long-time girlfriend, photographer and model Zoe Wiseman, in the summer of 2007.
With Nine Inch Nails
Marilyn Manson
Rob Zombie
Clouser has performed on releases with a variety of other artists and bands.
| Year | Title | Director | Studio(s) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Saw | James Wan | Lionsgate Films | |
| 2005 | Deepwater | David S. Marfield | Halcyon Entertainment | |
| Saw II | Darren Lynn Bousman | Lionsgate Films | ||
| 2006 | Saw III | |||
| 2007 | Dead Silence | James Wan | Universal Pictures20th Century Fox | |
| Death Sentence | ||||
| Russell Mulcahy | Screen Gems | |||
| Saw IV | Darren Lynn Bousman | Lionsgate Films | ||
| 2008 | Saw V | David Hackl | ||
| 2009 | The Stepfather | Nelson McCormick | Screen Gems | |
| Saw VI | Kevin Greutert | Lionsgate Films | ||
| 2010 | Saw 3D | |||
| 2012 | The Collection | Marcus Dunstan | LD Entertainment | |
| 2016 | The Neighbor | Anchor Bay Films | ||
| 2017 | Jigsaw | The Spierig Brothers | Lionsgate Films | |
| 2021 | Spiral: From the Book of Saw | Darren Lynn Bousman | ||
| Eye Without A Face | Ramin Niami | Sideshow | ||
| 2022 | Unhuman | Marcus Dunstan | Blumhouse Productions | |
| 2023 | Saw X | Kevin Greutert | Lionsgate Films |
| Year | Title | Studio(s) | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002–2003 | Fastlane | Warner Bros. Television 20th Century Fox Television | ||
| 2003–2008 | Las Vegas | DreamWorks Television | "A Little Less Conversation" by Elvis Presley was the theme during the series run in the United States while "Let It Ride" by Clouser was used as the theme in international and DVD versions of the series | |
| 2005–2010 | Numbers | Scott Free Productions | ||
| 2008 | Fear Itself | Lionsgate Television | ||
| 2011-present | American Horror Story | 20th Television | Theme music | |
| 2015 | Childhood's End | Universal Cable Productions | ||
| 2015–2016 | Wayward Pines | 20th Century Fox Television |
| Year | Title | Developer | Publisher | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | WCW Mayhem | Kodiak Interactive | Electronic Arts | song "Mayhem" | |
| 2009 | Singularity | Raven Software | Activision | With Michael Wandmacher | |
| 2015 | Evolve | Turtle Rock Studios | 2K Games | With Jason Graves, Lustmord & Danny Cocke |