John Carpenter is already well known as a director, producer, writer, composer and even bit-part actor in the movies he has made. Now you can add to that list live keyboard playing frontman in a band.

The evening started off with support from the Italian ‘giallo horror film-scores’ creator Arcimago who is now based in Brighton. I’d seen him a week ago at the Oxjam festival and was impressed though at The Dome he sounded even better. His simple beats and melodies sounded more anthemic here and he put on more of a performance to the audience that increased throughout his set. It was the perfect warm-up act for what was to follow.  

John Carpenter’s career really started with his science fiction comedy film Dark Star in 1974 and included his own electronic synthesizer style soundtrack. Something that would become a trademark of his in his following films like Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween 1-3, The Fog, Escape from New York (and L.A), Christine, Big Trouble in Little China, Prince of Darkness, They Live, In the Mouth of Madness, Village of the Damned, Vampires, Ghosts of Mars to name a few.

While his movies cover a range of styles one common theme is they all have elements of suspense often with scenes without much happening visually accompanied with simple but memorable electronic music. Over the last couple of years he has released Lost Themes I & II, a collection of music that never quite made it into any of his films.

Unsurprisingly the stage had a massive cinema screen at the back which showed the best clips from the movies the songs came from and the show started with Escape from N.Y. though unfortunately John seemed to be having problems with his keyboard during this track. Once that was fixed he settled in and looked like he really enjoyed performing the rest of the concert. After some more movie music from Assault on Precinct 13 he moved on to a few of the Lost Themes tracks and the back-projections were replaced with more traditional rock concert lighting.

You may be forgiven for thinking that an evening of music from the movies would be your typical orchestra and conductor affair but tonight was far from that. With John Carpenter at the front of the stage with a simple midi keyboard linked up to a laptop he was backed by a solid rock band arrangement. Bass, guitars, drums and a second keyboard player. If you ignored all the visual tricks and just listened to the music then it sounded much more like an instrumental rock concert than a classical recital of a more traditional soundtrack.

Though John added some nice touches on the visual side like drenching the stage in smoke for the theme from The Fog or the whole band putting on shades for They Live. He has not always written the music for his films and for The Thing he worked with the legendary Ennio Morricone which he performed in his honour.

Carpenter provided some nice little interludes between tracks like talking about looking for girl with green eyes with Kurt Russell, for Big Trouble in Little China, as being one of his most fun memories. Or saying “Please drive carefully when you go home” before the final track from Christine.

A good third of the concert was from the Lost Themes albums and these tracks gave John and the band more space to have a bit of fun. The guitarist was especially good at pulling off the L.A. rock guitar poses and often caught the eye while John was continuously encouraging the crowd, who did not really need much encouragement and pulling off a few rock poses himself.

For the closing song from In the Mouth of Madness John was impressively lit by two spotlights either side of the stage and returned with the first encore from Prince of Darkness, one of the most operatic and gothic songs in the set.

As a final nod to his film history the concert ended with The End in big letters on the screen and everyone left with their favourite Carpenter themes no doubt rolling round their heads for the next few days.
Jonski Mason

Website: theofficialjohncarpenter.com