Once again, Popdose’s own cacophonous crypt-keeper, Jack Fear, has emerged from the shadows bearing a new Halloween mixtape for your unsuspecting ears: a seamless 78-minute collage of music, sound, and spoken word to thrill, delight, and unsettle you — all of it free to stream or download.
Every year (and lo, my children of the night, I have been toiling in this Tomb of Forgotten Tunes for many and many a year), the mixtape seems to find its own mood. Like the shape-changers and skinwalkers of legend, it changes its form and semblance to suit the tenor of the times. Last year’s installment was a party jam, with a heavy concentration of bangers and a lot of broad humor, as was called for. The year before that, the mixtape felt like tales told by the fireside. It is what we need it to be, whatever that is.
This year feels . . . meditative. A pause for breath in the horrors of the mundane world. Something pagan, perhaps. It’s less about ghosts n’ goblins, more about mortality and cycles and old wisdom. The reason for the season, if you will.
It’s a mood, as the kids say, and one that’s enhanced immeasurably by the bumper crop of witchy new music released over the last few years. Much of the fun of this ongoing project is getting hipped to rippers that passed me by the first time, along with presenting well-worn classics in a new context, letting you listen with fresh ears.
Ultimately, that’s the reason why we present these as mixtapes — each a single MP3, a continuous montage — rather than as playlists. Placement and sequencing, ebb and flow can make a new-to-you song sound like an instant classic, or an overfamiliar warhorse strange and exciting once more.
All we ask of you is that to surrender to someone else’s eccentric taste for an hour-plus, as we did in days of freeform radio, when a real live lonely human being would spin a mood or tell a story just with the tracks they’d spin, hoping someone would make a connection — as so many of you have. It warms my blackened heart when you reach out to tell me so. And to all who have spread the word about this series via social media, you have my undying gratitude.
If you like what you hear, we encourage you to support the individual artists to whatever extent you can.
Enjoy, and until next time, be good to each other. After all — it’s a scary world out there.
Visit the archives for all previous Halloween mixtapes.
Halloween Mix 19 (Don’t Fear the Reaper) (1:18:49)
intro: Triangle – Trisan (excerpt)
(montage: Suzanne Vega reads Oscar Wilde’s “Les Silhouettes”)
Harvest Time – The Clientele
(Don’t Fear) The Reaper – Blue Öyster Cult
Between the Devil and Me – Fancy
Who Pick de Pumpkin – Zap Pow
(Let’s Go) Psycho – Brigitte Handley and Danny B. Harvey
Got the Jitters – Don Redman and His Orchestra
Jane (The Night the Zombies Came) – Pixies
Zombie Delight – Buck 65
Everybody Scream – Florence and the Machine
The Castleford Ladies’ Magic Circle – Jake Thackray
(montage: The Witch, 2015)
Yes, I’m a Witch (The Brother Brothers remix) – Yoko Ono
Trick or Treat – The Necromantix
(montage: The House on Haunted Hill, 1959)
The Ghost of Smokey Joe – Cab Calloway
Oh Death – Camper Van Beethoven
The Scarecrow – Lal and Mike Waterson
The Wight’s Chant – The Tolkien Ensemble with Christopher Lee
The Thing That Should Not Be – Primus
interlude: Orson Welles reads R.L. Stevenson’s “Under the Wide and Starry Sky”
(montage: Jon J Muth’s soundtrack for M)
C’est l’Halloween – Matt Maxwell
Haunted House – Thee Tsunamis
Strange Brew – The Cream
(montage: Hellraiser IV: Bloodline, 1996)
Sabbat Matters – Gloria
House – Charli XCX featuring John Cale
coda: Sacrificial Bonfire – XTC
Thanks, as always, to Dan Augustine, Andrew Weiss, Chris Healey, Dylan Todd, and all Night People everywhere. Special thanks this year to Matt Shepherd and to the mighty Andrew Hickey.
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