SOUNDTRACK: THOM YORKE-“Volk” (2018).
A lot of the music I listen to is weird and probably creepy to other people, but I don’t necessarily think of songs as appropriate for Halloween or not. So for this year’s Ghost Box stories, I consulted an “expert”: The Esquire list of Halloween songs you’ll play all year long. The list has 45 songs–most of which I do not like. So I picked 11 of them to post about.
I knew that Thom Yorke had scored the soundtrack to the film Suspirira. I didn’t know that the film was a remake, or that the band Goblin scored the original or even what the film is about.
Esquire said that Yorke’s “Suspirium” was the creepy Halloween song from the record, but I don’t find it any more creepy than any Radiohead song–his vocals are so unmistakable that it’s all Radiohead to me. However, this instrumental later in the soundtrack is definitely a creepy piece of music.
It opens with synthy twinkling that sounds more like scraping metal. Then a thin echoing synth melody takes off. The sound of that melody morphs and shifts, growing louder and quieter and changing shape before returning to that original sound again. After two minutes splashes of discordant keyboard sounds pop in and turn into various other sounds.
The song continues to move forward with a slow bass and atmospheric sounds. It starts to get more tense around the four minute mark as more jagged sounds stab the air. At nearly five minutes, drums come out of nowhere. They lend a beat to the sounds, but the beat is frenetic and as unsettling as anything else and it just adds to the cacophony.
Then at around 5:45 everything abruptly gets turned off and sharply fades out except for some echoing sounds.
It seems over but for the last 30 seconds a pulsing wall of loud grunting seems to slowly creep out of the silence.
Shudder.
[READ: October 18, 2019] “Bayou de la Mère”
Just in time for Halloween, from the people who brought me The Short Story Advent Calendar and The Ghost Box. and Ghost Box II. comes Ghost Box III.
This is once again a nifty little box (with a magnetic opening and a ribbon) which contains 11 stories for Halloween. It is lovingly described thusly:
Oh god, it’s right behind me, isn’t it? There’s no use trying to run from Ghost Box III, the terrifying conclusion to our series of limited-edition horror box sets edited and introduced by Patton Oswalt.
There is no explicit “order” to these books; however, I’m going to read in the order they were stacked.
I am familiar with Poppy Z. Brite, although I’m not sure exactly how. Perhaps I am just familiar with the name because it is so unusual. (It’s a pseudonym of course).
I always assumed Poppy was a woman, but indeed, Poppy is a man.
This story is also not particularly scary. It is more of a story about the relentless hands of religion–which can indeed be scary. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 