The rope itself is just white noise. It's where it leads you. You may not get there, but you 'get' there's no 'there' to get to, and that's better than a single 'there' ever could be.
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random painting from Night Gallery |
If you need a working definition of hauntology, here Reynolds rounds up some writers who best sum up the hauntology sound, he starts out with Matthew Ingram at The Wire ("memory is a theoretical portal to the phantasmal kingdom, not a trivial exercise in retro stylistics" and ends up with Dickens and then W.S. Merwin ("Tell me what you see vanishing and I / Will tell you who you are") and it all makes frickin' beautiful eloquent sense.
As I've said (but forgotten), I found it because I love John Carpenter and thanks to Netflix showing me The Machine and Beyond the Black Rainbow, I finally realized part of the reason why was all synth related. I was like oh wow, I love these movies but 50% of that love comes solely from their pulsing analog retro-futurist scores, both of which are on Spotify. From there the Moog crumb trail widens deeper into the black forest of retro-futurist analog sci fi TV and the 70s cryptozoological funk of Goblin, which in turn leads me unto Ghost Box, Scarfolk Council, and now Simon Reynolds and Ghost of my Life author Mark Fisher, who repurposed Derrida's original (Communist-spectral) meaning towards haunted music, via his childhood spent attuned to the quietly forward-thinking electronic music of BBC's Radiophonic Orchestra. Since England's never fully bowed their TV channels to the Lowest Common Denominator monetizing, or had to knuckle down to Christian boycott, the BBC of the 70s was deep and proudly into the occult, leading a whole generation of artists who'd done LSD in the 60s to the reins of the new decade, and the children's minds were right there in sync with these cool cats, in ways we all lost in the 80s, when videotape erased the mystery from media through the very act of preserving it. Britain's notorious 'Video Nasties' ban kept the mystery alive for a few more years than in the States, where collective desensitization to TV violence was already a huge problem (or not, depending on who you ask).

For me it all began with Boards of Canada's Music has the Right to Children in 1998 and then Zombi's Cosmos in 2003, tapping for maybe the first time into the retrofuturist analog rainy day weirdness of old 70s filmstrip tape accompaniments for elementary school primers on ESP, Argento frisson and druids. Since this stuff was all on CD, the warm pulsing sound of analog was the first time doubly ghosted and like a double negative became positive. The past sounded warmer and more organic, even more futuristic, than the immediate present. That's hauntology, and I'm hooked... at least until November, when those loathsome orchestras will inevitably return right as night starts lurching way forward sooner and sooner, snaking their way across the stand-still city like a rope of sweaty reflective mylar-enshrouded woe.
Here's my #1 of two Spotify lists:
Heirs of Goblin Carpenter
And now here's some of the more noteworthy soundtracks and soundtrack-ish works.
DESICCATED SWIMMING AREA:
THE NICK (OST)
Cliff Martinez (2014)

LOST THEMES
John Carpenter(2015)
John Carpenter(2015)

PROPHECY OF THE BLACK WIDOW
Umberto (2010)
Umberto (2010)

BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW
Sinoa Caves (2014)
For when your floating down the street at dawn, chased in slow motion by your own shadow looming 60 feet tall and with burning coal eyes or are tripping your face off at an airport, part György Ligeti from THE SHINING and part Claudio Simonetti from TENEBRE.

Antoni Maiovvi (2013)
Musik for remembering what it felt like as a 16 year-old driving home at night in the rain after seeing The Terminator at an empty theater in Woodbridge, NJ. As we learn in all the great writing on hauntology, that's what the uncanny frisson memory of the mediated grave robbers from outer space medias are for. Maiovvi's soundtrack is for a 'neo-giallo' short film set in Berlin. I'll probably never see it, but I do like the soundtrack.

Broadcast (2013)

COSMOS
Zombi (2004)
Zombi (2004)
FROM OUT HERE
Advisory Circle (2014)
Advisory Circle (2014)

IT FOLLOWS (OST)
Disasterpiece (2014)
From the very first notes of the very first shot, you just know, things are never going to be the same old concept of old sameness again.

COLD IN JULY (OST)

".... while tipping its hat to John Carpenter [it] moves beyond mere cloning of ones influences. Jeff Grace feels like a real contender for the electronic score crown. Cold In July is undeniably a post millennial classic synth soundtrack that makes the terrific and very enjoyable music of Umberto, Zombi, Salisbury & Barrow feel like mere fanboys playing at wanting to be their heroes Moroder, Goblin, Tangerine Dream etc [...] Somehow he puts new textures into the atmospheres of these tracks and adds a new level of sophistication to synth scoring." (Space Debris - Cardrossmaniac)
UNTIL SILENCE
Roll the Dice (2014)

THE MACHINE (OST)
Tom Raybould (2010)

Steve Moore (2015)
"Cub is a retro-synth soundtrack that's so good it doesn't need to pretend it's anything new. This score is the sound of a man and his synthesiser creating fabulous minimal and spooky analogue sounds not unlike John Carpenter whereas Zombi were more like your full on horror prog rock group along the lines of Tangerine Dream or Goblin." (Space Debris)
Sleep Games -- Pye Corner Audio
This 2012 clinkety-clink riveter from Boing Boing pen plinketer Mark Pilkington explores muchly the fiction and authorial booky wook aspect: "Hauntologists mine the past for music's future."
--
And this quintessential post from Rouge's Foam scribe Adam Harper, explores a wide range of music, film, and art: Hauntology: the Past Inside the Present.
Hard to believe it's from 2009. Were was I all this time? Ah, what a loaded question.
--
HAUNTOLOGY FOR A RED OCTOBER
JULIAN HOUSE (Design/Videos)
"Cub is a retro-synth soundtrack that's so good it doesn't need to pretend it's anything new. This score is the sound of a man and his synthesiser creating fabulous minimal and spooky analogue sounds not unlike John Carpenter whereas Zombi were more like your full on horror prog rock group along the lines of Tangerine Dream or Goblin." (Space Debris)
Sleep Games -- Pye Corner Audio
Dead Air - Mordant Music
Room 237 (OST) - Jonathan Snypes & William Hutson
Access and Amplify - The Brain
From the Grave - Umberto
Brainstorm - Steve Moore, Majeure
Night Drive - Chromatics
Hic Stunt Leones - Alessandro Parissi
Belbury Tales - Belbury Poly
Drokk - Geoff Barrow, Ben Salisbury
Only God Forgives (OST) - Cliff Martinez
Polygon Mountain - Ubre Blanca
Ga'an - Ga'an
Solar Maximum - Majeure
Unicornography - The Focus Group
Psychical - Ensemble Economique
FURTHANCE:
And when in England visit lovely:
and also lovely Clinkskell
This 2012 clinkety-clink riveter from Boing Boing pen plinketer Mark Pilkington explores muchly the fiction and authorial booky wook aspect: "Hauntologists mine the past for music's future."
--
And this quintessential post from Rouge's Foam scribe Adam Harper, explores a wide range of music, film, and art: Hauntology: the Past Inside the Present.
Hard to believe it's from 2009. Were was I all this time? Ah, what a loaded question.
--
HAUNTOLOGY FOR A RED OCTOBER
JULIAN HOUSE (Design/Videos)
A FIELD IN ENGLAND (2013)
POST SCRIPT:
And then Shout Factory debuts this the same week I'm writing this post... It's cometh. Who says America's behind the screens when it comes to hauntological excavastalgia?
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