A Quick Dispatch from the Darkside

For Halloween, my wife reminded me that I should do something spooky. I had an idea of my own, but I was struggling with presenting it fairly. I am still working on that idea, but you’re not going to hear about it this week. She gave me an idea, but I felt that it was, honestly, a bit outside of my wheelhouse. Not that I couldn’t talk about it, but that I didn’t know enough about it to do it justice. So, I sifted it and got to where we are now: considering the music of John Carpenter.

Now, I should not have to tell you who John Carpenter is. But, for the sake of journalistic integrity, Carpenter is one of the masters of the horror genre. His films—Halloween, Christine, The Thing—are widely considered among some of the greatest, most influential horror films ever made. The villain from Halloween, Michael Myers, is a piece of American popular culture. In addition to his films, Carpenter is an massive influence in the musical realm, which is what we will be talking about here.

More than Michael Myers and the film itself, the soundtrack for Halloween is iconic. Without consciously attempting to do so, you’ve heard the theme song for the movie.

When you listen to it, your body gets tense. Your heart rate starts to ramp up, making it feel like someone is watching you from the shadows. The simple piano line is repeating as the synth oscillations thump behind it. The tension is only amplified when the synth chords are played, lingering like a fog over the music. The combination makes you feel like you are out on the most terrifying suburban street on the spookiest of holidays. In short, it is an extremely effective horror theme.

The process of creating this song and the rest of the music is the most interesting part of this particular score. Inspired by the soundtracks of Bernard Herrmann (Psycho) and Ennio Morricone, Carpenter, in collaboration with Dan Wyman, made the soundtrack over the course of two weeks, because that was all they could afford to do. Using only pianos and synthesizers, Carpenter created this score on the fly in the studio. To make this even more impressive, Carpenter made this in, what he calls, “double-blind” mode. This means that he neither referenced the movie nor made the music in synchronization with the movie. A truly shocking thing to think about when considering how well it works in the movie.

With the success that Halloween had in the box office and the effectiveness of the score, Carpenter continued to write his own soundtracks. The style that he perfected with Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, and Escape from New York—thumping beats, stark synth soundscapes—became his hallmark. While there were times that he deviated from this format (one notable example is The Fog), this aggressive, synth-driven style would stay at the front of people’s minds.

After the stylistic departure of Ghosts of Mars, which he recorded with multiple guitarists such as Scott Ian (Anthrax) and Buckethead, Carpenter went silent for multiple years. In 2015, with his son, Cody, and collaborator Daniel Davies in tow, Carpenter released Lost Themes, the first of four records he would subsequently release with that title. As he described them, these records are scores for imaginary movies.

Retaining the same intensity of his 80s score work but having access to a battery of modern recording equipment and extra help, one can see a refinement on his earlier scores. For example, listen to “Obsidian” from Lost Themes.

Over the course of its eight-minute runtime, you can hear the synth menace of his earlier horror and action soundtracks, but that dread is fleshed out with finely shredded guitars, samples, and organic drums. As the piece moves through its multiple parts, the tension falls and rises expertly. Much like with any tense situation, there is a lull before it will ramp up again, before it will get worse. Messrs. Carpenter and Davies understand this deeply, and this song is the proof of that. When you look out from this track, the rest of the album shares this level of detail, providing all the feels one would expect from a well-considered score.

With the artistic success of the first two volumes of Lost Themes, it had become clear that John Carpenter was back in the scoring game. And appropriately, the first real film he scored after his return was the reboot/sequel/new whatever of Halloween. The lessons learned from Lost Themes are plainly apparent on this new score. The first place to hear that improvement is the new Halloween theme.

Aside from hearing how much he has benefited from modern production, the new version of the theme retains many of the original motifs, but the added layers of synths help to hammer home the constantly present menace. It is clear that Messrs. Carpenter and Davies wanted to maintain the original tension of the score. If anything, the new production techniques have increased the precision of the dread, making you feel it more even more.

This new form of Carpenter and collaborators has turned out some excellent music. The four Lost Themes are great listens, and it is fun to think about what kind of movie they would go with. The 2018 Halloween score as well as the 2022 score for Firestarter are excellent on their own terms, standout scores in a career replete with them. Clearly, Carpenter has a particular aesthetic, but it is constantly being refined and tweaked, making it stand the test of time. And, he shows no signs of slowing down, with the last version of Lost Themes coming out only a year ago.

Given that this is Halloween weekend, I don’t want to keep anyone too long. Put on some Carpenter, feel the dread, and enjoy your spooky weekend. If you want to watch a John Carpenter movie that is off the beaten path, my wife, a film scholar, recommends In the Mouth of Madness, his 1994 film with Sam Neill.

Next week, we’ll get into 2005. I was a music director at a college radio station, and I saw a lot of bands from this era with my own eyes, as I know a number of readers of this newsletter did as well. It was a transition point in music, maybe pitching us toward the hellscape that we live in now. That said, we did get “Galang” and Illinoise, so not a total loss? Be safe and take care of yourselves and one another. Also, if a male cat rolls over on to his back while you’re giving it a scratch, don’t pet his belly. He will bite you. This is just a fact.