Dream Theater

If you're at all familiar with the Netflix sci-fi/horror phenomenon known as Stranger Things, you've heard its foreboding, pulsating theme music dozens of times.

- MIKE METTLER

To come up with a universally loved theme that had to perfectly mirror the show's deeply entrenched upside-down '80s setting, composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein blended and filtered Prophet V and Roland SH-2 synthesizer sounds with some fine Mellotron seasoning mixed in for good measure. The familiarity of that signature Stranger synth bed should in turn lead your ingrained sound-sense memory to conjure the music of Tangerine Dream, the pioneering German electronic band whose aural fingerprints are all over the show's ethereal, period-apropos soundscapes. Not only have all five seasons of Stranger Things exposed younger generations to scores of wonderful '80s-bred tracks; the show's creators also opened the door for both new and re-attuned appreciation of TD's tirelessly inventive instrumental works.¹

“The younger audiences we see coming to our shows definitely learned about us from Stranger Things—and they also found out who we are from the five hours of music we composed for GTA 5,²” TD keyboardist and music director Thorsten Quaeschning told me in a recent Zoom interview. “That's why younger people are attending our concerts and buying our vinyl. Some even ask for tapes—but we don't have any of those.”