Stranger Things

It’s the 80s, synth is everything, and suddenly there are interdimensional traveling monsters. But hey, at least the backing track for the end of the world is pretty great.

Image source: https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Things-Netflix-Original-Soundtrack/dp/B01JVW2TVA

Stranger Things, Volume 1 by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein

Rating: 9/10

Most people know of or have seen Netflix’s instant cult favorite, Stranger Things. Monsters, the 80s, a child with out of this world abilities. What more could you want? Maybe a great score to go along with it? Luckily, that’s exactly what we received.

Personally, my favorite of the three seasons so far was the first. With the first season came the first volume in the Stranger Things discography. I’ll be focusing on this album because the rest of the albums are similar in style. Volume 1 takes us from the series’ bass-bumping theme song to The Upside Down to Hawkins Laboratory all with a synth-wave, nostalgic sound.

As a musician I always tend to advocate for acoustic or live recordings over electronic music. I do however love some modern synth-wave groups and Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein have taken an 80s sound and mixed it with a dramatic flare necessary for enhancing the story. From the light pop synth they use in the track Kids to the ominous, almost lightsaber sounding electronics in Photos in the Woods, they twist the sound to the mood of the show.

Breaking down the theme song to to show for instance, we hear more of a darker tone because it is in a minor key. Choosing a lower octave for the music allows us to see that this show isn’t always light hearted. It’s a dramatic show and the first moment of the show that we see and hear tells us that.

Dixon and Stein also create certain patterns and motives depending on the characters in a scene. Whenever there are children in a scene, the synth becomes more light. Examples of this can be heard in Kids, Friendship, Nancy and Barb, and other pieces playing under lighthearted moments with the younger members of the cast. Whenever a monster or antagonist is on screen, we get the opposite. The slow, low pitched waves of the synth make it feel like everything is moving in slow motion (and sometimes the scenes were in slow-mo). The lower and quieter the music, the more dangerous the villain.

Despite absolutely loving the soundtrack, my one fault with it is that some of the tracks sound too similar. It’s very hard to get variety when using a couple of synthesizers and not much else. I applaud Dixon and Stein for even getting a large amount of variety while staying true to the synth sound, but there are many moments that just feel the same. And with season four on the way, so comes another album. All the tracks have a bit of uniqueness, but again, there are a lot of similarities.

Even with similar sounding tracks, the Volume 1 soundtrack is great to listen to while doing work or if you feel like being transported in time to the 80s. Lofi music is gaining popularity today, and to me synth-wave compliments that genre incredibly well. If you haven’t yet and were intrigued by what I’ve said then give the Stranger Things soundtracks a listen.