The time for John Carpenter to release Lost Themes couldn’t be better. Not only is the soundtrack scene exploding right now but countless modern musicians have copied and pasted Carpenter’s eerie approach to synth craft mercilessly for years making it sound as modern as ever. So it’s no surprise that synth freaks and film buffs alike have been drooling over this one. Luckily for them Lost Themes delivers.
While Lost Themes has strangely been dubbed Carpenter’s “debut album” this is hardly the 67-year-old’s first musical foray as the director also helmed the soundtracks to his cinematic masterpieces like Halloween They Live and Escape From New York among many others. And the success of Lost Themes lies in Carpenter’s ability to capture all the sinister but beautifully melodic essence of his classic musical work and instill it with a sense of new.
Despite once relying on pure simplicity Carpenter’s arrangements are more complex than ever weaving in multiple themes movements and instruments from live drums to majestic pianos to distortion-dialling guitars and more synth gold than we deserve. Still it sounds as classic as you could get with the album repeatedly recalling the best moments of Big Trouble in Little China and Halloween III while still sounding like an entirely new beast.
In a way John Carpenter has never done John Carpenter better.
