���Finally back in stock (and now completely out of print, sold out from the source), and finally reviewed: the Death Waltz reissue of John Carpenter's wonderfully spooky score to his 1980 nautical ghost story The Fog, a loving homage to the classic ghost stories of MR James and Arthur Machen that is jolted with doses of shocking 80's era violence and gruesome special effects. Thirty years later, The Fog still continues to be one of Carpenter's most overlooked films, but I'm of the opinion that it's one of his best, an intensely atmospheric and often deeply creepy tale of a shipwrecked crew returning from their watery grave to wreak vengeance on the denizens of the seaside town of Antonio Bay, whose ancestors originally sent the ghastly crew to their doom.

��� Carpenter's score for The Fog was substantially different from his other, more minimalist electronic scores from the era, and is one of his most expansive and understated works. Blending together piano and synthesizer with sonic textures that evoke the isolation of the doomed coastal town, the music for The Fog is permeated with a mournful, accursed vibe; in place of the minimal pulsating drum machines and searing nocturnal synthesizers that one usually associates with Carpenter, this goes for a much moodier, more gothic feel as it works to evoke the eldritch feel of Carpenter's old-fashioned ghost story. The record starts off perfectly with the opening sequence of John Houseman's character recounting the tale of the Elizabeth Dane to a group of children, and from there moves on to the score itself, the main theme crafting an exquisitely creepy atmosphere of dread and sorrow as it interweaves pipe organ-like tones and Carpenter's signature minimal synthesizer style. Subsequent tracks skillfully employ hushed, echoing rhythms and minimal percussive patterns with his utterly gloomy piano theme and dark, droning keys, these sounds growing ever more dreadful and malevolent as the score progresses, a briny blighted ambience unfolding over distant bathysphere clanks, monstrous distorted rumblings and swirling stygian drift churning in the depths, fearsome sheet-metal reverberations and ominous, plaintive piano chords pulsing in the deep, surrounded by swirls of ghoulish electronic effects, and swells of nightmarish orchestral terror and ghostly organ peal like foghorn blasts through the dread mist, answered by the far off lonely cry of a distant buoy. Later in the score, these sounds build into pulse-pounding sequences of ghostly pursuit and murder, synth chords resembling the steady inexorable tolling of a bell, drifting into dread-filled passages of gothic pipe organ and deep, malevolent bass throb. Definitely a classic Carpenter score that showcased another side to his unique style, The Fog also works surprisingly well on its own as a musical piece, the length and expansiveness of the tracks turning this into a fantastic slab of ghostly, funereal ambient music.

��� The second version of Carpenter's score to be released by Death Waltz, this "Blake's Gold Edition" is a 180 gram double LP set pressed on gold vinyl, released in a limited edition of one thousand copies and housed in a heavyweight gatefold jacket with fantastic ghastly album art from Dinos Chapman and liner notes from Carpenter himself, the two records featuring both the original movie score as well as a host of musical cues from the film that have never been previously made available on vinyl.