STACK #196 Feb 2021

MUSIC FEATURE

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Auteur director, score composer and deadset creative genius John Carpenter talks evoking the creeps, the joy of imagination, and how you should listen to his new album Lost Themes III: Alive After Death for max effect. Words Zoë Radas N ow that they’re three albums deep into the captivating Lost Themes project, John Carpenter says that I just know that a slide whistle is not gonna work.” The decorated, 79-year-old idol of horror,

the 1974 sci-fi comedy Dark Star, all the way through his celebrated scores for his films Escape From NewYork (1981), They Live (1988), the Halloween franchise and many more. And Carpenter is still pumped about synths, particularly the way they’ve evolved. “The synthesizer sounds that we procure, we download, the various plug-ins... the sounds grow over the years, and as the technology advances and gets better and better, people come up with more sounds,” he says with wonder. “It’s amazing what you can get now: there’s actually a [ Interstellar, Inception score composer] Hans Zimmer orchestral sound. Old Hans is trying to make some bucks!” he laughs uproariously. “People are gonna buy this stuff and go ‘Oooh, I can sound like Hans Zimmer!’

himself, son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies have stumbled into a way of “communicating without words.” Is it a James Brown bandleader-type of scene, with Carpenter flinging cocked elbows and pointed fingers to indicate where the song’s going next? “Well!” the affable Carpenter guffaws over the (landline) phone from his home in California’s Hollywood. “Maybe like, either Cody or Daniel extending the middle finger? Yes, we communicate that way!” he laughs warmly, then adds: “You sense when it sounds right. We’ve worked together long enough now; when someone prefers a kind of sound, well,

sci-fi and action fans the world over is about to release Lost Themes III: Alive After Death ; it’s the third in a series begun in 2015 with Lost Themes (which also got a remix edition that year) and continued in 2016 with Lost Themes II , with all three bandmembers – Carpenter the elder, Carpenter the younger, and Davies – receiving equal composition, performance and engineering credits. These records are intended to soundtrack “the movies in your head” as Carpenter puts it, and primarily use the pulsating throb of synthesizers – which have been Carpenter’s instrument of choice since his debut film,

FEBRUARY 2021

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