Halloween has come and gone and, at least musically speaking, left us with some gifts. Some of them are contained in «Scary Muzak», the new Ulver album, mixed by Carpenter Brut, mastered by Thibault Chaumont, and with a rather interesting backstory. Its inception dates back to a year before that. “Enter the newly restored 1920s cinema at Frogner in Oslo. Frescoed stars, cobweb, myrrh, and pumpkins. On the big screen: John Carpenter’s cult classic «Halloween» (1978). In the pit: Ulver, performing a reimagined version of the iconic score. A surprising and timely one-off right before the capital city shut down for real.” After the performance, the quartet of Ole Alexander Halstensgård, Kristoffer Rygg, Tore Ylwizaker, and Stian Westerhus went into isolation in their studio, “fantasizing about bygone nights of slasher, exploitation, and giallo.”

It would take three to four months for the album, which you can hear below, to be completed, “on one hand a homage to Carpenter’s themes – five out of twelve tracks are covers whereas the rest comes from the outer realms – and on the other zooming out on the aesthetics of the late ’70s and early ’80s popular culture.”

«Scary Muzak» was released on October 31 by House of Mythology on cassette, digital, and vinyl formats, which are respectively available here, here, and here.