Does any show have music so gleamingly, eerily evocative as Stranger Things? A third season of the Netflix series arrives in July, and its soundtrack composers, Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, play their limb-shaking synthesiser themes at Nile Rodgers’ Meltdown festival in August. A Secret Cinema Stranger Things night in November will also give fans the chance to explore the cast’s hometown of Hawkins, Indiana – recreated in a London location – and bathe in the rush of period pop from the show. Just don’t get caught in the Upside Down while dancing to The Cure, if you can help it.
The emotional charge of music is essential to Stranger Things. Even before its directors, the Duffer brothers, approached them to soundtrack the show, Dixon and Stein of Texan electronic band Survive collected old synthesisers and loved unusual films. They already made their music on machines whose very mention prompts blood pressure spikes in geeks of a certain age (the Roland TR-606 and the Prophet-6 are among their favourites), and they also gobbled up Italian horror and alternative sci-fi.
The brothers heard Dixon and Stein’s work on 2014 US thriller The Guest, and in July 2015 asked them to make some demos and potential themes. The sounds they made were used in the acting auditions to create atmosphere. In other words, the sounds were there in the fabric of Hawkins before the fleshed-out world itself.
Sources tell us that Secret Cinema has a very exciting young British electronic artist lined up as composer for the live events – and the sound system is so cutting-edge that Björk just launched her world tour with it. This is music as nostalgic as it is nerve-jangling, as reverential as it is rebellious. You can get lost in it too, whether you’re preparing your Stranger Things fancy dress, or simply trying to terrify yourself in your own fairy light-dazzled living room. To celebrate it, this playlist brings together musical influences on the show, as well as familiar songs recast in new, spooky contexts. It will send you tumbling back in time as much as it will shake you to your very bones.
Kids – Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein
The first music you ever heard on the first season of Stranger Things was this, as Mike, Dustin, Lucas and Will cycled on their BMX Chopper bikes after a game of Dungeons & Dragons. Initially, it’s a stark series of broken minor key chords, before a low, thudding bass note suddenly arrives on the offbeat – a harbinger of what lies beneath, and what is to come. Will soon leaves his friends, cycles off, encounters something unseen, and disappears. From there, we’re deep in the mystery, in for the terrifying ride.
Humanity part two – Ennio Morricone
That low, thudding beat from Kids may have resonances right here, in one of many pieces of bleak, minimalist music from John Carpenter’s 1982 horror, The Thing, composed by soundtrack composer extraordinaire Ennio Morricone. “Obviously John Carpenter’s films [influence us],” Stein told Rolling Stone in 2016. “That brooding … that awesome use of dissonance – propelling scenes.”
Released the same weekend as Steven Spielberg’s much more optimistic film E.T., The Thing was originally a flop, but became a cult classic in the age of video rentals. It also has other connections with Stranger Things. It’s about a parasitic extraterrestrial that could take over people (check), it features a bleak research station (check), plus Mike has a poster for the film in his basement. Dustin even catches their science teacher, Scott Clarke, watching the film with his girlfriend Jen.
Chase – Giorgio Moroder
In the 2016 Rolling Stone interview, Stein also gushed about the epic cinema music of the Italian producer who created Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. “[I love] the stuff that he did with Harold Faltermeyer,” he said. “They have, like, a weird romance vibe.” Moroder and Faltermeyer’s work together includes synth drum-saturated 1980s outings such as the Top Gun soundtrack, but also the Oscar-winning music from 1978’s Midnight Express. Chase is from this, and it’s the ultimate pop instrumental made with the Moog modular synthesiser, propelling its machine-made beat along deliciously and dangerously, taking our disco feet with it.
Suspiria theme – Goblin
The Duffer brothers are huge fans of Italian horror master Dario Argento; after all, his 1970s film Suspiria rewrote the rulebook for the use of sound and colour in cinema. Stein and Dixon also love progressive rock band Goblin, and their 1977 theme for Argento’s bloody ballet academy movie remains bone-chillingly brilliant. Its effects lie in the combination of a childlike but disturbing music box melody, weird electronics, plus a ghostly whisper singing along tunelessly, with a loud la-la-la.
Green Desert – Tangerine Dream
In most interviews, Stein and Dixon gush about the influence, and the majesty, of Tangerine Dream. Formed in West Berlin in 1967, Edgar Froese’s band developed a huge sound that spun together psychedelia, krautrock and ambient textures; they also made many cult soundtracks together (such as their 1983 work for Michael Mann’s The Keep, released in a limited run of 150 copies in 1997). Green Desert comes from the band’s eponymous 1986 album that features in episode five of season one of Stranger Things. It accompanies a scene where chief Hopper tears apart his trailer, trying to find listening devices, in a great homage to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 thriller, The Conversation.
Elegia – New Order
This song features in the same episode of season one as Tangerine Dream, as the townsfolk of Hawkins, Indiana, get ready for a funeral (no spoilers: it won’t turn out the way you expect). This moving instrumental was written by New Order as a tribute for their friend, Ian Curtis (singer in their pre-1980 incarnation without Gillian Gilbert, Joy Division). Its 1985 release date, two years after the events of season one, got the Stranger Things accuracy monitors seething, however. But in worlds dictated by hazy nostalgia, weird science, and extraterrestrial jiggery-pokery, ask yourselves honestly, Stranger Things fans: is logical continuity the name of this game? The shivery mood of this song is also bang on – as is that of Joy Division’s 1980 single, Atmosphere, which features in the previous episode.
Should I Stay Or Should I Go – The Clash
Let’s leave the terror and bleakness behind for a while and remember how parts of the Stranger Things soundtrack can also bring hope. This is the song that bound together Will and his older brother Jonathan as their parents fought, before their divorce. It becomes the song Will sings in the Upside Down to remind his mother Joyce that he is still alive. The show’s music supervisor Nora Felder had to convince The Clash of the song’s importance to the plot, and how its success might introduce the band to younger audiences. She managed it, winning an Emmy for her efforts.
Time After Time – Cyndi Lauper
Here’s another heart-pumping musical moment – this time from season two. Everyone’s favourite kid of the gang, Dustin, is at the second series’ finale snow ball dance prom. The walls are dripping with silver ribbons, and he is dressed to kill, his hair quiffed outrageously. His friends leave him to slow dance with their chosen girls, and ever the outsider, he is soon left alone. Then something brilliant happens. You’ll be punching the air with him.
Heliosphan – Aphex Twin
As season three approaches, the children of Hawkins are getting older. Where could Dixon and Stein go next with their inspirations? Dixon told Under The Radar magazine in March about his love of 1990s electronic music: “I got into Aphex Twin and all that weird electronic stuff that was still poppy but also experimental … insane music, such as Autechre, you know, borderline alien communication.” This 1992 track from Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works echoes the Stranger Things mood while mixing its menace with propulsive drum’n’bass rhythms. Could we have a Stranger Things season four set in the 1990s perhaps? Stranger things have happened, indeed …
White Rabbit – Jefferson Airplane
After all, one of the show’s greatest moments involves a tantalising injection of music from the 1960s, no less. We can’t finish a Stranger Things playlist without mentioning the amazing Eleven, whose arrival into Hawkins in season one sends everything nuclear. This psychedelic classic inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland reminds us how timeless a story Stranger Things is, too. It’s about disappearing into the rabbit hole, where “logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead”, but its finale reminds us of what we need to do: “Feed your head, feed your head”. In Hawkins’ world of twisted musical nostalgia, there’s every risk of that happening for some time yet.
For tickets to Secret Cinema presents Stranger Things, visit secretcinema.org
