My wife and I are having some people over for a Halloween-themed dinner. She’s put me in charge of the music. She’s looking for spooky/scary music-- goth is ok but not silly/light-hearted stuff. For instance-- Bela Lugosi’s Dead is allowed, Monster Mash is not.
I’m looking for suggestions for music to play. Classical/rock/whatever. Any good ones out there?
Unquestionably the spookiest album I’ve ever heard. Whatever you do, don’t listen to it with the lights out. :shiver:
No lyrics, though.
Toccata and Fugue in D minor by Bach
Night on Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky
Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Dukas
It seems all the great classical suggestions I could think of, including those you mentioned, are compiled on this disc, so rather than list them, I’ll just let whoever’s interested clink the link and look at the track listing.
Good classical compilation there–it has Danse Macabre, which is a favorite of mine. May I also suggest a little Pink Floyd, specifically this album. Play “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In a Cave and Grooving With a Pict” followed by “Careful With That Axe, Eugene,” then follow up with “Set The Controls For the Heart Of The Sun.” If that doesn’t freak out the trick or treaters, you live in a very bad neighborhood… 
You might also try some of the soundtracks from Hitchcock movies, with Bernard Hermann scores. Not all the cuts would be “spooky” of course, but PSYCHO and VERTIGO have some very nice, very spooky music.
A theremin, unquestionably, would be perfect for this.
Not exactly spooky and most is not what I’d call ‘dinner’ music (although there is a Fiend Club Lounge CD by The Nutley Brass that might work), but certainly perfect for Halloween - just about anything by The Misfits, The Cramps, Bauhaus, and White/Rob Zombie.
Pet Sematary and Howling at the Moon - Ramones
The theme from Nightmare Before Christmas.
Black Sabbath’s first album.
Uriah Heep, The Magician’s Birthday and Demons and Wizards.
The scene in Wagner’s Flying Dutchman where the crew of a ship torments the undead crew of the Dutchman until they respond is pretty cool, but you must like German opera. 
“Satan fills our sails, and we break for nobody!”
Oh, and there’s also the scariest music in the WORLD. (OK, at least to me, since this place was one of my most favorite scary places growing up.)
If you can find it – I once had a tape of an actor reading the poems from H.P. Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth, with really creepy New-Age-y background music.
One of these Days by Pink Floyd
Helter Skelter has some sinister connatations.
Every Breath You Take and Murder by Numbers by the Police.
You ain’t heard scary until you’ve heard Carmen Lombardo and the boys singing Boo Hoo. Even scarier, it’s available as a ringtone. Humanity is doomed.
Not as much spooky as it is darkly humorous, but once again I’m plugging “Funeral March for a Marionette”, better known as the opening theme to “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour”.
Combine CK Dexter Haven’s suggestion of Bernard Hermann and ZebraShaSha’s theremin and you have Hermann’s score for “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. Very eerie.
Lots of Danny Elfman film scores are spooky. His first compilation, Music For a Darkened Theatre, is very good, with samples of his best themes and scores.
I came in to plug the “Classics from the Crypt” album, but I was beaten to it. I usually throw in some tunes from the “Nightmare Before Christmas” soundtrack as well, by Danny Elfman.
Diabolical Suggestion by Prokofiev.
This guy :eek:
I always play Gil Shaham: Devil’s Dance
on Halloween. I find it sets a perfect mood of elegant spookiness.
Two obvious ones come to mind:
The Twin Peaks soundtrack - by Angelo Badalamenti (sp?) - lots of sparse, airy pieces with weird, tense chords and slow resolutions. A couple have a slinky jazz feel as well, which could be perfect for a party. Very cool.
Threnody by Penderecki - his stuff was used a lot by Kubrick for the Shining and this piece is the one that is the out and out creepiest. Written for the victims of Hiroshima, it is supposed to musically represent the sensation of having your skin burned off your body via atomic attack - pleasant, eh?