Hidden away in a remote mountain valley, the secluded village of Illswich was born from the ambition of its fortune-seeking founder. While outsiders might view it as nothing more than the dying remnants of a bygone age, those who call it home guard its secrets with unshakeable resolve. This CD features 53 minutes of immersive gothic folk horror and dark fantasy music and soundscapes with artwork by Pascal Casolari.
Plankett's Grove, the latest album from Midnight Syndicate, is out today! Another release full of their signature instrumental Gothic horror and Halloween sounds, it's perfectly timed for the lead up to All Hallow's Eve.
Things are beginning to get spooky and the air is turning crisp. We are getting closer! Enjoy.
Slasher Dave does it again with a brand new release, "deadicated" to people just like you and me! Home Haunter drops just in time for the Halloween season, featuring 12 new tracks of synthwave/horror/ambient audio goodness. And this time, he has even named tracks after a collection of inspiring and incredible home haunts throughout the country. (I guess Highbury Cemetery will be featured on Volume 2, eh Dave?) :)
We have one week to go, and this one has been powering me through some late nights in the garage. Rocket fuel for home haunters!! Let's go!!
So while I took the last few months off from any and all haunt projects, I did keep one toe in the water, and that was with music. My unending quest to find the best dark, horror, and ritual ambient audio will always be my 365-day-a-year connection to all things Halloween. I've long championed the use of this genre as the perfect background audio for haunt displays. The perfect amount of creepiness to set a truly menacing and dark tone.
One recent discovery is Blackpool, UK's The Night Monitor. "Soundtracking unexplained phenomena." Can there be a cooler description than that?? I perused their entire catalog and picked out quite a few ambient gems that have gone into the standard rotation here at the Cemetery. Tunes to really get the black-and-orange blood pumping.
I'll share a few more tracks in the near future, but I figured I'd start with my favorite of the bunch. An unsettling homage to the famous English cryptid, Owlman of Mawnan...
Cover story: 3rd July 1976. Cornwall, England. During a period of strange happenings in the area (including a sighting of local sea monster Morgawr on the same day) the mysterious winged cryptid known as Owlman makes its second appearance of the year, when two girls are startled by the bizarre bird monster while camping in the woods near Mawnan church.
Sally Chapman - "It was like a big owl with pointed ears, as big as a man. The eyes were red and glowing. At first, I thought it was someone dressed up, playing a joke, trying to scare us. I laughed at it, we both did, then it went up in the air and we both screamed. When it went up, you could see its feet were pincers."
Barbara Perry - "It's true. It was horrible, a nasty owl-face with big ears and big red eyes. It was covered in grey feathers. The claws on its feet were black. It just flew straight up and disappeared in the treetops."
I recently revisited this horrific masterpiece by Throbbing Gristle, originally released back in 1978. Still so unnerving today! This would make an incredible soundtrack for a haunt. Or a nightmare...
Oh man, do I LOVE this new track from Daniel Davies. So dark and menacing. And with the addition of bandmate (and Godfather) John Carpenter, I think it's one of their best collaborations to date.
Davies' new release, Signals, drops next week on Sacred Bones Records and I cannot wait to spin this one. If the rest of the tracks are anywhere near as good as this, it's going to be living on my turntable for quite a while...
And if this dark collaboration is a hint of things to come for Carpenter's upcoming Halloween Kills, we are all going to be in for a hell of a treat!
A killer dark drone track from Dronny Darko's newest release, Black Hive. From the Dronny Darko Bandcamp page: On this album Dronny Darko explores what lies beyond time where the lurkers roam. The black hive devours time left behind to fuel the future at the knot of time. An incredibly brooding album for lovers of dark drone.
Feel the cold winter air on bare skin atop Majestic Cathedrals. Hear the
archaic chanting echoing from never ending halls below. Taste the iron
from blood filled chalices of forgotten secret orders. Bow down on
bruised knees before the serpent pillar in Sacral Monasteries. Partake
in rituals hidden but practiced since the dawn of time.
Wow.
I absolutely love this track. It starts off light and airy, with the serene sounds of birds and nature, and then quickly dives into a cold, desolate choral droning that sounds like it emanates from the hollowed out shell of an old stone cathedral. This track has a TON of atmosphere, and would work really well in a Gothic haunt scene (the Davis Graveyard abbey, anyone?).
And the faceless, hooded figure in the video below. A perfect choice for a new monster mud figure. I need to make it happen!
So I'm sitting around the Cemetery in a post-Halloween funk of boredom, when I came upon this wonderfully dark, atmospheric track. This is from Christoph De Babalon's 1997 release, "If You're Into It, I'm Out Of It."
Aphex Twin was my first introduction to the incredible sounds of "darker" ambient and its perfect fit for use in my Halloween yard haunt soundtrack. After using a novelty Halloween cassette during the first years of my display, I came upon 1994's Selected Ambient Works, Vol 2 in my wife's CD collection. Upon first listen, I was blown away by the darkness and cold of the tracks. Like nothing I had heard before. I immediately knew that this would be the atmospheric audio to use in order to take my haunt to the next level.
I still listen to this frequently, and every time I hear this particular track, I'm reminded of the progression of my haunt through the years and the expansion of my musical tastes and influences.
Halloween Weather Forecast Update:
Continuing to improve, but I'll remain cautiously optimistic for now.
Wow. I finally had the chance to watch the 2013 British sci-fi film, The Machine.I was pleasantly surprised by how interesting the film itself was, but Tom Raybould's hypnotic synth soundtrack is phenomenal! Another one going into the haunt-related soundtrack playlist. This will be on repeat for those late night prop-making hours in the garage!
I'm posting the clip of the entire soundtrack, as each track really is spectacular:
Christmas comes a bit early to Highbury Cemetery this year! Presenting a very special Freebie Friday from a newly rediscovered gem from the depths of the garage... While I was cleaning and organizing my garage after another wet, yet successful Halloween, I stumbled upon an old, single speaker radio/cassette player. After blowing years' worth of sawdust and cobwebs off, I inspected the old radio, remembering how I used to use it in the early, early days of my home haunt. While reminiscing, my eye caught something on the front of the radio. More specifically, something in the tape deck. I did a double-take as I quickly realized what it was. It was a cassette! But not just any cassette...
It was my old "Chamber of Horrors" Halloween cassette! Voices. Sound. Music! I couldn't believe that I had found it. And I couldn't believe that I had forgotten it. It must have been hidden away in my garage, enduring at least 7 years' worth of cold winters and hot summers. And it appeared to still be in good condition.
We used this cassette as our haunt soundtrack in the early days, some 10 years ago or more. And we used to play it through that old, dusty one-speaker cassette player. That thought alone made me chuckle. It really showed how far we have come. After getting nostalgic, I brought the tape into the house and quickly connected an old cassette deck to my current stereo setup. And nothing. No sound. No movement. The deck was dead. Two weeks later, I procured another cassette deck from my mother-in-law and quickly hooked it up to the stereo. Same thing. Totally dead. I was completely striking out. Two cassette decks and nothing. Perhaps the tape was cursed? Amazingly, I did a search on Amazon and found an incredibly cheap (cost and construction!) Cassette-to-USB tape player and two days later, had it hooked up to the computer, ready to try its luck with the tape. I put it in the player and hit play... The speakers sprung to life, playing the sweet sounds of the old cassette, filing my mind with the classic haunt sounds from this masterpiece. Hearing those old haunt sounds again brought a big smile to my face. As I listened to the tape, I started researching it, as I knew nothing about the age or the origin of it. And that is where things get kind of interesting. Do a Google or YouTube search for "Chamber of Horrors" and you will undoubtedly find many entries on the 1988 version of this cassette. And I quickly found out that this version (with a different sticker label on the cassette itself) is actually awful. Generic voices and quick audio clips from popular songs (Thriller) and standard scary sound tracks. How many times is that guy going to say, "Haaaappy Halloweeeen!"?? Take a listen for yourself to see what I mean:
I recently discovered the 2010 Panos Cosmatos-directed retro 80s science fiction film, Beyond The Black Rainbow, due in large part to the film's soundtrack being co-released on vinyl (hooray!!) by Death Waltz Records and Jagjaguwar.
While the film itself is a stunning visual feast for the eyes, the soundtrack is what really stands out. Sinoia Caves' minimalist, synth-driven tracks drive home the dystopian ambient undercurrent of the cold and sterile environment that envelopes the main characters. I cannot recommend both the film and the soundtrack enough! Beyond The Black Rainbow is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Enjoy!
No real post today because I'm spending the day in the garage, working like mad to get the last of my new props finished in time for Thursday. Instead, I'm just going to go through a couple of things happening... First, good luck to all of my fellow home haunters whose Trick-or-Treat takes place tonight. Scare lots of kids and have lots fun doing it! Next, the Highbury Cemetery 2013 T-Shirt Night of the Living Contest is still going on! Nobody has submitted the answers to the three questions yet. Wanna win a FREE shirt? Why not check it out and give it a go!! Also, if you find yourself with some free time today, why not check out Outside The Cinema's Annual Halloween Throwdown. They'll be broadcasting horror movies all day, building up to the night's big feature, Heavy Metal Massacre (a movie widely panned as one of the worst ever made)! It's a great podcast and the Throwdown promises to be a great time! Horror movies ALL DAY LONG. Tune in at tv.outsidethecinema.com.
And finally, I came across a great, free comp from Graveyard Calling Records out of the UK. A Haunted Journey is a comp featuring 14 tracks of ambient electronic music that sets a wonderfully creepy atmosphere for the Halloween season. Visit the label's Bandcamp page for more cool electronic tracks and comps!
We'll be back tomorrow with our final installment of Cemetery Sundays for 2013. We'll be touring a small, local cemetery that I had to jump a locked gate to get into...
I love discovering musical artists whose works could be repurposed as a soundtrack to a home haunt. This time up, it's dark ambient artist Vestigial's 2008 release, Translucent Communion:
Time for another installment of Haunt Soundtracks. This time up, it's Norwegian dark ambient artist Northaunt, whose eerily beautiful tracks would make for an ominous soundtrack on Halloween night. I just picked up 2006's Horizons and 2001's The Ominous Silence and both have been on a constant rotation at the Cemetery.
I'm a big fan of using Ambient music in your haunt, as it sets an unusually dark and creepy tone (I have been using a few tracks from Aphex Twin in my haunt for years). I recently discovered a few tracks from Lull, a 1990s dark-ambient side project from Mick Harris (who was also a drummer for Napalm Death!). I will definitely be incorporating some of these tracks in this year's haunt...
A cold, weathered hand pierces the rust-laden earth of a late autumn night. Reanimated decay becomes the evening's guide. Masked faces bask in the fiery glow of a jack-o-lantern's illumination. A lifeless finger points the direction toward the next porch-lit house. For this is the night of ghouls and goblins and tricks and treats. This is the night of Hallowe'en...
