The Four EPs of the Apocalypse
The 2021 edition of my annual Halloween playlist, with commentary!
The inspiration for this was simple - cross The Beta Band’s album The Three E.P.’s with the mythological Four Horsemen to continue my annual tradition of themed Halloween playlists. From there, I referenced past works to gauge how many songs should be included in total and then devoted an even split amongst each rider; eight songs apiece for Plague, War, Famine and Death. That was the only easy part of this playlist.
It was one of two original candidates for the 2020 Halloween edition, both of which ended up being abandoned mere days before the holiday for one that was a pure reaction to the terror of the year in which it was made - an expression of the feeling of abject, incapacitating hopelessness encroaching on so many American minds leading into November 2020. I could have used a playlist I’d created along similar lines from earlier in the year, but that would have been a disservice to a work meant to stand on its own. Ultimately, the ease with which 2020 ended up coming together bespeaks a particular existential necessity.
Still. I was still left with a good idea that felt too rich to abandon but too difficult to keep banging my head against so soon after solving 2020. Part of the trouble stemmed from how literally or liberally to interpret the theme of each E.P. and finding songs that fit. I like to build these organically as much as possible; starting familiar and branching out through discovery from there. Caving and typing “Plague,” or, “Famine,” into the search bar of Spotify felt like cheating. I did it anyway because this is, in fact, just a playlist. I take it seriously, but I also want to have fun.
Running with that joy is where some of my favorite creative decisions came from. What would drive home the theme of War better than using only songs from straight, white men? Yes, one of the bands founded the Tibetan Freedom Concert series, another is basically the template for progressive, DIY punk, and most of the songs directly referencing war are actually anti-war. But it wouldn’t be the first time a certain type of person looking to be angry misinterpreted loud music.
Germination bends much more horticulturally than it does pathological, but, it’s also got the word “germ,” in it, which is all I needed! The same goes for tracks with titles like Spill The Milk and Hallow Hollow or Argument - they embody their concepts better than a list of tracks which all happen to have Famine or War in their name. And as much as that lenience grants me license for playful details like Hey Man Nice Shot following Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun, it also makes it easier for me to include less obvious choices across the board.
Towards the end of the second round of revisions that picked up six months after I’d first abandoned this, I realized it was lacking some voices. Diversity has been a deliberate theme of at least one past Halloween playlist and it’s a conscious decision to not just choose stuff from my iPod. I wish I could say it didn’t take this year’s news to remind me to add music from Asian artists, but it did. I started digging and happily discovered the aforementioned Ryuichi Sakamoto piece and a delicious Buffalo Daughter track that fit perfectly between the bleakness of Nicolas Jaar and a classic Clinic freakout. HEALTH had always been on the list and just about always closed it out, but I decided on a remix that sounds more like music Actually Dying to be the last thing you hear.
The final piece of the puzzle was the cover art. I wanted to go back to making that myself and for 2020 had drawn something up that was as satisfying as all the other work I’d done at the time. I started to see new images and designs during the second round of work but put off making it until I’d gotten the music sorted out. A low-key obsession with the CMYK color model combined with Warhol and a half-remembered XTC album cover were the references for what ended up looking almost exactly like what I’d pictured in my head. A refreshing change from the previous year.
Sloppy cursive is about all I’m capable of even when I’m not writing on glass with an Apple pencil, but it’s an energy that fits the color. The heart was at the end of the title on both cover designs. Is it a kiss? A wink? An author’s signature? A pleasing shape? Yes.
Enjoy
