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From the album “Lost Themes IV: Noir“, out now on Sacred Bones Records. Listen / buy: Starring: John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies Staz & Misha Lindes Natalie Mering Directed by: Ambar Navarro Produced by: Hannah Kinlaw DP: Max Flick Pre Production AD: Dan Hanson Production Coordinator: Corrie Zaccaria 1st AC: Michelle Alanis Gaffer: Danner Gardner Key Grip: Trevor Hollander Stylist: Kiki Stash Hair & Makeup: Leticia Llesmin BTS Stills: Cloudy Thoughts PA/Art Assistants: Matthew Rielly & Danz Johnson Prop Car: Joseph Rincon Location: The Pink Box Studio Titles: Mike Pargas Art Driver: Richard Sanchez Breakfast Catering: Cosmic Vinyl Special Thanks: Liquid Death @johncarpenterofficial It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. In the years since, Carpenter, Carpenter, and Davies have released close to a dozen musical projects, including a growing library of studio albums and the scores for David Gordon Green’s trilogy of Halloween reboots. With Lost Themes IV: Noir, they’ve struck gold again, this time mining the rich history of the film noir genre for inspiration. Since the first Lost Themes, John has referred to these compositions as “soundtracks for the movies in your mind.” On the fourth installment in the series, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs “noirish” is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone. The noir quality, then, is something you understand instinctively when you hear it. “Some of the music is heavy guitar riffs, which is not in old noir films,” Davies notes. “But somehow, it’s connected in an emotional way.” The trio’s free-flowing chemistry means Lost Themes IV: Noir runs like a well-oiled machine—the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.
