John Carpenter will release his fourth solo album, Lost Themes IV: Noir, on May 3 via Sacred Bones Records. The filmmaker/composer is, as always, accompanied by son Cody Carpenter on synthesizer and godson Daniel Davies on guitar.

The album is available to pre-order on vinyl in several colorways, each of which features a foil stamped jacket and comes with a 24x36 fold-out poster (pictured below):

Black ($20)

Red ($24)

Indie exclusive tan and black marble with bonus 7"

Sacred Bones exclusive red on clear splatter with bonus 7" ($30, limited to 1,000)

Rough Trade exclusive oxblood red and black splatter with bonus 7" ($33, limited to 300)

Shout Factory exclusive black and clear cloudy with bonus 7" ($32, limited to 500)

The album is also available on CD ($14) and cassette ($12). Watch the music video for a new song titled "My Name Is Death" below, where you can also read the press release.

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. In the years since, Carpenter, Carpenter, and Davies have released close to a dozen musical projects, including a growing library of studio albums and the scores for David Gordon Green’s trilogy of Halloween reboots. 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 noir quality, then, is something you understand instinctively when you hear it. “Some of the music is heavy guitar riffs, which is not in old noir films,” Davies notes. “But somehow, it’s connected in an emotional way.” 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. “This is who we are, I think,” John summarizes. “Daniel’s the adventurer. He pushes for new sounds, new directions. He tries things that I haven’t thought of. He’s a lot more daring than I am, and he enriches the whole thing. Cody’s the musician. He’s a savant at music. He understands music. We depend on him to rescue us.” And what about John’s contribution? With characteristic understatement, he concludes: “I’m the experience. I’ve done music for movies before.”

John Carpenter - My Name Is Death New Lost Themes album!

this is the cutest thing i’ve seen in a while

Say what you want about the H40 trilogy, but you gotta admit, the music slaps!

2018: The Shape Hunts Allyson

Kills: Rampage

Ends: The Junk Yard

John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies - He Walks By Night

John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies - My Name is Death

John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies - My Name is Death (Off...

Fright-Rags has released a shirt and flexi disc bundle for John Carpenter's new single, "He Walks By Night." Both feature artwork by Aaron Lea. Priced at $45, the set is limited to 500 and will ship the week of May 24.

Bad movie I have Rock ‘N’ Roll High School 1979

i’m sorry but he’s so fucking cute 😫

On The Jukebox: “Halloween Ends (Original Motion Picture Score)”

Original music composed by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies.

Halloween Kills

Benvenuti o bentornati sul nostro blog. Nello scorso articolo abbiamo ripreso un tipo di cinema che non trattavo su MMD da tantissimo tempo, il trash, e lo abbiamo fatto con un’opera nostrana, Cruel Jaws – Fauci Crudeli. La storia narra di una cittadina marittima che viene attaccata da un feroce squalo tigre. Nel frattempo avvengono numerose sotto trame, come il perfino uomo d’affari che vuole…

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'Halloween Ends' - Expect The Unexpected

‘Halloween Ends’ – Expect The Unexpected

I got to listen to the film score for “Halloween Ends” in its entirety before I sat down to watch the concluding chapter of this particular Michael Myers trilogy. Composed and performed by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies, it reminds me of what Carpenter himself said about this installment: it is meant to be “more intimate” than its predecessors, and the music helps to illustrate…

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Album Reviews: Red Hot Chili Peppers / John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies

This week I got to review not one but two high profile group’s second new release of the year!

Red Hot Chili Peppers Return of the Dream Canteen

(part of the) album cover

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are coming up on 40 years as a band. The core of the group has always been singer Anthony Kiedis and bassist Flea. The wild punk antics of this group have sometimes overshadowed the music itself. They’ve had a ton of lineup changes over the years, but once drummer Chad Smith joined in 1988 along with guitarist John Frusciante, that became the classic lineup. I first became aware of them in the late 80s, but really became a fan around Mother’s Milk era. The group’s mixture of funk, metal, rap, rock, punk and jazz set them apart from a lot of their peers during that era. 1991′s Blood Sugar Sex Magik is the band’s magnum opus and it broke through to mainstream radio too. Over the years Frusciante has come and gone. There’s a perception among music geeks that any other guitarist was just a placeholder for Frusciante. While I liked Dave Navarro and Josh Klinghoffer, the band as a whole really played off each other well with Frusciante. I got to see RHCP in 2000 in their co-headlining tour with Foo Fighters. That lineup is easily there best. Ever! 

RHCP in 2022

In 2019, Frusciante re-joined the band. Earlier this year saw the release of the band’s Unlimited Love, which was their best album since 2002′s By the Way IMHO. Instead of having to wait five years for the next RHCP album, the group is releasing Return of the Dream Canteen today on Warner. The album was recorded during the same sessions as Unlimited Love. It would be easy to regard this as “all of the leftovers not good enough to make it onto Unlimited Love”, but that’s not the case. This works as its own album and Unlimited Love works as its own sequential album as well. I thought the band’s double album Stadium Arcadium was a little long and could’ve been a better album as a single disc. By releasing two separate albums, the Chilis are having their cake and eating it too: no double album with a lot of filler, but two separate albums that can be appreciated as their own separate release. There are some serious bangers here including the recently released single “Eddie” (a tribute to Eddie Van Halen), “Shoot Me a Smile” and “The Drummer”. It is a long album at 75 minutes over 17 tracks, but it feels like the slightly mellower side of the recording sessions with a side of funk. I can only hope we get a new album in another six months!

For info on Return of the Dream Canteen: https://music.redhotchilipeppers.com/collections/return-of-the-dream-canteen

4 out of 5 stars

John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies Halloween Ends soundtrack

album cover

One of the coolest things I’ve gotten to do since starting this blog is that I’ve gotten to cover John Carpenter’s revitalized music career.  In 2017, Carpenter along with his band including son Cody Carpenter and his godson Daniel Davies went on tour and I was lucky enough to see their Boston show performing film scores along with movie clips. In 2021 I got to review John’s album Lost Themes III: Alive After Death and earlier this year I reviewed the trio’s soundtrack to Firestarter. But the really exciting thing for this trio is that they scored the soundtrack to the 2018 Halloween movie, David Gordon Green’s direct sequel to John’s 1978 best-of-the-entire-series original. The trio referenced John’s original score in a very innovative way. I even named that soundtrack my #5 Album of 2018. Last year, they did the soundtrack for Green’s sequel Halloween Kills. Not lying when I say their soundtrack score was the best thing about that film. Now for the release of Green’s final film in the series (or so they say) John, Cody and Daniel have done a soundtrack score for Halloween Ends, opening this week. The soundtrack drops digitally today and will be released physically on January 14, 2023 from Sacred Bones.

Cody, John and Daniel

At this point, John, Cody and Daniel are a tight unit and they all are playing off each other so well. In reviewing this album, I have not seen the film yet, so I was reviewing this solely based on the music and not based on the cinematic context of how the music plays with scenes. There is an undercurrent of terror throughout this entire soundtrack. It is ambient and synth-heavy, but there’s also an element of danceable rhythms bubbling up, similar to John’s early 80s scores. As a soundtrack album it didn’t blow me away the way that the 2018 Halloween soundtrack did, which was super exciting to see John doing a new Halloween score for the first time since Halloween III. But it is a solid score and I certainly hope the film itself can live up to the soundtrack this trio has done!

For info on the Halloween Ends soundtrack: https://www.sacredbonesrecords.com/products/sbr315-john-carpenter-halloween-ends-ost

3.5 out of 5 stars