Composer Ceiri Torjussen on Expanding the Emotional Soundscape of ‘Delhi Crime’ Season 3
Netflix’s Delhi Crime has never shied away from the difficult truths at the heart of its stories, and its third season is no exception. Returning composer Ceiri Torjussen (he scored Season 2) once again shapes the show’s soundscape—a haunting blend of synth textures and traditional Indian instrumentation—to mirror the series’ balance of grit and empathy.
In the conversation below, Torjussen discusses his approach to scoring Season 3’s emotionally charged story of human trafficking, how he expanded the show’s sonic world while maintaining its established tone, and why sometimes the most powerful moments come from knowing when not to use music.
You can listen to some of Ceiri’s music from Season 3 here.
WON: Delhi Crime has such a distinct tone—gritty, emotional, and deeply human. How did you approach crafting the score for Season 3 to reflect that world?
This is my second outing with Delhi Crime (since I also scored Season 2 in 2022), so I’d already established a sonic palette that had worked for the show. Also, Andrew Lockington’s excellent music for Season 1 first established a synth-based sound-world for the show, so I like to think that there’s a sonic consistency through all three seasons. All that said, Season 3 came with a unique challenge: it’s a human drama about sex trafficking and so, while I needed to keep the gritty, synth-based sound-world alive, I also needed to address the tragic human consequences of the harrowing storyline. This meant sometimes leaning into the more emotional story beats and trying to reflect the plight of the young girls in the show in a dramatic but sensitive way. It was a hard balance to strike.
When you first came on board for the new season, what were your initial creative conversations with the show’s team like? What direction did they want to take the music this time around?
Tanuj (director) and the team were pretty open-minded on how I should score the new season, but we did have conversations about themes and story way before I saw any footage. We discussed how important it was to strike a balance between the classic gritty, hard-edged sound of the show and the more delicate and troubling storyline of child trafficking and abuse that forms the core of the season 3 plot. Exactly how I did this was up to me, and as always, Tanuj was excited for me to experiment with new ways of scoring, which was a real treat. I wrote a bunch of music, having just read the scripts – just based on my own, visceral reactions to the story.
Each season of Delhi Crime deals with very different cases and emotional landscapes. How does the score evolve to reflect that shift in story and theme?
Season 2 was about gang violence and elderly abuse, and so that definitely had a unique sound – I used some more visceral, percussion-based sound for the gangs, and a dread-laden, creepy sound for the grizzly attack scenes. Season 3 also deals with a gang. This gang is more sophisticated but just as evil, and so I had to figure out a ‘sound’ for them that encapsulated the horror they wrought. This gang’s sound is more synth and bass-heavy – a theme you first hear to accompany the evil mastermind Badi Didi and her client, John Gupta. On the other side of the story was the plight of the young girls who were being abducted and trafficked. Their sound needed to be at the same time sad (tragic even), but also unsettling. We follow their storyline through every episode, so I needed to reflect both their sorrow and their struggle for survival.
The series walks a fine line between realism and tension. How do you decide when the music should heighten the suspense and when it’s better to hold back?
There’s a constant flux between suspense and emotional respite throughout every episode. Deciding “when” and how to score this ebb and flow is a combination of discussions with the creative team and my own instinct as a composer. It’s not always cut and dry, and sometimes it’s a process of trial and error, but eventually we’re able to strike the balance satisfactorily.
Can you walk us through your process for building the musical palette of Season 3? Were there any new instruments, sounds, or recording techniques that defined this season’s sound?
For this season I decided to use more traditional Indian sounds than in S2, but processed in unusual ways. I focused on instruments like sarod (a type of Indian lute), santoor (Indian hammer dulcimer), bansuri (Indian bamboo flute) and vocals. The latter two elements were recorded for me by the fantastic artist Sheela Bringi. She recorded a few ‘songs’ that I wrote as ‘wild-track’ (i.e. not to picture). I was then able to use her performances not only as the basis of certain cues but also to use isolated elements of the recordings and manipulate/process them in novel ways. These sounds gave a much more ‘human’ approach to my score, which was especially useful for the sound-world of the young girls’ storylines.
The show is so rooted in the city of Delhi. Did you bring in any regional or cultural influences to help capture that atmosphere?
Only insofar as I focused on mostly traditional North Indian instruments, ragas and talas, as opposed to South Indian structures, which are completely different. Since the story takes place in/around north and central India, I thought it prudent to restrict my Indian instrumental palette to this region (though I did cheat on occasion with some great-sounding south Indian drums). All that said, New Delhi is a very cosmopolitan city – a true melting pot of religions, languages and cultures – so this is reflected in my music also. And of course, the synth-based backbone to my score established our ‘home’ with the Delhi police.
What scene or sequence from Season 3 was the most challenging—or rewarding—to score?
There were many challenging and creatively rewarding scenes. A few that pop to mind (without wanting to reveal spoilers) are some of the ‘police interview’ scenes, in which some of the victims and criminals reveal crucial plot points in emotionally visceral ways. For these moments I needed to strike a delicate balance between how the characters were ‘feeling’ as they revealed their stories and the vantage points of the cops as they learnt these story beats that moved their investigation forward. Also, the final episode was challenging from a practical point of view since it’s so dynamic and action-packed. (That’s all I can reveal about that I’m afraid!)
The music in Delhi Crime feels both cinematic and intimate at the same time. What’s your secret to achieving that balance for a streaming series?
I don’t really think about the show any differently than I would about a (traditional) broadcast series, or even a feature film. It was crucial that I just scored the drama and helped tell the story in an artful way. Some moments are very intimate, and some very cinematic, and I mostly went with my instinct about how each moment should be scored.
You’ve worked across so many genres—from action and thriller to drama and documentary. How does scoring a crime drama show like Delhi Crime compare?
As I mentioned above, Delhi Crime is a crime drama with, by now, a well-established ‘sound-world’. It’s in its own microcosm for me stylistically since I’ve written so much music for it now, and the sounds and themes are very well ingrained in the show. I always approach each project in its own singular way, and always try to put a unique stamp on every new show or film I work on, and Delhi Crime is no different in that respect.
WON: Fans often say that silence is one of the show’s most powerful tools. How do you decide when to let a scene breathe versus when to underscore it with music?
The show does have a lot of score – almost ‘wall-to-wall’ in fact. Because of this, the moments with no score really stand out dramatically, since using silence can be just as powerful as using score. Deciding “when” to let a scene breathe comes after a conversation with Tanuj and the team, but it is also quite instinctive. It is our stellar casts’ ‘emotional generosity’ that gives the audience the goose bumps and, sometimes, no amount of music can improve upon that.