Investigation

’Tis definitely not the season to be jolly, as Steve Sutherland brings you a selection of musical chillers guaranteed to scare away those Halloween trick-or-treaters

Welcome to the inaugural Hi-Fi News ‘Themed Playlist’, which will be available to stream via Qobuz, the pioneering digital music service established in 2007. Each HFN playlist will have, at its heart, a topical issue – perhaps something seasonal or newsworthy – with many selections offered in ‘hi-res’, as available. For our first playlist, we’ve cherry-picked 20 numbers associated with ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night! Yup, we’re celebrating Halloween – and we know what you’re thinking. No Ghostbusters? No ‘Thriller’? No ‘Monster Mash’? No ‘Sympathy For The Devil’? Have you gone stark raving mad?

Horror hits

It’s okay, relax. Our playlists will do their utmost to swerve the obvious, avoid the ubiquitous and instead strive to turn you on to some relevant but thrillingly different sounds sourced and researched by ex-NME and now Hi-Fi Choice Editor – and music fanatic – Steve Sutherland. You can sample the list and play along as you read by checking out our playlist on Qobuz.

From the shock rock genius of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to the voodoo vibes of Dr. John, via some apocalyptic Greek prog and a macabre tale from the mind of PJ Harvey [pictured], we hope this list of Halloween hi-fi will offer something for everyone. Bolt through the neck? Vampire fangs in place? Blood pellets at the ready? Cool. Let the séance begin…

John Carpenter
Anthology (1974-1998), Sacred Bones Records

Setting an appropriately sinister atmosphere is this classic spine-tingler composed and performed by John Carpenter, who also co-wrote and directed the 1978 slasher movie that spawned a genre, initiated a franchise, encouraged many a copy but was never, ever bettered. Awesome in its chilling simplicity, it’s only matched in the horror soundtrack business by Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells segment in The Exorcist, the way the Scream franchise revels in Nick Cave’s 'Red Right Hand', and Carpenter’s own brooding masterpiece for The Fog, which also features on this superb 13-track anthology set.

Roky Erickson
The Evil One, Light In The Attic Records

A diagnosed schizophrenic, Roky was lead singer with psychedelic pioneers 13th Floor Elevators when he was arrested for drug possession in 1969. Pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, he ended up in a psychiatric unit where he received electroconvulsive therapy and Thorazine treatments. Upon release he formed Roky Erickson And The Aliens, releasing The Evil One album in 1981. Produced by Stu Cook, formerly of Creedence Clearwater Revival, it featured such horror rock classics as 'Don’t Shake Me Lucifer', 'Night Of The Vampire', 'Creature With The Atom Brain', and this little beauty.

Fairport Convention
Liege & Lief, Universal Music Catalogue

British folk music is a nest of supernatural and superstitious musical splendours – the entire soundtrack to 1973’s The Wicker Man movie, for example, is a masterpiece of rural horror courtesy of composer Paul Giovanni. This track, however, comes from Fairport Convention, and is a take on the traditional ballad about the sly and seductive gentleman werefox, Reynardine. Ethereal vocals by Sandy Denny, lilting guitar by Richard Thompson... this was never topped but just about matched by the spooky trad ghost story 'She Moves Through The Fair' from the band’s earlier LP, What We Did On Our Holidays.

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
...Hits & Rarities, Sunset Blvd Records

The story goes that Screamin’ Jay was a failed opera singer and decent boxer who reverted to the blues and, during a 1956 recording session, got so drunk that he howled and growled rather than sang. Sobering up, with no recollection of the session, he discovered he 'could do more with a song destroying it and screaming it to death'. Despite being banned by many a radio station, 'I Put A Spell...' became Hawkins’ signature tune and the shock rock genre was born.

The Cure
Disintegration (Deluxe Edition), Fiction Records

Accompanied by the 1990 Brit Awards’ Best British Video, a creepy masterpiece directed by Tim Pope, 'Lullaby' is the only Top 5 charting single from British gothic rockers The Cure. Taken from the band’s Disintegration LP, it features one of frontman Robert Smith’s more playful scenarios – that of a cannibalistic spiderman eating him alive, which he delighted in telling journos was inspired by the gruesome bedtime stories his dad used to tell him when he was a kid.

The Cramps
Songs The Lord Taught Us, EMI

Named after a cult 1957 science fiction B-movie starring Michael Landon, you’ll find this stonker composed by trash-addicted singer Lux Interior and his partner guitarist 'Poison' Ivy Rorschach on The Cramps’ 1980 debut, the unimpeachably brilliant Songs The Lord Taught Us. Equally majestically weird and worth disinterring is 'Human Fly' from The Cramps’ brilliantly named 1978 debut EP, Gravest Hits.

Death In Vegas
The Contino Sessions, Sony Music

Death In Vegas decided to push the boat out for their second LP, 1999’s The Contino Sessions, so they hired in a bunch of guest vocalists including Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, Jim Reid of The Jesus And Mary Chain and the guvnor himself, Iggy Pop. 'Aisha' is Iggy’s contribution, and seems to be about a serial killer who meets his grisly end when one of his intended victims turns out to be even more brutally murderous and deranged than he is.

Tom Waits
Mule Variations (Remastered), Anti – Epitaph

Best leave the description of this track from 1999’s Mule Variations to Waits himself: '[We’re] compelled to perceive our neighbours through the keyhole. There’s always someone in the neighbourhood – the Boo Radley, the village idiot – and you see that he drives a station wagon without a windshield, and he has chickens in the backyard and doesn’t get home till 3am, and says he’s from Florida but the license plate says Indiana... So, you know, "I don’t trust him"'

Dr. John
Gris-Gris, Rhino/Atlantic

Half high-priest, half snake oil salesman, Mac Rebennack began his illustrious recording career in the persona of Dr. John The Night Tripper and 'I Walked On Guilded Splinters' was the flagship track off his 1968 voodoo-obsessed LP Gris-Gris. The good Dr. is an enchanter operating in New Orleans, offering you dubious charms and potions to do damage to your enemies served up in a rich, ritualistic musical soup. Spooky as all hell.

Warren Zevon
Excitable Boy, Rhino/Elektra

Featuring Fleetwood Mac’s John McVie and Mick Fleetwood on bass and drums respectively, the most famous track off Zevon’s third album, 1978’s Excitable Boy, was inspired by the 1935 B-movie of the same name and mentions the great horror actors Lon Chaney and Lon Chaney, Jr alongside such lyrical glories as 'You better stay away from him/He’ll rip your lungs out, Jim'. The title track, about a young lad building a cage using his girlfriend’s skeleton, is equally macabre.

John The Revelator
Blind Willie Johnson
The Complete Blind Willie Johnson, Columbia

No one knows who wrote the ‘Book Of Revelation’, the final part of the Bible which deals with the terrifying apocalyptic end of all things. One candidate for authorship, though, is John Of Patmos, a Christian prophet exiled by the Romans, and that’s who Blind Willie Johnson is referring to on this number, recorded in September 1930. An otherworldly, spine-tingling call-and-response blues song, it’s since been covered by Depeche Mode, Jerry Garcia, The White Stripes, and more.

Violence Grows
Fatal Microbes
Make More Noise!, Cherry Red Records

Fatal Microbes were a short-lived band (they lasted about a year) fronted by a troubled 14-year-old called Honey Bane. This, their debut single, came out in 1978 as a co-released 12in with Poison Girls – whose singer, Vi Subversa, was mother to Fatal Microbes members Gem Stone and Pete Fender. The single, a favourite of DJ John Peel, is just about the creepiest you’ll ever hear, Bane reciting its mantra of murderous youth like some sinister nursery rhyme.

You’re So Dark
Arctic Monkeys
One For The Road, Domino Recording Co.

‘One For The Road’ was the fourth single off British indie superstars Arctic Monkeys’ fifth and best LP, 2013’s AM. But that’s not our focus here – instead it’s the single’s B-side ‘You’re So Dark’ that demands a Halloween spin, being a throwaway lustful Goth number by a band that, at this precise point in their career, couldn’t put a foot wrong. Vocalist/guitarist Alex Turner name-checks H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe and The Munsters, and the first verse goes: ‘You got your unkind of ravens/And your murder of crows/Catty eyelashes/And your Dracula cape/Been flashing triple A passes/At the cemetery gates’. Splendid, spooky stuff!

The Four Horsemen
Aphrodite’s Child
666, EMI

In 1972, Aphrodite’s Child, a proto prog outfit featuring a pre-fame Vangelis, released their portentous double album 666, which pretty much set the ‘Book Of Revelation’ to music. ‘The Four Horsemen’ is its most well-known track, dealing with the dread equine incarnations of conquest, war, famine and death. The record company refused to release the controversial album for more than a year – now it’s rightly hailed as a devilish classic.

Season Of The Witch
Lana Del Rey
Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, Polydor Records

There are more brilliant versions of this song than just about any other ever. The original, written and released by Donovan on his 1967 UK edition of the Sunshine Superman LP, is exquisitely trippy. Among many others, Brian Auger And The Trinity cool-jazzed it up a little the same year for their LP Open with Julie Driscoll on mesmeric vocals. Richard Thompson (formerly of Fairport Convention) also did an incredibly twisted version for the 2001 crime drama Crossing Jordan. But our choice is Lana Del Rey’s sultry rendition, recorded for the soundtrack to the 2019 Halloween movie Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. Slinky.

Down By The Water
PJ Harvey
To Bring You My Love, Universal/Island

‘Down By The Water’ finds a deranged PJ Harvey doing fatal harm to her daughter under a bridge with heavy overtones of jealousy and madness. The way it ends, with Harvey referring to the traditional ballad ‘Salty Dog Blues’, whispering ‘Big fish little fish swimming in the water/ Come back here, man, gimme my daughter’, is as unhinged as anything you’re ever likely to hear. Find it on the singer/songwriter’s third LP, 1995’s To Bring You My Love.

Swinging
Black Box Recorder
England Made Me, Chrysalis Records

Exposing the dark underbelly of suburbia, BBR’s 1998 debut set England Made Me is chock-full of genteel freak-outs courtesy of John Moore (ex-Jesus And Mary Chain), Luke Haines (Auteurs) and vocalist Sarah Nixey, who sings as if she’s just been expelled from Roedean. ‘Swinging’ is particularly scary, featuring a teen psychopath luring a lad to a sticky end. ‘If I set fire to you now/Would you even make a sound?’ wonders Nixey, in a voice that’ll have you running for the hills.

Mind Playing Tricks On Me
Geto Boys
We Can’t Be Stopped, Rap-A-Lot

Geto Boys’ track, a catalogue of paranoid psychotic episodes set to a gorgeous backing sample from Isaac Hayes’ ‘Hung Up On My Baby’, is the Texas hip-hop act’s evil masterpiece. You can find it, if you dare, on 1991’s We Can’t Be Stopped, their obscenely aggressive third LP sporting a cover shot of the group in a hospital. Rapper Bushwick Bill, who was born with dwarfism, had just lost his right eye when he shot himself in the face during an argument.

Enter Sandman
Metallica
Metallica (Remastered), Blackened Recordings

Of all the creatures conjured to terrify little ’uns at bedtime, the Sandman – who punished children who wouldn’t go to sleep by pouring sand into their peepers – is king. Metallica took the folklore tale, added a great riff and some very heavy production, and crafted ‘Enter Sandman’, the opening track for their self-titled 1991 album. The thrash metal pioneers have form here, having previously based two tracks on H.P. Lovecraft’s octopus-headed monster, Cthulhu.

Pet Sematary
Ramones
Brain Drain, Rhino/Warner

When horror writer Stephen King’s cat was run down by a truck, he buried the critter and then wondered what would happen if the moggy came back to life. The notion was spun into a gruesome book in 1983 and the book became an equally gruesome movie six years later. Punk outfit Ramones, one of King’s favourite bands, were invited to write the theme song, the mightily irresistible ‘Pet Sematary’ also appearing on their ’89 album, Brain Drain.