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Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
12:30 PM GMT 28/10/2009
Asked what tunes make them feel happy, sad, horny or uplifted, most folks can reel off examples. Ask them to name pieces of music that scare the living bejesus out of them, though, and brows tend to furrow. From The Monster Mash to the groovy exorcism service offered by Ray Parker Jr's theme from Ghostbusters, pop, at least, tends to de-fang the purportedly terrifying. Dig deeper, though, and there is some genuinely frightening music underfoot, its ability to unsettle us tied to personal associations or some inherently scarifying trait of the arrangement or lyric.
Association plus sonic disquiet is, of course, a powerful double-whammy. Think of the ominous, two-note motif that signals an approaching great white shark in Jaws, or the shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho that Bernard Herrmann scored for jarring, pulse-quickening violins. "Even without the visuals, Hermann's music freaks you out," Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne told me recently. "Whatever is happening, you know it's not good."
Coyne reckons that songs that touch upon human evil or frailty - rather than, say, zombies we know don't really exist - tend to unsettle most. Unsolved Child Murder by The Auteurs; Napoleon XIV's They're Coming To Take Me Away Ha-Haaa! - these are deeply disturbing songs which play on our worst fears. You'd think twice about playing them and thrice before singing along.
It is intriguing, too, that even seemingly innocuous material can disturb. One friend of mine is inexplicably alarmed by the theme music to cartoon-dog animation Roobarb, while David Bowie's Life On Mars? gives my sister Alison the heebie-jeebies, though for wholly understandable reasons. As a teenager she and some friends dabbled with an ouija board one night and got spooked. "If it's really a dead spirit moving this glass, let Life On Mars? be on the radio right now," spoke sis into the candlelight. They turned on Clyde FM and were duly scared shitless. No more Hunky Dory for Al.
Less fathomable, on the face of it, is music's ability to spark collywobbles solely through the use of certain timbres, harmonies and harmonics. The demonic-sounding discord that results from combining the first and diminished fifth tones of a scale can be heard in both Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze and Camille Saint-Saëns Halloween-encompassing Danse Macabre, but when I broached the so-called 'Devil's Interval' with Tyondai Braxton of Battles recently, he told me it was but the tip of the scariness iceberg.
"If you want to be truly scared I suggest you go straight to Les Espaces Acoustiques by the French composer Gérard Grisey. He pioneered something called Spectralism where the chords form these weird alien harmonics. One movement of Les Espaces, Transitoires, is absolutely terrifying."
Just for the record, the song that I won't be listening to alone in a graveyard after midnight this Halloween is Kate Bush's Waking The Witch. Demonic growls, suffocated-sounding cut-up voices, and a tale of innocents drowned as coven girls - it's enough to put the willies up Vincent Price.
James McNair
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 12:30 PM GMT 28/10/2009
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There isn't that much in popular music that is genuinely scary, I don't think. The psychological horror in a song like Nick Drake's Black-Eyed Dog is pretty harrowing, but not the quite the stuff to raise hair on the back of the neck.
The freeform howling in the midst of Pink Floyd's Echoes will get the blood pumping if it's dark, you're alone and you've been smoking the waccy baccy, I can assure you.
But I think Scott Walker's Tilt is a bloody scary piece of music throughout, as are some of the murderous tunes on Suicide's harrowing masterpiece. But even these pale next to something like Penderecki's War Requiem. Borne of his holocaust experiences, this really is the stuff of nightmares.
Posted by Boo! at 2:29 PM GMT 28/10/2009 Report Abuse
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Some of that Doctor Who/Radiophonic Worshop stuff is truly creepy, and maybe it's something about synths but I find Tangerine Dream very unsettling (Zeit). Hmmm, quite Sunn 0)))-like, actually *shivers at thought*. For a nice old-fashioned spinechiller, how about Night On Bare Mountain? And Tubular Bells, for that Excorcist tingle...
Posted by Jo Public at 3:29 PM GMT 28/10/2009 Report Abuse
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Scariest album of all time: 'White Chalk' by P.J. Harvey. Regardless of what she's singing about, each song conjures sepia images of wraiths drifting through dessicated woods. Utterly chilling.
I've also freaked out a few friends over the years by playing them the Rolling Stones' "Sing This All Together (See What Happens" in the dark.
Posted by Psychobabble Mike at 12:52 PM GMT 30/10/2009 Report Abuse
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When I was a young lad I had a 45 rpm vinyl record of a song by Bloodrock called "D.O.A." It is the aftermath of a car collision. I remember thinking one day "I'm not playing this anymore, it's too weird. Lyrics such as "I try to move my arm and there's no feeling/When I look I see there's nothing there" As I write this there is a chill in the air....and it's only the 30th of OCober. Happy Halloween everyone!!
Posted by Brian at 1:19 PM GMT 30/10/2009 Report Abuse
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When I was a young lad I had a 45 rpm vinyl record of a song by Bloodrock called "D.O.A." It is the aftermath of a car collision. I remember thinking one day "I'm not playing this anymore, it's too weird. Lyrics such as "I try to move my arm and there's no feeling/When I look I see there's nothing there" As I write this there is a chill in the air....and it's only the 30th of October. Happy Halloween everyone!!
Posted by Brian at 1:20 PM GMT 30/10/2009 Report Abuse
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"Diane" by Husker Du - combines a catchy bass line and beautiful melody with terrible disturbing lyrics. Also "Permafrost" by Magazine - needs no explanation!
Posted by Sue at 2:09 PM GMT 30/10/2009 Report Abuse
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"Diane" by Husker Du - combines a catchy bass line and beautiful melody with terrible disturbing lyrics. Also "Permafrost" by Magazine - needs no explanation!
Posted by Sue at 2:12 PM GMT 30/10/2009 Report Abuse
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"Diane" by Husker Du - combines a catchy bass line and beautiful melody with terribly disturbing lyrics. Also "Permafrost" by Magazine - needs no elaboration!
Posted by Sue at 2:13 PM GMT 30/10/2009 Report Abuse
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"Diane" by Husker Du - combines a catchy bass line, beautiful melody, and terribly disturbing lyrics.
Also "Permafrost" by Magazine - no explanation is needed!
Posted by Sue at 2:15 PM GMT 30/10/2009 Report Abuse
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"Cat's foot iron claw, neuro-surgeons scream for more at paranoia's poison door. Twenty first century schizoid man" scares the hell out of my children and me - a King Crimson classic.
Posted by Jonathan Amos at 12:51 PM GMT 01/11/2009 Report Abuse
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Scariest album of all time hands down, William S. Burroughs' "Dead City Radio."
Posted by Spaceboy at 8:55 PM GMT 01/11/2009 Report Abuse
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Sucide's - Frankie Teardrop is the most disturbingly scary song I can think of
Posted by Anonymous at 6:28 AM GMT 02/11/2009 Report Abuse
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What about the Stranglers’ "Waltzinblack" or "Fyt" off This Mortal Coil’s first album? I know quite a few people who wouldn’t play either with the lights turned off.
Posted by etienne at 11:30 AM GMT 02/11/2009 Report Abuse
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Recently sat in the dark with a couple of friends listening to 'Frankie Teardrop' by Suicide....... now that is disturbing!
Scott Walker's more recent albums such as 'Tilt' and 'The Drift' are pretty frightening also.
'The Tell-Tale Heart' by Edgar Allen Poe, narrated by Iggy Pop is a fantastic listen, as is 'What's He Building...' by Tom Waits. My young daughter used to listen to those two tracks as a treat before bed ! Does that register as Child abuse?!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by Anonymous at 2:52 PM GMT 08/11/2009 Report Abuse
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