A Closer Listen
Every year, we look for the perfect release to review on Halloween, and this year’s choice is particularly fitting. If you’re hosting a haunted house tonight, or entertaining trick or treaters, we recommend this as your soundtrack. Total Spook Mixtape is ready-made, a 100-minute mix from Luigi Monteanni, co-founder of the Artetetra label, released on Discrepant’s Sucata Tapes imprint. In compiling the release, Monteanni turned to the cassette and CD culture of the 80s and 90s, concentrating on scary music and sound effect releases; or at least, releases that were advertised as scary, even though they were usually much less so. Many of these productions were themselves inspired by Disney’s 1964 record Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House, as well as early horror films that might have seemed terrifying when they were released but now seem campy at best. All told, this makes Total Spook Mixtape a whole lot of fun: a cornucopia of sounds that range from the obscure to the nostalgic, neither as benign as Casper nor as terrifying as Pennywise.
We start with staccato strings, heavy breathing and the chortling laugh of nearby monsters. In the distance, someone screams; a heartbeat pounds, faster and faster. “You won’t escape me this time!” brags a sinister man over a demented organ. Will the DJ be able to keep this up for 100 minutes? He will, while carving out space for various musical segments: session musicians working for a dime, theremins galore, pitches shifted and a myriad of studio tricks come into play.
Church bells chime, choirs sing, and the supernatural element is introduced. Lightning cracks (of course!), a cat yowls, dogs bark, ghosts go “ooo.” Monteanni reveals some of his sources: Elvira’s Fright Sound Tape, Haunted House Party, Shivers! House of Horror, dozens in all. Victims cry and scream; cauldrons boil; doors creak; the wind howls. But every once in a while, there’s a funky patch, like when singers yell “Swamp Monsters!” It’s all in good fun, like the sinister tent on the cover. Sure, the wolves are howling, but we’re all going to live, right?
“Tonight, you will meet the sca-a-a-ariest monsters of all time!” Well, not exactly ~ but that’s the point. “It’s alive! It’s alive!” But what exactly is it? It’s the long-lost sense of Halloween as a time to face our fears, heading out into the darkness in search of candy, trusting that the adults whose home we were visiting would not gobble us up instead. Since then we’ve found other things to be afraid of, making those classic monsters seem quaint.
The library highlight arrives late – a recitation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Haunted Palace” – but it emphasizes just how engaging camp can be. The poem pales in comparison to “The Raven,” but the voice, half serious, half teasing, makes it effective. As the final growl fades, we find ourselves grateful for this time capsule, a reflection of a more innocent era that wasn’t really that long ago. Happy Halloween, everyone! (Richard Allen)
Fri Oct 31 00:01:45 GMT 2025