Shlohmo – Teeth
Electronic artist Shlohmo has a serious aptitude for the atmospheric. His tracks range from the uplifting to the tragic to the deeply, deeply unsettling. This is probably his masterpiece in the latter regard, it sounds like a robot’s death rattle. Initially just an onslaught of disjointed industrial chatter, an almost hip-hop beat phases in along with some heavy, overwhelming synthesized throbs. It’s almost impossible to listen to without getting sucked in.
Boards of Canada – Beware the Friendly Stranger
While this is only a 42 second loop, it remains one of the most spectral collections of noises ever committed to the airwaves. The album it’s taken from, Geogaddi, is a fairly potent laxative as a whole, but this track is on a whole different level. There’s a kind of beauty to the sparseness of it, and the distant echo of playing children, coupled with the title, makes it that much more evocative. It was actually used as the backing music for Salad Fingers. Need I say more?
Masahiro Ikumi – Virtual Mima
This is the only music on this list taken from a score. Why? Largely because most soundtrack music owes its scareitude as much to the footage/gameplay that it’s affixed to as itself. This track however is scary no matter how you hear it. Taken from the 1997 anime Perfect Blue, the distant bell sounds and electronic thrums are creepy enough, but when the vocaloid humming comes in you’ll be in a ball on the floor before the track even hits the 2 minute mark. One of my brother’s friends actually had a panic attack whilst listening to this.
Aphex Twin – Come to Daddy
Perhaps a somewhat obvious choice, but a valid one all the same. Richard D. James has made some overwhelmingly gorgeous music over the years, but those aren’t the words I’d necessarily use to describe Come to Daddy. More along the lines of OH GOD MAKE IT STOP. The heavy, frothing guitar, the frantic DnB break and the repeated reminder that something lurking within the depths of this track will eat your soul. Please don’t eat my soul, Richard D. James, I didn’t download Syro when it leaked, honest.
Sunn 0))) – Aghartha
Clocking in at 16 minutes, this is by far and away the longest track on this list. There are many deeply disturbing tracks emanating from the world of dark, droning post-rock, from Godspeed to This Will Destroy You to Isis, but this track, from Sunn 0)))’s magnificent Monoliths and Dimensions takes it for me. It’s like being dragged to hell by your eardrums. A massive quaking attack of the heaviest, hardest guitar-led distortion you’ve ever heard flings you into a slowly unfolding death-march of nightmare fuel. The compressed, contorted brass the eventually arrives sounds like a horde of pissed-off zombie hornets. A deep voiced, grim description of the ‘Hollow Earth’ concept runs over it, if you manage to last that long without shivering yourself into a liquid state…
If you have any other creepy tunes that you think belong on this list, let us know in the comments. After that it might be worth putting the Pokemon theme on loop for a while.
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