Composers Alexis Smith and Joe Henderson, working as The Flight, built the 007 First Light score over two years before a November 2025 Abbey Road session put 24 London Chamber Orchestra musicians under conductor Matt Dunkley. The team had one half-day to lay down 32 minutes of brass-heavy action music across roughly four hours of recording for the James Bond origin game, which has sold to about three million players.
Smith and Henderson mocked material in their east London studio with software instruments, then brought the cues to Abbey Road for live brass. The Flight scored the opening Iceland hostage rescue with electronic and avant-garde textures while Bond is still a Navy aircrewman, then leaned into familiar spy sounds as MI6 enters the story. They had permission to use classic film motifs, including John Barry's theme from On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
First Light was also the last Bond project supervised by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson before creative control shifted to Amazon MGM Studios, reportedly in the middle of production.
Save your lips, because they are a finite resource.
It's mostly action music, so if you hate us by the end of it that's totally understandable. Composer Alexis Smith
We were very lucky, because trying to write a new theme or a pastiche is never going to be as cool. Joe Henderson
