John Carpenter isn’t only one of our favorite filmmakers of all time, he’s also become one of our favorite moody recording artists. Since 2015, Carpenter has recorded and released albums of new instrumental material with his son, Cody Carpenter, and godson, Daniel Davies. Lost Themes and Lost Themes II are great to drive to late at night and possess all of Carpenter’s musical trademarks. Seeing him in concert is a treat because you get new songs plus several of his most famous compositions from his own films. Now, Carpenter has announced Anthology: Movie Themes (1974-1998), featuring brand new recordings of these timeless cinematic cues.
This anthology collects 13 themes from some of his most famous movies (really all of them, honestly), dating all the way from his low-budget first feature Dark Star all the way up to his cult supernatural western Vampires. It’s got the staples like Halloween, Escape from New York, and Assault on Precinct 13, and also some of the lesser known but no less great ones, like the above lead track, In the Mouth of Madness which sounds like a cross between Metallica and Goblin. Other personal favorites include the suitably haunting theme from The Fog and the bluesy theme from They Live.
He’s also got a track from his 1982 classic The Thing, which famously is one of the few films he didn’t score himself, instead getting legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone to do a creepy, minimalist score. “I asked Morricone to please compose something with a very few notes,” Carpenter says. “And brilliantly, he did.” Morricone also did bigger, more orchestral tracks for that score that ended up not being used in the movie, but were later used for Quentin Tarantino’s western (and horror movie, if we’re being honest) The Hateful Eight, for which Morricone would later win the Oscar.
The album –which will be released October 20–will be accompanied by a brief North American tour beginning October 29 in Las Vegas. Tour dates and more information can be found on Carpenter’s official website, and find a full track listing for Anthology: Movie Themes (1974-1998) below!
1. In the Mouth of Madness
2. Assault on Precinct 13
3. The Fog
4. Prince of Darkness
5. Santiago (Vampires)
6. Escape From New York
7. Halloween
8. Porkchop Express (Big Trouble in Little China)
9. They Live
10. The Thing
11. Starman
12. Dark Star
13. Christine
What’s your favorite John Carpenter theme? Let us know in the comments below!
Images: Sacred Bones Records
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He writes the weekly look at weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!
