Director John Carpenter to Release Debut Album

John Carpenter may be best known for frightening people with his movies, but his music will give you a different type of chills entirely.

The director behind films like Halloween, Escape From New York, The Thing and They Live announced his debut solo album today. Lost Themes is due out Feb. 3 on Sacred Bones Records.

While Carpenter is best known as a director, he’ composed music for his films for years. His IMDB entry gives him 22 separate composer credits, including scores to films like Big Trouble in Little China, The Prince of Darkness and the spine-chilling theme to Halloween.

Yet despite working in music for decades, the horror master has never made an album before. The album’s first single “Vortex” (stream it below) is an ominous instrumental track that could easily serve as a soundtrack to one of his films — but that’s not what Carpenter intended.

“Lost Themes was all about having fun,” Carpenter said in a release. “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.”

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