People Are Strange was inspired by our obsession with aliens. Sci-fi has a wide range of themes and sub genres but the thing that always fascinated me as a child was those creepy crawly other-worldly monsters from Space!

I wanted to open this track with an synthesiser drone that invokes the feeling of a space ship landing and opening it’s doors. I knew this would be useful for a variety of scenes featured in the documentary.

I often write music visually with a basic imaginary narrative. I imagined the story of this song to be about an alien stepping foot on earth and exploring it’s surroundings. The song consists mainly of a pulsing heavy bass synth with fluttering computer sounding glitches. This intentionally evokes a feeling of tension and fear. Maybe as the alien is being chased by humans? I used synth presets that mimicked the sounds from the wonderful Blade Runner score by Vangelis to capture that sci fi aesthetic.

I wanted to write a heavy ending so that this song could also be used for any emotionally impacting cues that the documentary might require. Writing our songs in this way allows editor Samuel Way, to use loops of the music as background music or to hit specific dramatic cues. It’s both scary and climactic as it builds and I wanted to write something a little heavier to include a hint of the heavy metal influence on 80s music.