4 New Electronic Albums to Add Some Dark Atmosphere to Your Halloween

When talk beings to circulate about Halloween, people tend to start thinking more about which scary films to watch than any other kind of media. Horror movie nights are social, fun, and give you an excuse to weed out the most cowardly of your friends, then lock them in the shed and slowly dismember them over a period of several days. Or maybe that’s just me. Anyway, there are plenty of other ways to introduce a spooktastic atmosphere to your household during this weird, weird holiday.

Sure, you could just do the obvious thing and crank ‘Thriller’, ‘The Monster Mash’ and the Ghostbusters theme, but if you’re feeling a bit more creative, why not fill your home with a bit of factory fresh electro-dread? Electronic music has never been short on atmosphere, and a good deal of it is sinister as fuck. Happily, we’ve had a few appropriately creepy electronic releases recently, so consider some of these when it comes time to fill your household with the murdervibes.

Kuedo – Slow Knife (Planet Mu)

The side project of Vex’d member, erm, Jamie Vex’d, Kuedo first came to the world’s attention with 2011’s Severent, which was fairly unsettling, but in a more introspective ‘why are we here and why are the walls turning into complex machinery’ sort of way. Slow Knife is just straight up ghostly, taking direct influence from films like Night of the Hunter and Under the Skin, and their scores.

Listening to it makes you feel like you’re being watched by some kind of ethereal entity, trying to communicate with you from the beyond. The only time a voice wafts into audible range, it’s that of Wild Beasts singer Hayden Thorpe, and he doesn’t exactly have anything nice to say, given that the track is called ‘In Your Sleep’.

Phaeleh – Illusion of the Tale (Undertow)

Since first breaking onto the scene on the funkier, bouncier end of the dubstep spectrum, Bristolian Phaleah has morphed into one of the most reliable providers of ambience in the game. His previous release, A World Without, had a kind of melancholy to it, but there’s something downright unsettling about Illusion of the Tale. Despite some flutters of optimism here and there, you can tell that death (and what comes after) were prevailing conceptual themes.

Tracks like ‘In the Emerald’, which creeps into a steady, but measured swell, and ‘Children of the Lake’, which burbles with bassy omens as an 80s synth track bleats over the top, summon up more than a few unsettling notions. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very chilled album overall, but you can’t ever shake that one persistent tingle doing lengths up and down your spine.

S U R V I V E – RR7349 (Relapse Records)

How appropriate that, almost directly following their work on Stranger Things, synth outfit S U R V I V E should come out with a heavy hitting, industrial nightmare album like RR7349. It’s easily the most up-tempo album on this list, but only because it makes you feel like you’re running away from some kind of brain sucking moon demon from beyond the stars. It builds, falls, ripples and lashes out at intervals, keeping you guessing from beginning to end.

Like the Stranger Things score, the album is distinctly evocative of a bygone cultural era, but instead of Goonies and E.T., it’s Carpenter era slashers, early sci-fi horror releases and the first video games which could ever claim to have been frightening. Some moments are uplifting, but the dark brush strokes come at you like swings of a sword, leaving you no time to get out of the way.

Audeka – Lost Souls (MethLab)

All of the albums on this list are unsettling but Lost Souls is just downright horrifying at times. A slow, burning rise of bass beats can give way to a relentless industrial surge with little to no warning. The Canadian trio have been in the game for a while, but this is their first full LP, and it’s one hell of an opening salvo. From glitchy wailing wraiths to scraping metallic monsters, each consecutive track has a distinct identity, and each hits you harder than the last.

It’s easy to see that the album is 3 years in the making. It feels conceptual, storied and deeply layered, and most of those layers are thickly coated with a kind of tragic, sinister murk. The trio claim that Dark Souls had some level of influence on the album, and it’s easy to pick out. As well as being unsettling, it feels despairing, hopeless, like the heat is draining from it. Not exactly ideal for a Monday morning commute, but perfect for that All Hallows’ Eve Mentality.