Rolling Stone

… the director turned to the only person he thought could give The Knick a unique sound: his frequent collaborator, Cliff Martinez.

“I had some reservations about it at first,” Martinez says. “You’re trying so hard to place the viewer in this time and this place, and the music is really fighting something that everyone else in the show is trying to achieve. But as the episodes started coming in, and seeing that it had all this electronic stuff that was mine, I realized that it was working. So it gave me the confidence to do it.”

Ultimately, Martinez fashioned the most compelling soundtrack on television right now. A complete anachronism, the composer constructed a postmodern and curious through-line for the series with droning, minimalistic synthesizer and guitar lines, warbling bass and chimes that seem to swoop down from nowhere.

-David Mermelstein

Read the full article at Rolling Stone – Blood Brothers: Inside the Music of ‘The Knick’