It's been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvoin one of Hollywood's great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs,made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson DanielDavies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. In the years since, Carpenter, Carpenter, and Davies have released closeto a dozen musical projects, including a growing library of studio albums andthe scores for David Gordon Green's trilogy of Halloween reboots. With LostThemes IV: Noir, they've struck gold again, this time mining the rich history ofthe film noir genre for inspiration.Since the first Lost Themes, John has referred to these compositions as"soundtracks for the movies in your mind." On the fourth installment in theseries, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by,what makes these songs "noirish" is sometimes slippery and hard to define,and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the greatAmerican noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters andDavies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone. The noir quality, then, issomething you understand instinctively when you hear it, as in connected inan emotional way.The trio's free-flowing chemistry means Lost Themes IV: Noir runs like a welloiled machine-the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John's own Christine. It's a chemistrythat's helped power one of the most productive stretches of John's creative life,and Noir proves that it's nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.
