John Carpenter's Cathedral

About

After four collaborative <i>Lost Themes</i> albums and four film scores, the songwriting team of legendary <i>Halloween</i> and <i>Escape from New York</i> director John Carpenter, his son Cody, and godson Daniel Davies’ next project started with a dream. And as with most of the elder Carpenter’s dreams, this one was about frustration. “I’m directing a movie and nobody is listening to me,” he says. “I can’t get anywhere. Time is running out. Those types of dreams. But this one was unusual.” It went like this: A detective finds a human body turned inside out, which leads her to an abandoned cathedral in downtown Los Angeles. The cathedral has a second cathedral hidden underneath it, where a supernatural entity lurks. As the bodies pile up, a battle for survival ensues. “He said, ‘Oh, I had this dream, and it’s called <i>Cathedral</i>,” guitarist Davies recalls. “And I thought, ‘Wow, his dreams have titles!’ Time passed, and we started talking about it with Cody and thought, ‘What if we did a score to that idea?’ The <i>Lost Themes</i> albums were scores to the movies in your mind, and this could be the score to the movie in John’s mind. So, we ran with it.” The elder Carpenter would describe a scene, and the trio would score it as they might a film. Only instead of viewing clips from a working print, they were writing from Carpenter’s verbal cues. “The way John describes things, it just paints a picture in your mind instantly,” Davies says. “He’d say, ‘We have a big battle sequence here’ or ‘Someone’s being murdered.' And then we would write based on that.” As dark as anything in the trio’s discography, <i>Cathedral</i> is much more guitar-oriented than the <i>Lost Themes</i> albums; it’s also their first record with live drums. The result just might be their first heavy metal album. You can hear it in the snaky guitars on opener <b>“Primeval,”</b> the hard-rock groove of <b>“Elevator,”</b> and the classic thrash rhythm of <b>“Lord of the Underground,”</b> while John and Cody’s synths take the lead on the ominous <b>“Inside Out”</b> and <b>“Desolation in the Underworld.”</b> “I felt a little less protective of it being synth-driven,” Davies says of the material. “And it just feels good to be bathed in heavy guitars. John is always encouraging that: ‘We need something heavy, something driving here.’ And the imagery he described just lent itself perfectly to that. Big drums, choirs, low-tuned guitars. There’re also pretty melodies throughout the album in the more intimate parts that are then played over a heavy guitar or heavy drums.” After tracking <i>Cathedral</i>, Carpenter teamed up with his wife Sandy King and writer Sean Sobczak to turn his dream into a graphic novel. <i>Cathedral</i> the album then became the soundtrack to <i>Cathedral</i> the graphic novel, with each track corresponding to a specific section of the book. The album’s liner notes include prompts for each song to create a fully interactive experience. “My preference is that people spend their money and buy the graphic novel because that money returns to me, which is a wonderful thing,” Carpenter says. “But it’s not a requirement. You can enjoy the music all by itself.”

via Apple Music

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