Electroween
Chances are, you’re going to a Halloween party this year. Maybe you’re even throwing one. In either case, should you find yourself with the AUX, I bestow to you this gift—a six-and-a-half-hour mix of the best electro-goth and industrial dance music the 80s had to offer.
The 80s invented modern Halloween: goth rock, the slasher, the rise of Stephen King. There’s a reason Stranger Things is all like that and stuff. Conglomerates, the Cold War, computers, and supermarkets all teamed up to give people cash to spend, candy to buy, and a tingle of despair, unnamed, in their heads. A yearly bacchanalia became a necessity.
Luckily, a dancefloor can be free—and darkness conquers all, even the rich. Ministry, Depeche Mode, Cabaret Voltaire… These are the priests that stepped forth to save us. Hit shuffle, and let the exorcism commence.
Two years after our first maddening descent into dungeon synth—the haunted, medieval, dark ambient subgenre born from side projects of Nordic black metal stars—and we’ve already seen a swell of scholarly literature on the genre from dark-corner music nerds and fantasy-flecked weirdos (both me) alike.
Trance is one of the cheesiest genres in the world, which makes it one of the very best. Contrary to the name, it is not conventionally relaxing, though I find strange comfort when awash in it. It usually starts with a kick drum, then a tide of synthesizers, then arpeggios that dart and echo like a bee trapped in a concert hall.
Hear me out—Radiohead is a Halloween band. I think this is important. This is important because, for one of the biggest rock bands in the world, I think there’s still a lot of “I don’t get Radiohead” out there. I was on that side of the fence for like 15 years.
This weekend, I urge you to press pause on the spooky movies for only a moment to go see Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon at your favorite theater—I want to get this baby over the $100 million mark on its opening weekend. Wouldn’t that be great? We could all save cinema, together.
If you happen to be celebrating today’s holiday appropriately—that is, strolling amongst graves, raking in the leaves, or running in jeans—I made a little neo-classical mood music for your Friday the 13th adventure. There’s a little bit of pumpkin synth, a little dark ambient, and a whole lot of attitude for your hallowed eve.
Welcome, ghouls, to another season of creeps. Grab your theremin and your howling cat, because we’re taking this train all the way to hell (the fun one, not the torture one).
Happy Halloweekend! Here's a playlist for all that—the ghost hunting, the night walking, exploring the liminal planes. Coffee in costume after midnight. A dog's bark from a dark hillside.
Allay your fears with Nightwyrms, our collection of coldwave and minimal synth. When the icy wind blows, it's best to embrace it—roll down those chilled windows and fill your lungs with the night.
It’s fitting for a holiday that celebrates death to reflect so aptly the nature of life—that there is far too much to do before we’re gone, and we will always dream it differently. But we feel our imagination as much as we see it, and thoughts change our cells as much as chemicals—
Last Wednesday night, desperate for consolation from lives shackled with chaos, I went with Elsie to go see Candlelight—a small concert series of classical music held in hidden, non-traditional venues around the city, each lit solely by hundreds of scattered candles.
I’ll meet you at the wrought iron gate—get there as close to sundown as you can because it only opens once a year. Wait for the moon to crest the roof, then dip down through the hedges to the yard.
For all my terror, I find delight in apprehending the grotesque. It’s the illness we ignore that tends to kill us, after all. So let us stare our specters in the eye—we’ll be dancing step-in-step with them for the next few weeks.
I’m building an ark of songs from the 2000s that I hope will never get old. It’s the Millennial Dance Canon. Let’s hit the floor, losers.
The room is just as crucial to the music as the melody. Peripheral pieces of a song—separate from the pitch, the key, the tempo—can go unnoticed until they’re gone altogether, things like volume, echo, reverb, resonance.
One hundred Earwyrms! Can you believe it? One hundred weeks of passing off the same seven Frank Ocean songs as a new playlist. For #100, I couldn't resist going back through my favorite issues and compiling them here—most of my 30 million subscribers missed the early ones. Here are my worst quotes:
Spring break is dead; long live spring break. With no more travel and everyone indoors, I've made a playlist for us to have spring break at home. Wishing the best to all and everyone we know. Stay safe and stay sane!
Happy Halloween, enjoy the final round of shadow songs. If you still don’t know what you're wearing this Thursday, I’ve made a list of costumes you may be able to pull off.
Halloween is all sublimation: we give our base instincts permission to emerge, we indulge in our ancient taste for spirits and specters, we put our real fears aside as we focus on the imaginary—the things that could never actually hurt us, but help us let off some screams.
It's Friday the 13th, and it's the weekend of the Harvest Moon. Those two things haven't aligned since the start of the millennium, and they won't align again until 2049. It's the night to believe in magic once again.
This week's playlist isn't really a playlist, it's more of an album showcase. It's my favorite Halloween album ever made. It's called Dead Man's Bones, by a band called Dead Man's Bones.
True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The desire to party had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them.
Chances are, you’re going to a Halloween party this year. Maybe you’re even throwing one. In either case, should you find yourself with the AUX, I bestow to you this gift—a six-and-a-half-hour mix of the best electro-goth and industrial dance music the 80s had to offer.