Music

Album Review: Twitch The Ripper ‘Bodiless’

Published

13 years ago

November 12, 2010

Twitch the Ripper have been making waves lately in the electronic world, doing several dates with The Birthday Massacre as well as an upcoming show with Combichrist. Jon Dobyns (vocals, synth, guitars) sent us a Top 10 Horror Movie list, which was a huge hit with you readers. Now, with their debut album, ‘Bodiless’, about to be released, we bring you our review. Is the album worth picking up? Is their music as good as their taste in horror? Find out after the jump!

The album kicks off with ‘Disconnected’, a song that is definitely more energetic than much of the rest of the album. It’s a song that sounds like something you would hear in your local goth/industrial club. There are fat analog textures mixed with atmospheric guitars. Very good use of panning makes the song feel spacious. The only thing that hinders this song a little bit is some of the vocals are a bit off-key, which comes up now and again through the rest of the album.

The production on ‘Bodiless’ is very solid, especially for a self-produced, self-recorded album. There could stand to be a bit more in the low-end register, especially for this genre of music. Also, as mentioned before, some of the vocals aren’t spot on tune, but those moments are few and far between and nowhere near crippling to the overall experience.

Two songs I especially enjoyed were ‘Never Got You Anywhere’ and ‘A Place For Polaris’. Both tracks had interesting patches and textures that grabbed me. ‘Never Got You Anywhere’ had some great vocal harmonies and ‘A Place For Polaris’ built steadily to a very satisfying conclusion, doubling as a great way to end ‘Bodiless’.

The Final Word: Don’t expect the ‘dance’ feeling of Depeche Mode but also don’t go into this expecting Aphex Twin’s Ambient Works. ‘Bodiless’ treads the line between both to deliver something that makes you alternately want to tap your foot and sit back and reflect as the music washes over you. As debut albums go, Twitch The Ripper are off to a great start.

JonathanBarkan

Managing editor/music guy/social media fella of Bloody-Disgusting

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Music

“He Walks By Night” – Listen to a Brand New John Carpenter Song NOW!

Published

1 week ago

April 9, 2024

John Squires

It’s a new day, and you’ve got new John Carpenter to listen to. John Carpenter, Daniel Davies and Cody Carpenter have released the new track He Walks By Night this morning, the second single off their upcoming album Lost Themes IV: Noir, out May 3 on Sacred Bones Records.

Lost Themes IV: Noir is the latest installment in a series that sees Carpenter releasing new music for John Carpenter movies that don’t actually exist. The first Lost Themes was released in 2015, followed by Lost Themes II in 2016 and Lost Themes III: Alive After Death in 2021.

Sacred Bones previews, “It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. With Lost Themes IV: Noir, they’ve struck gold again, this time mining the rich history of the film noir genre for inspiration.

“Since the first Lost Themes, John has referred to these compositions as “soundtracks for the movies in your mind.” On the fourth installment in the series, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs “noirish” is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone.

“The trio’s free-flowing chemistry means Lost Themes IV: Noir runs like a well-oiled machine—the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.”

You can pre-save Lost Themes IV: Noir right now! And listen to the new track below…