The score for HBO’s 2019 miniseries Chernobyl, composed by Hildur Guðnadóttir, uses no orchestral instruments. Guðnadóttir followed the production to the decommissioned Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithuania, which stood in for the Ukrainian site, and recorded there in protective clothing with the field recordist Chris Watson, a founding member of Cabaret Voltaire.
Doors, pumps, reactor halls and the saws of the turbine hall became raw material, processed into slow pulses, groans and sustained tones, with her own treated voice as the only traditional instrument. She has described the work as mostly an act of listening. The music sits between drone, industrial ambient and sound design, so that the threat of invisible radiation seems to come from the building itself. It won the Emmy for outstanding music composition for a limited series in 2019 and later a Grammy, and has been performed live, including at CTM Festival in Berlin in 2020.