Welcome to Right on Cue, the podcast where we interview film, TV, and video game composers about origins and nuances of their latest works, as well as select commentaries from some of the score’s most important tracks.

This week, we speak to composer Yair Elazar Glotman about his score for the latest prestige thriller from Netflix, Reptile, a stylish neo-noir starring Benicio Del Toro as a mercurial detective looking into the murder of a real estate agent. Everyone’s a suspect, from the victim’s boyfriend (Justin Timberlake) to the creepy guy down the street (played by Michael Pitt), even to some of Del Toro’s fellow officers (including Ato Essandoh, Domenick Lombardozzi, and Eric Bogosian).

It’s the directorial debut of music video director Grant Singer, who fills each corner of the frame with cold, calculating, and precise compositions, painting an isolated, alien world of hidden motivations and untold terrors hiding within the mundane. Singer’s work in Reptile closely mirrors the work of David Fincher, and it’s an intriguing experience to behold — not least because of Glotman’s dissonant, visceral, textural score.

Building eerie combinations of altered string compositions and textured synths, Glotman’s work fills in the empty spaces left by Reptile‘s sparse, opaque script, echoing through the vast voids of understanding the central mystery leaves its viewers.

I’m pleased to have Glotman on the podcast to talk about how he got started in music and composing, his work with Singer on Reptile, and his fascination with pulling apart the sound of things to see what he can find.

You can find Yair Elazar Glotman at his official website here.

Reptile is currently streaming on Netflix. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Netflix Music.