Soderbergh's goal was an incredibly contemporary score — something that flew in the face of the precision of the period detail the rest of the crew was laboring to create in their meticulous reconstructions of Manhattan turn-of-the-century streets, fashion, transportation, and lighting. "The mix of electronic score with the period drama really like a high-risk concept," Martinez said. "Everything else in the show is trying to put the viewer in 1900 in New York, and the music was really fighting to take you out of that period."

In the cold open to Episode 1, for example, the viewer watches Thackeray make his way from an Opium Den to The Knickerbocker Hospital in a horse-drawn carriage, resplendent in the period dress (albeit injecting himself in the toe) with what appears to be a fully realized 1900s Manhattan out the carriage window — all with the pulsing, futuristic sound of Martinez's score in the background.

After scoring three episodes with the help of his longtime collaborator, Gregory Tripi, this mode seemed to work — or at least, according to Martinez, to normalize. "I thought, 'OK, then, that's the sound of the show, there's the style,'" he said. "If anything, it just proves that there's one hundred ways to skin a cat, and there's a lot of ways to go with music as dramatic underscore. As long as it fulfills the dramatic needs of the story, then you're good. And I think Steven enjoys throwing the audience a curve ball — particularly when it comes to music — so I think it was an interesting, colorful, and attention-grabbing device as well."