On Halloween, horror legend John Carpenter released a stream of “Vortex”, the first track from his upcoming album Lost Themes, which comes out February 3rd on Sacred Bones Records. The track was released through Sacred Bones’ website and featured video clips from several of Carpenter’s film over the years, all of which cycled randomly, creating a unique experience for every visitor. You can enjoy your own experience here.
Jason von Doom, the creator of the “Vortex” video loop, states:
The page takes a bunch of scenes from various John Carpenter films and turns them into a unique video each visit. It was built along with CASH Music, a nonprofit that builds free and open technology for musicians. We start with a list of favorite clips, pull them in a random order, then vary the length of each edit to bring a more unique feel to each visit. Watch long enough and you’ll see the best Kurt Russell movie never made.
Read on for a stream of “Vortex”, a quote from Carpenter, and more.
Carpenter explains Lost Themes:
‘Lost Themes’ was all about having fun. It can be both great and bad to score over images, which is what I’m used to. Here there were no pressures. No actors asking me what they’re supposed to do. No crew waiting. No cutting room to go to. No release pending. It’s just fun. And I couldn’t have a better set-up at my house, where I depended on (collaborators) Cody (Carpenter, of the band Ludrium) and Daniel (Davies, who scored I, Frankenstein) to bring me ideas as we began improvising. The plan was to make my music more complete and fuller, because we had unlimited tracks. I wasn’t dealing with just analogue anymore. It’s a brand new world. And there was nothing in any of our heads when we started other than to make it moody.
Carpenter adds:
Both classical music and rock and roll are part of my musical language, which is riff-driven. So if you listen carefully, I’m sure you can hear some echoes from my past. But I’m sure that’s true of any composer. You just bring your music along with you.
Tracklist:
1. Vortex
2. Obsidian
3. Fallen
4. Domain
5. Mystery
6. Abyss
7. Wraith
8. Purgatory
9. Night
