By request, and again, keeping with the Halloween theme, here is Chris Young's Urban Legend, the first in a dreadful series of teen slasher pictures. As always, Young lends a velvety menace and style to the proceedings with his music, a slick and terrifying effort brought to crackling life by Los Angeles AFM union musicians.

A handful of Young's score was released on Milan Records' official soundtrack album, but a 45-minute promotional CD was released by Young via Intrada shortly after.

Link in comments

Continuing with the Halloween theme... While not the delirious trip into style and insanity that was Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, Mick Garris' 1997 mini-series for ABC is considered more faithful to Stephen King's source material.

Along for the ride is Garris' frequent composer Nicholas Pike, here given the rare opportunity to record his score in Los Angeles with a substantial orchestra. The results are anything but Penderecki, Bartok and Wendy Carlos. Instead Pike's score is much more traditional in approach, mixing orchestral elements with plenty of atmospherics ("Psychic Call", "Croquet With Wendy", "Unmask!" and "Falling Into Blackness" - admittedly the second half of the album really cooks), voices and thundering percussion to great effect with the score reaching an emotionally satisfying climax with the final track "10 Years Later". Great Halloween time listening, especially on a long twisting drive into the country.

Released as a promotional disc shortly after the mini-series aired by SuperTracks.

Link in comments

Mixes seem to be all the rage these days so I thought I'd celebrate Halloween with a short mix of my own. I prefer to just throw stuff together without much thought -- the less of a "theme" the better. This being a Halloween collection meant the tone should be consistent throughout... Pure, unmitigated, horror! This is a collection of unreleased and commercial tracks. I hope that if you hear something you like and it's available for sale you'll buy the CD.

A note about sound: these tracks come from different sources. There are variations in volume and quality. If you are using iTunes you can manually set the playback volume for each individual track. More details on sources below.

The tracklist:

01. The Fury - John Williams +(2:44)
02. The Exorcist - Lalo Schifrin *(1:10)
03. Terror Tract - Brian Tyler (3:34)
04. The 'Burbs - Jerry Goldsmith (2:34)
05. Amityville 3D - Howard Blake *(3:22)
06. It's Alive 2 - Bernard Herrmann +(3:03)
07. Hocus Pocus - John Debney *(1:41)
08. Candyman - Philip Glass (1:05)
09. The Night Walker - Vic Mizzy *(4:39)
10. The Shining - Wendy Carlos And Rachel Elkind ^(3:31)
11. Urban Legend - Christopher Young *(3:24)
12. The Ring Two - Hans Zimmer, various (2:48)
13. Young Sherlock Holmes - Bruce Broughton ^(3:46)
14. I Know What You Did Last Summer - John Debney *(3:24)
15. The Monster Squad - Bruce Broughton ^(3:22)
16. Fear No Evil - Frank LaLoggia *(1:27)
17. The Fly II - Christopher Young (6:22)
18. Evil Dead 2 - Joseph LoDuca +(5:02)

Total Running Time: 56:58
* - Promotional Release
^ - "Private" Release
+ - Out-of-print

Sorry, file deleted!

Sorry for the delay folks, been busy. Please note that Rapidshare now deletes inactive files after 10 days, not the previous 30. Lennie Moore's Outcast has been deleted from Rapidshare, and will not be re-uploaded. I will honor any requests that a file be removed from Rapidshare.

Now on with the regular post... Here's something to kick off October and a bit of a Halloween theme... Don Davis' big orchestral romp House of Frankenstein. Running the gamut from standard scare-score ("Frank-N-Danish") to all out chorale fantasy ("In Paradisum"), there's plenty here to enjoy in the disc's generous 67-minute runtime. From Davis' Matrix-style tonalities to James Horner action licks ("She's Not Hungry For Food").

Issued as a bare-bones promotional disc by the composer in 1997, House of Frankenstein remains a solid effort from a composer we don't hear from often enough. Enjoy!

Sorry, file expired/deleted!