van Wissem was commissioned by Cinémathèque Française in Paris to compose the soundtrack to the restored original version of the “Nosferatu” film (1922). When he was writing the score he says he found a Dutch double 7 inch record with sounds of extinct birds on the streets of Rotterdam. He manipulated these found bird sounds by using electronics and added them to the score. “Beginning with a lute solo, his soundtrack incorporates electric guitar and distorted recordings of extinct birds, graduating from subtlety to gothic horror.” His soundtrack goes from silence to noise over the course of 90 minutes, he said, culminating in “dense, slow death metal.”