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Review: John Carpenter’s Lost Themes (LP)

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I got home around midnight last night from my day job and like a kid on their birthday, I tore into my copy of John Carpenter’s Lost Themes. The cover already invoking a horror vibe, I read the linear notes as I usually do with projects like these. The notes written by Daniel Schweiger, immediately remind me of the fifteen films Carpenter has both directed and composed the music for. He brought up the visuals from films like Big Trouble Little ChinaHalloween, and The Fog. This reminder got me excited as I put the needle to the record thinking of all the monsters, good guys, and anti-heroes Carpenter has given us over the years. And then I read “Lost Themes asks Carpenter acolytes to visualize their own nightmares.” And with a cold beer in my hand I let Lost Themes paint a picture in my dark apartment.

Ultimately, that is what Carpenter wants us the listeners to do. To forget his past catalog, to forget any visual cues from his films, and to let his music to get our imaginations going. Its a bit tough the first time around to not imagine an evil car chasing after you with Vortex or to imagine Snake Plissken trying to escape some alien infested space station filled with cybernetic dinosaurs (I might have an over active imagination). Ultimately the story and visuals are up to you, and that is what is great about this album is that it is fun. Any fan of Carpenter’s work or 70’s/80’s synthesizer rock will enjoy this album. It invokes much from his catalog and takes inspiration from synth-based composers like Goblin with the help of Cody Carpenter (the band Ludrium) and Daniel Davis (I, Frankenstein). 

Excellent album artwork design by Jaw Shaw featuring photography by Kyle Cassidy.

Excellent album artwork design by Jaw Shaw featuring photography by Kyle Cassidy.

Between the artwork and the single word titles for each track this task is made easier to create our own imagery. This obviously would have been harder if he made tracks entitled Snake Plissken Battles Through Space to Stop the Killer Cybernetic Dinosaurs From Kidnapping the Vice President of Earth (seriously, how isn’t this a movie already?) If I were to compare Lost Themes  to any time period of Carpenter’s score catalog, I find it is closer to resembling the scores of They Live and Escape From New York than say Halloween or Assault on Precinct 13. But even when the listener isn’t trying to imagine their own story line the album sounds just as great as his classic scores.

Carpenter wants us to exercise our imagination and helps us with the task by creating his best music since the 1980’s (although I still love the score to Into The Mouth Of Madness). Read any review on the album and you will see how much of a diverse the imagery that is invoked by this hypnotic and atmospheric piece. John Carpenter has proven again that his is a master story teller.

Track Listing:
1. Vortex
2. Obsidian
3. Fallen
4. Domain
5. Mystery
6. Abyss
7. Wraith
8. Purgatory
9. Night
*10. Night (Zola Jesus and Dean Hurley Remix)
*11. Wraith (ohGr Remix)
*12. Vortex (Silent Servant Remix)
*13. Fallen (Blanck Mass Remix)
*14. Abyss (JG Thirlwell Remix)
*15. Fallen (Bill Kouligas Remix)

*Remixes are download only. The LP version does come with a download card

 

 

BUY IT! CONSUME IT!

BUY IT! CONSUME IT!

Buy it here:

Amazon.com 

The Official Sacred Bones Site

Or your local record store!

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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