From the piano in the background of the cashier scene detuning and glitching, to the silence when Earn looks through the glass walls at the agency while people look at him, to the creepy ambiences in the creepiest episode to the hard-drives noises in the studio to the sound of scissors, sprays, brushes in the barbershop story, Atlanta has wonderful sound design. Very clean. Perfectly chosen.
The same is true with the music selection, always on point. But there’s another thing that I love about the sound, it’s what I call the “little sentences”.
Episode 3. They’re outside the club and about to get in. The bouncer is like “twenty for dudes, bruh”. And Earn, simply looking in his wallet repeats “twenty…” and the bouncer replies “twenty for dudes, bruh”. It’s almost like a sound effect. There’s this line in episode 7 when the girls are selling selfies to Van and the hustler is like “wassuup watcha gonna dew” at low volume, like some kind of little snark. Every episode, there are some little sentences. “mmh fuck with me, mmh” in Episode 1. “Oh yeah that one don’t work good” in Episode 5. The stupid lama laugh in Episode 4. “Man I’m bruising this boy” in Episode 11. So forth. They stick.
It’s part of the writing but it ends up being the sound. Catchphrases are this audio/thoughts hybrid to me. There’s the serious, cinematographic sound of Atlanta. And then there’s the goofy, quirky, sound of Atlanta.
Another layer added that makes the show more special.