‘It seems it has its own mind’: the bizarre and terrifying instrument behind Alan Wake 2’s soundtrack

Following the game's hero into hellish madness, Petri Alanko required an especially unsettling score. Enter a noise machine that disturbed even Stephen King

On Petri Alanko's website, where the Bafta-nominated Finnish musician offers his services as a composer for video games and film, the artist and performer makes a bold claim: No deadlines missed since 1990". If you're a creative of any flavour, you're likely to read that with a mixture of awe, suspicion and incredulity. Deadlines are flexible, right? Right?

It's not a boast, it's a service promise, more or less," laughs Alanko. I'm really good at scheduling my own work, but I am very careful when dealing with someone else for the first time. Not all clients know exactly what they want, despite me helping them to figure out what's needed. I need to be the creative, the analyst, as well as the crisis negotiator." Video game music production is often chaotic: composers have to be malleable, lean, adaptable, unafraid of killing their darlings or working to impossibly tight deadlines. That Alanko shrugs this off as simply part of the job is testament to his dedication.