JOHN CARPENTER – Lost Themes (2015)

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JOHN CARPENTER, the legendary Director and Composer behind Halloween, Escape From New York, They Live, Assault On Precinct 13 and many more is releasing his ‘debut solo album’ “Lost Themes” today, out Sacred Bones Records.

John Carpenter has been responsible for much of the horror genre’s most striking soundtrack work in the fifteen movies he’s both directed and scored. The themes that drive them can be stripped to a few coldly repeating notes, take on the electrifying thunder of a Rock concert, or submerge themselves into exotic, unholy miasmas.
It’s work that instantly floods his fans’ musical memory with imagery of a menacing shape stalking a babysitter, a relentless wall of ghost-filled fog, lightning-fisted kung fu fighters, or a mirror holding the gateway to hell.
“Lost Themes” asks Carpenter’s acolytes to visualize their own nightmares.

Carpenter started putting together the scores for the movies he directed because it was cheaper than hiring a composer and an orchestra. That sort of low-budget necessity can sometimes lead to great things, and Carpenter’s scores are great.
His theme music for Halloween might be the all-time greatest piece of horror-movie music, and it’s been sampled countless times. His eerie score for Assault On Precinct 13 made the movie’s silent, creepy-as-fuck gang armies feel like supernatural wraiths.
The absurd dystopian future of Escape From New York, where Manhattan is a walled-off prison for society’s dregs, somehow becomes more tangible with Carpenter’s ethereal synth theme.

Carpenter is now essentially retired from directing. In interviews, he’s been saying that he’s too old to make any movies anymore, that the process of dealing with studios is too much of a pain.
He made “Lost Themes” with his son Cody, who has a one-man Prog project called Ludrium. To hear Carpenter tell it, they made the music on the album for fun, messing around in Carpenter’s basement studio in between video-game sessions.
The material in “Lost Themes” it was never intended for release; Sacred Bones Records only got ahold of it when Carpenter’s lawyer asked him if he’d had any music laying around.
Point is: Lost Themes should not be anything special. It should be the sound of a faded legend with time on his hands and nothing left to prove.

However, it is not that. “Lost Themes”, as the title implies, sounds like the soundtracks for a few alien-invasion private-eye movies that Carpenter never got around to make in the early to mid-’80s. It sounds like shapes outside your house at night, like mysterious things moving in the shadows that mean you harm.
It’s heavy, creepy mood-music of the highest order. It has some motherfucking teeth to it.
The tracks on “Lost Themes” are built on heavy repetition, on melodic figures repeated so many times that they get under your skin.
But Carpenter is a Rock dude at heart. Before he made movies, he played guitar in frat-party cover bands. There’s a sense of Rock progression to some of the tracks on “Lost Themes”, and there’s a bleary metallic guitar that rears up every so often. The tracks don’t just needle away at you, either. They build.

There’s a dramatic rising action to all of them; they go places. Carpenter has talked about the tracks as soundtracks to imaginary movies, and a couple of times, my wife has walked downstairs while I’ve been listening to it and asked me what movie I’m watching.

Even if he doesn’t make movies anymore, Carpenter is still a storyteller, and the way the songs move towards a climax mirrors the way a movie would. The songs on “Lost Themes” establish a mood, and they build from there.
I can’t remember the last time I heard an instrumental album quite this riveting. These tracks refuse to sit still, and there’s an internal logic in the way they ratchet up the tension. It’s an album for driving empty city streets late at night, for imagining yourself into a movie of your own life.
And it’s too bad Carpenter doesn’t make movies anymore; you can’t help but envision the scenes that this music could soundtrack.
“They’re little moments of score from movies made in our imaginations,” Carpenter says. “Now I hope “Lost Themes” inspires people to create films that could be scored with this music.”

The record kicks off with the stomping synth-rock of “Vortex”, which has a feel not too dissimilar from the score for Escape From New York. Tasteful but minimal percussion make this a track you can move to.
“Obsidian” contains brooding piano and guitar interplay before morphing into a playful organ riff. “Fallen” opens with melancholy strings and percolating analog squelches before darkening to a sinister crescendo.
“Domain” and “Mystery” find Carpenter flirting with Goblin-esque Italian prog-rock and are choc-full of funky synth and guitar leads which recall the theme to Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977).

“Abyss” is straight out of an ’80s slasher film with its moody, staccato synthesizer motif and punchy synth bass.
The record becomes increasingly cinematic on “Wraith” and “Purgatory”, which shift between baroque, pop and electronic.
Carpenter returns to his trademark throbbing synth-bass and horror-inflected strings a final time on “Night”, ending the record with the same chilling atmosphere as Halloween and The Thing.

What makes “Lost Themes” so cool is that it delivers on the concept of sounding like genuine cues from films that were never made, while still giving stylistic nods to Carpenter’s past work which genre fans will truly gush over.
I love this kind of stuff. If you are a fan of ’80s movie soundtrack scores and Synthwave, “Lost Themes” is an engaging experience not to be missed.

1. Vortex
2. Obsidian
3. Fallen
4. Domain
5. Mystery
6. Abyss
7. Wraith
8. Purgatory
9. Night

John Carpenter: keyboards, analog & digital synths
Cody Carpenter: bass, synths, programming
Daniel Davies: guitar

BUY IT !
www.sacredbonesrecords.com/collections/frontpage/products/sbr123-john-carpenter-lost-themes
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