Pictured: ‘Lost Themes III: Alive After Death’ artwork
Renowned composer and director John Carpenter has announced his first album of non-soundtrack music in nearly five years, ‘Lost Themes III: Alive After Death’, which is set for a February 5th release on Sacred Bones.
John famously called the first ‘Lost Themes’ album “a soundtrack for the movies in your mind.”. On ‘Alive After Death’ those movies are even more vivid, with song titles among his most evocative as well. Lead single “Weeping Ghost” thrillingly conjures its title figure in a wash of synthesiser making the listener’s neck hairs stand on end as the aural spectre stalks the halls of a dilapidated mansion.
Underpinning Carpenter’s renaissance as a musician has been his collaboration with Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies. They’ve composed and performed as a trio since the first ‘Lost Themes’ album in 2015: on studio albums, on soundtracks, and onstage. Here, the trio reaches a new level of creative mind meld. Richly rendered worlds are built in the interplay between Davies’s guitar and the duelling synthesizers played by the Carpenters. “We begin with a theme, a bass line, a pad, something that sounds good and will lead us to the next layer,” John says of the trio’s process. “We then just keep adding on from there. We understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, how to communicate without words, and the process is easier now than it was in the beginning. We’ve matured.”
Much has changed in the trio’s musical life since 2016’s ‘Lost Themes II’. Following the release of that album, the group went on their first-ever concert tour, performing material from the ‘Lost Themes’ albums, as well as music from Carpenter’s classic film scores. They re-recorded many of those classic movie themes for 2017’s ‘Anthology’ album. The following year, John was asked to executive produce and compose the music for the new Halloween movie directed by David Gordon Green, which promptly became the highest-grossing instalment in the series. Whereas the original ‘Lost Themes’ album came as a surprise after years of relative silence from Carpenter, the third instalment sees him in the midst of a resurgent moment as a cultural force. The 2018 ‘Halloween’ score gave his music its biggest audience in decades, and the world he releases his new album into is one that has, at long last, given him the credit he deserves as a founding father of modern electronic music.
‘Lost Themes III: Alive After Death’ will be released on February 5th 2021 via Sacred Bones and is available to pre-order here.
‘Lost Themes III: Alive After Death’ track list:
1. Alive After Death
2. Weeping Ghost (YouTube)
3. Dripping Blood
4. Dead Eyes
5. Vampire’s Touch
6. Cemetery
7. Skeleton (YouTube)
8. Turning the Bones
9. The Dead Walk
10. Carpathian Darkness
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