Famed horror movie director and score composer John Carpenter says he might be addicted to playing video games. But, for the artist, that’s not necessarily an awful thing. In fact, Carpenter says a great deal of music and inspiration have come from the time he’s spent taking a break from his favorite gaming console. And these video game sessions have of late helped usher in a new phase of Carpenter’s creative career, one for which he is especially grateful.
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In February, Carpenter released his latest LP, Lost Themes III, which, as the name would suggest, is the third in a series of self-produced Lost Themes records from the composer. Each of the albums are brooding, emotive works that Carpenter has released under his own name but that he has created with the help of his son Cody and godson Daniel Davies, who is also the son of guitarist Dave Davies, co-founder of the British rock ‘n’ roll band, The Kinks. Carpenter, who began writing the music for the initial Lost Themes album in 2014, did so at first with the help of Cody. In the beginning, there was no big plan. The two would simply play video games in Carpenter’s Los Angeles home for an hour or so, and then they’d venture to a downstairs recording studio and improvise music on synthesizers. Then they’d climb back upstairs to play more games and then head back downstairs to work again. The familiar pattern proved especially fruitful for the duo. Later, Carpenter showed the tracks to an entertainment lawyer, and soon he had a new recording deal for the series with Sacred Bones Records.
But, for Carpenter, who’s enjoyed a long career as both an acclaimed director and score composer, working with family on the series has proved to be one of his most cherished achievements to date.
“It’s fabulous,” Carpenter says. “This is a new era for me. Doing Lost Themes is a whole brand new deal. It has nothing to do with movies. Movies are divorced from it. It’s all about my son and godson. We work on music together and we improvise. It’s just a joy. It’s amazing. I feel really lucky.”
Family bonding is important. And that there’s a familial musical connection between Carpenter and his son should come as no surprise for those who know the artist’s family tree well enough. Carpenter, who grew up in Bowling Green, Kentucky, was raised in a house filled with music. His own father was a music teacher who played music in the home “all the time,” both on the stereo and with his own violin. Carpenter says he doesn’t remember a time in his life without music filling the rooms of the house. When he was eight years old, Carpenter says, his father decided it was time for him to learn to play the difficult instrument. But, Carpenter says, there was a major problem. He had no aptitude for the violin, even though his father did.
Nevertheless, Carpenter fostered his own personal curiosity for music. He began to learn how it worked on the page and how sheet music notation functioned for the reader. Carpenter also started to study the piano and guitar as he got older, taking to them much more than he had the more arcane violin. Later, he enrolled at Western Kentucky University, where his father was chair of the music department. But, despite the music training, his first love was movie making. Carpenter then transferred from WKU and enrolled at the prestigious University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts before dropping out to make his first feature film. Soon, though, his interest in music and film would collide.
“I became a movie director,” Carpenter says. “But on the way there, I made a lot of low-budget films. When you’re a low-budget filmmaker, what happens is that you don’t have any real money for orchestration or a great composer. Rather than that, I decided to start doing the music myself. Maybe it was just arrogance, but I had access to synthesizers, and a synthesizer can make you sound bigger than just one person. By multi-tracking, you can sound like an orchestra. That intrigued me.”
By circumventing the violin initially, Carpenter found a way to create a large-scale electronic symphony. And while he’s capable of re-creating a dozens-piece orchestra with a single synth, he’s equally capable of creating a more stripped-down chamber orchestra-like feel too, using only a handful of parts. On perhaps Carpenter’s most famous composition, the theme for the horror movie Halloween, the composer deftly creates a minimal, though especially effective, soundscape that offers both rapid-fire and brooding sensibilities. On the theme, a staccato, high-pitched piano line is met with relentless electronic snares and chest-thumping string parts that move intermittently throughout the work. The result is disorienting, charming and horrifying, just like the modern American suburbs that Halloween utilizes so well as its backdrop. Perhaps it’s because those violin lessons at eight years old seemed so scary at the time that the “phony strings” Carpenter uses in his compositions become that much more stirring.
But while his love of directing and his love of music have intertwined so well on screen, they weren’t always connected as closely in Carpenter’s psyche. “They were separate,” he says. “There wasn’t really any connection, other than the fact that when I finished a movie and it was all cut together and edited together and ready to go, then I would start doing the music, start thinking about the music. Until then, it was separate.”
As a kid, Carpenter says, horror was one of his favorite genres of film. He would watch horror movies in theaters often while growing up, absorbing their freight and timing tricks. Today, he still loves the horror genre and its movies, he says. But when asked how he makes these movies or how he chooses the instrumentation, music, or tone for their scores, Carpenter, who has previously worked with filmmakers like George Lucas, is reluctant to give a more detailed explanation. Instead, he keeps it simple, deferring to the unknowable muse. Carpenter doesn’t want to analyze why a particular riff or sound works, say, when Michael Myers comes around a corner wielding a butcher knife. Instead, for the artist, the important part is only that it works—not how or why. He says he doesn’t much think about the philosophical aspects of the process.
“If you’re asking me how to create, then that I don’t know,” Carpenter says. “I don’t care why it works. I just do it. It’s all instinctual.”
Something that he does think about often, though, is the joy he gets from making music with both Cody and Daniel. Much of the time, the collaboration consists of sessions in Carpenter’s Los Angeles studio (video games included). Other times, when that’s not possible, files are recorded on laptops and then sent over email and worked on in their respective locations. Cody, a teacher, finds himself in Japan at times, so if a song needs his attention during these occasions, Cody will work on it with his father or Daniel over the web.
To stay close, some modern families share holiday photos. Others play in fantasy football leagues. But for Carpenter, Cody and Daniel, creating spectacular, spine-shivering, spooky, pulsing soundtracks is the way to stay in touch. But, of course, that also means playing video games during their down time in-person, falling into the escape they can provide.
“Right now,” Carpenter says, “I’m playing Fallout 76. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is a great game. I’ve been playing that too. I’ve also been going back and playing old games like Far Cry 4 and Far Cry 5. They’re fun. F-U-N, and I just love it. I’m probably addicted. I probably should get help. But I don’t care, I like it.”
On Carpenter’s latest release, Lost Themes III, his signature terrifying mood is immediately evident in each of the ten instrumental tracks. Putting on headphones and pressing play, fans might easily feel that they’re inside a John Carpenter movie, immediately taken to a dark suburban town and a neighborhood street. Suddenly a foot steps in a deep puddle—splash! Wait, is the killer gaining? Does that chromatic guitar lead portend evil just around the corner? Are the thumping drums and fomenting synths the last rhythms and melodies we’ll ever hear? These are the questions that race through the subconscious as one takes in Carpenter’s looming, perilous work. He’s a master at it, and he’s buoyed by the expertise and talents of his musical family members.
Songs like “Alive After Death,” “Carpathian Darkness” and “Vampire’s Touch” pierce and ooze into the listener’s ears and brain. Others like “Turning the Bones” or “Dripping Blood” lull. They are the calm before the proverbial sonic storm. Carpenter, who released the original Lost Themes in 2015 (it hit #129 on the Billboard 200) and then Lost Themes II in 2016, has also toured the world with his live band. In between, with the help of Cody and Daniel, he’s composed scores for television and movies. And while he loves doing all of these things, even decades after his career began, Carpenter notes that the future of each industry is at risk. It has made wondering what’s next a feat of mental gymnastics.
“Everybody’s been changed by 2020,” he says. “It’s impossible not to be changed. The movie business, for all intents and purposes, is non-existent right now—except on television, of all places. I hope that changes, too. I hope things get back to normal, I really do.”
In the meantime, though, the 72-year-old Carpenter will have his studio and his synths, his video games and his family to occupy him if the movie industry continues to fluctuate and, at times, flounder. For filmmakers like Carpenter who rely on big darkened rooms to provide their silver screen surprises, jumps and starts, now is a particularly unnerving time. But when the entertainment gods close a door, they do open a window. And Carpenter has found his creative solution and outlet in his well-received Lost Themes. He can now pour his joys, frustrations, fancies, humor and fear into each album. He can also fill out his song with the similar-minded instrumentations of both Cody and Daniel, who are each children of the scary tones Carpenter made famous throughout his career in movies like Halloween (1978 and 2018), The Fog (1980) and Escape from New York (1981).
“Music is transformative,” Carpenter says. “I don’t think I have to explain that to anyone. If you listen to it, there it is. One of the reasons why life is worth living is having music to hear.”
Feature photo by Sophie Gransard
