By Tristan Bishop
If there’s one thing I love just as much as horror films, it’s music. In fact, in another guise (editor’s note – there’s a clue in the title), I run an internet radio station and can be found DJing in some pretty terrifying London venues. It follows therefore, that I have a special affection for music which in some way references the films I love. With Halloween coming up, I thought it might be fun to share a few of my favourites (and perhaps a couple of my secret weapons) with the BAH readership.
Of course, there have been many articles written about horror and rock music in the past, so I delibrately avoided anything with loud guitars. Instead, read on to discover everything from zombie calypso to Cronenbergian drum & bass.
1. Yes, I did say zombie calypso. At first the combination of the most joyous music out there and the shambling dead may seem a tad odd, but when you consider the Carribean origins of the zombie legend it makes perfect sense. Here are couple of tunes you’d pretty much have to be a reanimated corpse not to smile at.
2. Hip-hop has long flirted with horror and violent imagery of course – Pugilistic lyrics are the lingua franca of the genre, with the proliferation of threats and boasts having roots in the rap battles that sprung up in New York in the 1970’s. If you were to believe everything the average rapper said then you would think they’d have offed more people than Freddy, Jason and Leatherface combined. There’s even a specific subgenre of hip-hop called ‘horrorcore’ which deals with the more extreme end of things, and which was popularised by RZA (from the Wu Tang Clan) and his side project The Gravediggaz way back in 1994. The video is a bit rubbish, but dig those psychopathic rhymes and dark jazzy breakbeats. I probably should warn that with this song (and the next) there are explicit lyrics. So now you know.
Of course the advent of the sampler meant that musicians no longer had to rely on lyrical allusion to show off their love of horror – now dialogue and even film music could be utilised. Here’s Busta Rhymes with a chart-bothering hit from 1998, which includes a certain Bernard Hermann theme you may well be familiar with…and this is one hell of a good video too.
3. You may well be familiar with France’s retro-futurist electro-rock duo Justice, but have you heard this little marvel which makes brilliant use of the theme from Dario Argento’s Tenebrae? Taking the giallo down the disco.
4. Finally, one of my absolute favourite genres of music is drum & bass – I can’t get enough of those lightspeed drums, especially when wedded to a decent melody and industrial strength levels of bass. First up we have the Welsh wizard himself, High Contrast, with a little something that may be familiar to Fulci fans….
If you would prefer something a little less smooth and soulful, here’s names-to-watch Mediks with a little zombie outbreak set to some rattling rave music.. You might want to play this as loudly as possible (whilst still being mindful of your neighbours of course):
And finally, being a massive David Cronenberg fan, I immediately spotted the use of some heavy sampling from the trailer of Shivers (under its release as They Came From Within):
I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief romp through some fun records with a horror theme. Why not scare your guests at your Halloween party with one or two? If you’ve got any favourites you’d like to share, drop them in the comments below!