John Carpenter – Lost Themes Remixed

A glorious paean to the science fiction soundtracks of our youth, legendary sci-fi and horror director John Carpenter’s Lost Themes, released earlier this year, is a portentous journey through ascetic beats, glacial synths and somber piano chords.

It’s also unashamedly 80s in its aesthetic, and with Lost Themes Remixed, the objective – with interventions from the likes of Blanck Mass, Prurient, Zola Jesus and Bill Kouligas – was clearly to slough away some of the original’s more outmoded aural elements whilst retaining Carpenter’s dystopian scope. Uniform’s Vortex remix is undoubtedly the most danceable, retaining the clean piano keys of the original while adding melodic synth and more sophisticated percussion, while Blanck Mass updates Fallen with his now characteristic caustic techno onslaught.

Not all of these remixes enhance the original; ohGr’s reimagining of Wraith eviscerates the track's gentle simplicity with its heavy-handed beats. But then again, the beauty of Lost Themes Remixed is that it allows two versions of Carpenter's work to co-exist – one for nostalgia’s sake, another for the here and now.