October Collective Collaborative Blog: Genuinely Terrifying Songs

For this month's collaborative blog, the collective offers some genuinely terrifying alternative options to "Monster Mash" for your Halloween playlist. From apocalyptic folk to experimental industrial, these songs are guaranteed to have you shakin' in your boots!

John's Pick

Song: “I Have a Special Plan for This World”
Artist: Current 93
Album: I Have a Special Plan for This World (2000)
We are born into this world with rudimentary fear. It is there to meet us in our first breath. Before we can even process or register our experience, it is there, seeded in some vague primal discomfort as our newly formed lungs first expand with air – and so we cry.
Then life experience builds fear up from that unknown inside us like some gnarled tower, teetering on its nebulous foundations and threatening, if we’re not careful, to come toppling down on top of us. It’s a useful mechanism. Fear keeps us alive. But as humans, we have a capacity for fear beyond this base, evolutionary design. In our ability to contemplate the universe and our place in it, we open ourselves up to existential horrors quite unique to our higher level of consciousness. 

The band Current 93’s sprawling long-form single “I Have a Special Plan for This World” perfectly exemplifies the churning, ruminating dread of feeling terrorized by one’s own existence. At over 20 minutes in length, the track demands the listener’s full attention, and the time is fully utilized in creating an atmosphere of creeping shadowy madness. One part haunted house sound effect tape and one part spoken word piece, it plays like the self-recorded ramblings of someone driven to the point of insanity and back.
“When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone / When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with…” Current 93 front man David Tibet begins in a detached monotone refrain, the steady rise and fall of tape hiss just behind his words evoking strange journal logs left forgotten in the darkest corners of some place of feverish study, “…When you are calm and joyful / And finally entirely alone / Then in a great new darkness / You will finally execute your special plan.” 

The lyrics on the track are taken in collaboration with cult horror author Thomas Ligotti from his poem by the same name, and Tibet delivers them with the haunting detachment of someone who’s seen beyond the veil of reality and into something truly terrible. “There are no means for escaping this world / It penetrates even into your sleep / And is it’s substance,” Tibet rambles in a sleep-forsaken rattle, Ligotti’s words masterfully evoking existential horror on a cosmic, unknowable scale. Ligotti tells of malignant, ever-present forces behind our world and behind all worlds, seeping inexorably into every part of our experience.

The composition stays fairly minimal throughout the track, opting instead for unsettling atmospherics that work to bolster Tibet’s vocal performance and guide the loose, fragmented narrative. Looping notes from what sounds like a failing electric organ rise and fall in steady, hypnotic drones, drawing the listener deeper and deeper into the troubled narrator’s twisted revelations. Meanwhile, garbled samples from a circuit-bent Speak & Spell toy provide transitions between verses that sound genuinely possessed, as if some detached voice from beyond the darkness were reaching out with incomprehensible, otherworldly intent. 

For those willing to brave the run-time, this song (if that is the proper term) is sure to leave a lasting impression. Full to the brim with themes of nihilism and existential dread, it invites the listener to consider that the evil they fear most may not be waiting to jump out at them from the shadows, but may in fact be the very stuff of shadows and that which casts those shadows, and so too the light which shines across those bent, shadowy forms. Listen alone with the lights off and come to realize your own special plan for this world.
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Brian's Pick

Song: “Pirate Jenny”
Artist: Xiu Xiu
Album: Nina (2012)
Morbid curiosity and the occasional adrenaline rush are consistent symptoms of horror-themed entertainment like movies and books, and people actually seek out these seemingly stressful states of mind to invigorate themselves, almost like sniffing wicked smelling salts. Musicians have captured this same sort of curious fear within their music, usually through strange and unconventional instrumentation, such as metal saws, theremins, and “found objects” like footfalls and the slamming of doors. But just as common is the use of threatening or ominous vocalization. Xiu Xiu is an exemplar of such hostile vocalization, especially in their Nina Simone cover of “Pirate Jenny,” itself a song originally from The Threepenny Opera. 

Haphazardly strummed nylon strings and chaotic deep rolling drums setup the atmosphere as the hoarse and breathy mutterings recount the tale of Jenny, the seaside hotel maid who dreams of revenge as she is mocked and disgraced by her bosses and customers. “Then one night there's a scream in the night / And you'll wonder who could that have been / And you see me kinda grinnin' while I'm scrubbin'” Xiu Xiu lead singer Jamie Stewart’s staggered and seemingly labored vocals tell the story of Jenny who, being inspired by her desire for retribution, imagines a large black-sailed ship mooring at the town’s harbor, and commanding its crew to raze the town to the ground in cannonfire — every building save the hotel in which she works. “By noontime the dock / Is a-swarmin' with men / Comin' out from the ghostly freighter / They move in the shadows / Where no one can see / And they're chainin' up people / And they're bringin' em to me / Askin' me, / ‘Kill them now, or later?’ “ During the climax of the song, Jenny contemplates her queenly and abominable judgment of the townsfolk, and the drums roll and build into a deep, helter-skelter pool of sound accented by a whining saxophone and a sudden buzzing and beeping synthesizer. The pirate crew exhort again, "Kill them now, or later?" 

The music stops. The tense silence remains for a moment, then Jenny answers, quick and hurriedly, apprehensive yet vivacious, and almost in a whisper: “Right now. Right… now.” The crew gleefully obeys the command of Pirate Jenny, then she remarks, "That'll learn ya."

The story of the imaginings and cruelty of one young maid seeps into the listener’s bones, reminding them that even the most forgettable and simple members of society can have the blackest dreams of revenge and barbarism. The song is only further made petrifying by the harsh and hostile mumbles and scheming words of the singer, swarmed with anarchic drums’ crashes and jeering strumming of strings. It’s successful as an unnerving and fear-sparking work due to its hostile nature — the shadowy mutterings surrounded by atonal instrumentation, drawing ever closer to some dark ultimatum the listener is forced to endure. The creative and cruel conspiracy of Jenny is mimicked in the hectic and bitter drums and murmurs, and the sudden pauses of silence where the listener is almost shackled and made witness to Jenny’s deliberation. This adaptation of “Pirate Jenny” is an intense and eerie song that will make most listeners shudder and blench at the addictive yet near-unbearable storytelling of Xiu Xiu.
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Greg's Pick

Song: “Revolution 9”
Artist: The Beatles
Album: The Beatles (The White Album) (1968)
This is the song most people skip when playing through The White Album, and rightfully so. It’s creepy, it’s discord, it’s haunting, and it’s largely been received as one of the worst Beatles songs ever. Sure, listeners are graced throughout the eight-minute horrorshow with familiar melodies from Beatles albums past, but they’re distorted, muffled, short-stopped, looped and set against a backdrop of “number nine… number nine… number nine…” repeating constantly, with more loops, samples, and recordings played backward. It’s a weird one for sure, and set the stage for the experimentation a band can get away with if they sell enough records.

Lennon explained that it's "an unconscious picture of what I actually think will happen when it happens, just like a drawing of revolution." He later said it was a mistaken "anti-revolution," and even later said it's basically whatever the listener thinks it is. Of those descriptions, I'd say the last is right, because the whole song is basically an audio collage, the visual equivalent of which is probably the Pepe Silva meme. Maybe Lennon wanted to show through music what hearing the subconscious mind is like without the filter — the churning mind of a disturbed Phineas Gage if he was a Beatles fan living in the 60s.

We might feel hard-pressed to discover meaning in a song that includes random Yoko screeches, a baby laughing and crying, old television samples, shattering glass, and burning flames, especially just six minutes after the sweetness of “Honey Pie.” Meaning or not, “Revolution 9” is sure to bother most listeners to their core. Even if we can stop to appreciate its arrangement as an avant-garde, stream-of-consciousness art piece commenting on the dark times this track was born of — we can, and we should — it’s still unsettling as fuck.

Noa's Pick

Song: “We Carry On”
Artist: Portishead
Album: Third (2008)
Pause the Halloween mix you’ve streamed in years past and loop Portishead’s “We Carry On” instead. The English trip-hop band has created what may be one of the spookiest songs out there and simultaneously the perfect soundtrack for a drag queen performance. As it scored the VAMP drag show at Tucson’s 191 Toole this past September, it demanded the attention of those in attendance. 

It starts with a repetitive sound that’s similar to a siren. This abrupt noise repeats rhythmically until it becomes recognizable as music. A fast-paced, tribal-like drum beat follows, inducing a sense of urgency. The suspense is built and the BPM moves quickly. A synthesizer plays a simple compilation of notes from a minor scale just before the siren-like sound cuts out and the vocals of Beth Gibbons begin. She sings in short phrases, practically chanting the words “The taste of life / I can’t describe / It’s choking on my mind / Reaching out I can’t believe / That faith it can’t decide.” It sounds as if she is struggling to breathe. Her high pitched short-of-breath voice creates a tangible tension in combination with the music. 

This only intensifies around 1:15 in when the siren sound re-enters. This noise is chaotic and with its alarming qualities, triggers the notion that something is wrong and you must act urgently. It is an essential piece of the discordant and disturbing atmosphere that Portishead creates in this song. 

What may be the spookiest part of this song, however, does not come to us sonically. The original title of this song was “Peaches,” a fruit which “represents the vital and sensuous taste of life,” and “makes a mockery of the daily grind through which we force ourselves to carry on.” Hence, the phrases “taste of life” and “carry on” we hear Gibbons sing. This song would perfectly accompany the monotonous lifestyle that many people fear — or fearfully fall into. You know, the one where you wake up, go to work, come home, go to sleep and do it all again the next day. The one where everyday consists of the same dull routine and is filled with loneliness and a choke-holding loyalty to a “money matters most” mindset, courtesy of capitalism. In this lifestyle, there is no time to enjoy the fruits of life. Doesn’t that sound scary? 
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Kurt B.'s Pick

Song: Victim
Artist: The Golden Palominos
Album: Dead Inside (1996)

Is anything more frightening than your own imagination? 

Drummer and composer Anton Fier’s Golden Palominos initially gained attention as a New York underground supergroup, with a fluid roster that included guitarists Arto Lindsay and Fred Firth, bassist Bill Laswell, pianist Carla Bley, sax player John Zorn, and vocalists like Syd Straw, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, and John Lydon of PiL. But for the eighth Palominos album, Fier zoomed in tight on a single talent: poet and performance artist Nicole Blackman.

Blackman has appeared on stages in New York City, Pittsburgh, and Birmingham, England, and recorded with KMFDM and Alan Wilder’s Depeche Mode side-project Recoil. She’s also a successful voice-over artist, with credits ranging from Chrysler automobiles and Lysol disinfectant to Cartoon Network and Saturday Night Live, and that sense of familiarity heightens the disquiet of Dead Inside’s opener. You can’t quite place her voice, yet you know it well. 

A miasma of garbled voices, radio interference and ambient electronics, “Victim” unsettles from the outset. Then Blackman enters, embarking on a five-minute monologue from the point of view of an abductee. Blindfolded, gagged and bound, her senses spring into overdrive. Strung together with a sense of wonder, her acute observations (“what place has no wind?”) underscore her intelligence, her innocence … everything she stands to lose.  

Fier sustains the tension underneath Blackman’s narration, but the Palominos’ key collaborator on “Victim” is you. Between each little fragment of smell, sound, or physical sensation, just enough space remains to fill in your own fears. No matter how many times you hear “Victim,” that compulsion to insert yourself in the story makes its chill persist.  

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