I think it’s about time we have a serious discussion about the canonization of Halloween music—like, what am I supposed to do with a playlist made up of the definition-of-camp “Monster Mash,” the Halloween theme, and Kanye’s “Monster”? That’s three completely different vibes right there that require me to shift from dancing like an idiot to feeling a sense of spine-tingling horror to, well, I guess going back to dancing like an idiot.
Tom Fec—the sometimes-masked singer behind the demented synth music project Tobacco—has a solution to this issue. Rather than focusing on the hokey, all-ages appeal of Party City’s definition of “Halloween,” Fec goes straight to the source, crafting a playlist of songs that pertain to the “Devil’s Night.” “With Halloween music you either have the schlocky shit, or all the John Carpenter Jrs who do the synth arpeggio thing in a different order,” he shares. “So this playlist is for Devil’s Night when stuff can happen. There’s some ambient in here that also passes as pretty, but what I love about ambient is the way it can accentuate a mood.”
Stream his full playlist below, which mostly sounds like a darker, more ambient take on Fec’s own twisted ambient pop as heard on his new record, Hot Wet & Sassy, which drops today. Listen to that here.
