New Batch – Lighten Up Sounds
10.19.18 by Ryan Masteller

It’s that time of year again, when carved pumpkins start popping up outside of everybody’s house and decorative witches and ghosts and gravestones adorn suburban lawns. We’ve been drinking nothing but pumpkin beer for two weeks (yum!), and pretty much all pastries and caffeine-related drinks around here include pumpkin as featured ingredient. It’ll get old soon, but we’ll revel in it now.

That’s the fun stuff, the safe stuff. Scary, but nice, as it were. There aren’t any killer clowns or satanic cults on anybody’s radar, and nobody’s watching Italian or Japanese horror movies. Not here, not in Anytown, USA, where we have economy-sized bags of candy lining our shelves already, just waiting for eager little trick-or-treaters and, let’s face it, our own selves, because who’s gonna eat all the leftover candy? Us, that’s who.

Lighten Up Sounds has us covered for the moment trick-or-treat ends. The three tapes in this batch are perfect mood pieces for these late autumn days when the sun sets earlier and earlier and the witching hour comes sooner and sooner.

LA TREDICESIMA LUNA – Oltre L’ultima Onda Del Mare
But first – a bit of ocean magic. That’s what Italian artist Matteo Brusa has in store for us with his unnaturally gorgeous “Oltre L’ultima Onda Del Mare” [“Beyond the Last Wave of the Sea,” according to Google Translate). It’s an inspiring cycle of drive and focus: the protagonist sets sail in search of something internal, a sense of purpose, maybe, or peace, but with the notion that the passage would lead to destruction. “The wind swelled the sails and our wishes, but deep within ourselves we knew we would never come back.” What happened out there? What transpired upon the waters that pointed toward a watery grave? We may never know. But we do know this: every moment of “Oltre L’ultima Onda Del Mare” is a cinematic delight, richly inhabited by tragic characters and elements. Who says the sea can’t be spooky?

WINTERBLOOD – Foresta Incantata
The woods at night are no place for anybody to be. Wicked things lurk out there in the dark, things that will devour or destroy you, or worse. For Italian project Winterblood (aka Stefano Senesi), the idea of an enchanted forest – “Foresta Incantata” – is flipped from the concept I grew up with, the whimsy replaced by horrific danger, the kind of danger that creeps up on you or slowly reveals itself after you’ve embraced a false sense of safety. Winterblood’s ceremonial synthesizer runs are the chilly calm before the dark magick takes hold, the ancient spiritual practices opening gateways to unforeseen menace. This is what I was talking about when I mentioned satanic cults above – “Foresta Incantata” is the misleadingly tranquil soundtrack to pagan ritual.

TIMOTHY FIFE – Hoichi the Earless
Poor Hoichi couldn’t even hear his own themes. Earless, you know. He missed out, because Timothy Fife knocked his soundtrack out of the park. His alternate soundtrack, anyway – “Hoichi the Earless” was named after and alternately scores Hoichi’s section of the Japanese horror anthology “Kwaidan.” I’ve never seen “Kwaidan” – I’m more of a “Hocus Pocus” kind of guy – so I am fully divorced from the visuals. But the sounds – oh the sounds. If this is Timothy Fife’s idea of film scoring, let’s give him a few more opportunities to work with, shall we? Mood switches on a dime, at times tense, at times tranquil, at times abrasive, at times ethereal, and Fife is there to guide it to a satisfying conclusion. Armed with a synthesizer that pulls from Carpenter as well as Cluster, Fife constructs this ten-part homage to Hoichi with a brilliant nocturnal flare. This is your new soundtrack for sitting around eating candy while you wait for those trick-or-treaters.