FROM THE SWAMPS

Written In Waters is one of the first avant-garde black metal albums ever to be released. It's a queasy, sickening, twisting ride through hellish landscapes. Very much so an acquired taste, but definitely worth the time listening to if you like your extreme metal weird  or experimental . Also if you like seemingly impromptu jazz sections there is plenty of that in here. Lots of surprises. Written In Waters

Grand Mutation is the result of an hour-long jam session between noise artist Lasse Marhaug and accomplished organist Nils Asheim. Accurate words to describe this album would be (of course) dark...atonal...commanding...hypnotic...and these artists achieve a synergy that works very well.  Another great installment in Marhaug's staggeringly prolific discography. Organ music is perfect for Halloween time, no? Grand Mutation

Carnival Of Souls is a film that I watched the other day that completely blew me away. It felt like a David Lynch-type movie that came out way before his time, a mixture of the "Hitchhiker" plot in The Twilight Zone and the movie Repulsion . But as this is a music blog and not a film blog, I'll just talk about the soundtrack. The soundtrack itself wasn't released until 1998, probably because Carnival Of Souls was a B-Movie, and didn't receive the recognition it deserved when it first came out. The music is all original, and it is composed almost entirely of atmospheric, and often atonal, organ music (the protagonist is a church organist so it makes sense). The soundtrack also includes bits of dialogue from throughout the film that complement the organ music quite well. For fans of Leyland Kirby, or The Caretaker , definitely check this out. The music is very similar in many ways. Carnival Of Souls