Category: Halloween

All Hallows’ Aquarium Drunkard III

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The music of autumn comes in many shades, but none of them without a little smoke and shadow. The days are growing shorter, the air a little cooler, and it is once again time to light the jack-o-lanterns. In our third installment of All Hallows’ Aquarium Drunkard, the writers reveal the secrets of their spooky season soundtracks. Inside you’ll find doomed teenagers, dissociative episodes, ghost planets, grisly murders and all sorts of monsters, real and imagined. Whatever kind of menace you are looking for, we’ve got you covered.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders :: (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

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This Halloween when the usual horror soundtrack fare begins to feel a little too familiar, there is Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Released in 1970, Jaromil Jireš’s surreal Czech fairy tale is a bizarre, beautiful collision of vampires, witchcraft, religious repression, erotic awakening and dream logic. Paired with Luboš Fišer’s score, the whole thing feels like an intermittent phantasmagoria.

Videodrome :: Psycho II (1983)

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About midway through Psycho II (1983), you realize you’re not watching a horror sequel, but a carefully constructed character study. Psycho II isn’t really interested in being a sequel or a horror film; it’s interested in the rehabilitation of Norman Bates, and how those in Bates’ orbit react to that. We may have entered the film expecting a boogeyman, but instead we’re watching a fatally flawed hero, and…we’re rooting for him? Yes, we’re actually rooting for Norman Bates.

The Wicker Man (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

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Part folk record, part pagan fever dream, The Wicker Man’s soundtrack is so steeped in sex, fertility, ritual and ancient melody that listening to it feels like stumbling upon something unearthed rather than recorded. Paul Giovanni’s songs create a world that feels simultaneously ancient and entirely invented—warm, earthy, erotic and communal, and perhaps all the more unsettling for sounding so beautiful.

All Hallows’ Aquarium Drunkard II

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Check your candy bars for razor blades, kids, it’s once again time for All Hallows’ Aquarium Drunkard. The damned souls around here are coming to take possession of your sound system and there aren’t enough exorcisms in the world to get them out of your house. Might as well enjoy the monster mash dub, spectral free jazz, pagan folk, creature-feature punk, and cult TV soundtrack grooves they are spewing up for the spooky season. It’s like Shakespeare said, Hell is empty and all the devils are here . . .

All Hallows’ Aquarium Drunkard

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What does an American Halloween in the year of our lord 2024 sound like? Everyone rings in the spooky season differently. Some people want some melancholy goth rock, others need novelty record exploitation trash. Some people want to draw the shades and build Berlin school synthesizer cathedrals in the air. And some just need to howl ‘Werewolves of London’ at the top of their lungs. It’s all good. We asked some of the contributors to tell us how they’re soundtracking All Hallows. What we got back comprises a monster playlist suitable for apple-bobbing, axe-sharpening and keeping the dark spirits happy.