# Day 1 listening



## Dinosaur1972 (Mar 28, 2007)

Projekt Presents: A Dark Cabaret (2005)

While searching for music by the darkly mysterious Jill Tracy, I ran across this little gem, a compilation of unusual throwback music by various artists on the Projekt label. As the title implies, most of these are done with the theatrical style of the roaring 20's - acoustic, lots of piano, trap set, a few strings ... very nostalgic.

Some highlights:

1. The Dresden Dolls - Coin Operated Boy
A terrific opening. A couple passages are very cleverly done (I won't spoil any surprises). I really like this song, though it isn't so much dark as it is just very clever.

3. Evil Night Together - Jill Tracy
I love this song. Slinky, gorgeous music with a kind of subtle naughtiness.

8. Knock Three Times - Black Tape For a Blue Girl
Outstanding work by a band I've followed for a long time.

11. True Love - Thoushaltnot
Good piano work, witty lyrics.

A couple tracks aren't so much "cabaret" as they are "angst-ridden Goth", so maybe the theme of the album doesn't apply perfectly to every track. Still, this is a uniquely fun album.

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The Ultimate Scary Sounds and Music for Your Halloween Bash (2008)

Yet another chapter in the very long book of Halloween sound effects albums. How does this hold up?
1. A Dance remix of "Night on Bald Mountain": It is bad. Do yourself a favor and skip it.
2. Cemetery: Lots of low winds, footsteps, some growling, some laughing. A girl crying - which is unsettling. Good track!
3. Salem's Lot: Bells, laughing witches, the same angry cat sound we've heard since 1960. It isn't bad, but there are some sci-fi type sounds that don't really belong.
4. Monster's Buffet: Some piano, monsters growling and people screaming. Not bad.
5. Ghost Waltz: An arrangement of a Mozart Requiem with scary sound effects. I had high hopes, but it was disappointing. Hey, it's crying girl again!
6. Jungle Sacrifice: Sounds like a lost tribe feeding people to a hungry lion. And an elephant.
7. Creeping Nightmare: Tries to be Danny Elfman music.

One thing I don't like about this album is that it tries to be a sound effects album, but they also use musical accompaniment - so each track plays more like a scene from a movie with a score. But the score never measures up to actual movie scores. And, when would you play this? You can't use it in a home haunt ... home haunts don't have musical scores, do they? If you want to be a sound effects album, just be that and be it well. Don't add music. I'll give Jungle Sacrifice a pass for the drums only.

8. - 12. These tracks actually isolate the spooky sounds from the tracks above. As sound effects, they actually work pretty well (once more from crying girl!), but at only 1.5 minutes long they aren't that effective.

This isn't a bad album, just a little misguided. Except that first track. That was really bad.


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