Vampires, ghosts, zombies, axe-wielding lunatics… it’s just another day at the FACT office.

Today, however, there will be more bloodshed and general ghoulishness than usual for it is, of course, Halloween. To celebrate the occasion, and to get you in the mood for frightening yourself and others, we’ve put together a playlist of recently released tunes that range from the faintly eerie, icy and eldritch to the outright psychotic and murderous. Listen, enjoy, and make sure the doors are locked…

BO DEAL FEAT. CHIEF KEEF & WAKA FLOCKA FLAME
‘MURDA’

Yes, hip-hop has been in love with ominous atmospheres for a long time now, but Chicago right now – for various reasons of course, not just musical – is producing some of the scariest rap music released in years. We were tempted to include Chief Keef [pictured] and Fat Trel’s ‘Russian Roulette’ just for the chance to make a tasteless joke about Trel and Halloween sweets, but the Southside-produced ‘Murda’, which deals with underage kids holding weapons, takes the biscuit as well as the candy.

ZEBRA KATZ FEAT. NJENA REDDD FOXXX
‘IMA READ’

Perhaps ‘Ima Read’ wouldn’t make the cut if it wasn’t indelibly associated with probably the scariest music video of recent years. Then again, Zebra Katz and Njena Reddd Foxx’s calling card is well versed in the first principle of horror movies – namely, what you don’t show is more effective than what you do. Four minutes of whispered threats over a forbidding beat is all the pair need to get pulses racing and hackles raised.

BENEATH
‘STILL HURTS’

Listen to clip here

Halloween is nothing to FACT without some cold, hard UK underground dreadweight, and Beneath is currently bringing it like no other producer around.

A$AP ROCKY, A$AP ANT AND FLATBUSH ZOMBIES
‘BATH SALT’

There’s not exactly a shortage of spooky hip-hop doing the rounds – Haleek Maul and Main Attrakionz could both easily have made this list – but not many tracks have courted the grindhouse set quite as explicitly as Lords Never Worry cut ‘Bath Salt’. P On The Boards’ dolorous beat plays like a gloomy rework of Busta Rhymes’ ‘Gimme Some More’; A$AP Mob & the Zombies turn out gruff, sinister, chopped performances. Oh, and it’s about zombies, by a group of self-described zombies – that sort of effort gets you a free pass.

LUST FOR YOUTH
‘COVER THEIR FACES’

Lust For Youth’s lovelorn, post-Cold Cave synth-pop aesthetic took a surprising turn for the positive and redemptive on their latest album, Growing Seeds, which has been picked up by New York’s Sacred Bones label (Zola Jesus, Gary War, etc) for imminent re-release. However, there is darkness at the end of this brightly lit tunnel: namely pasty-faced goth-disco stomper ‘Cover Their Faces’.

MASSACOORAMAAN
‘DEAD LONG TIME’ (NGUZUNGUZU REMIX)

Nguzunguzu‘s schtick is often eerie, but there’s usually a playful streak at work too. Here, though, the L.A. duo sound positively malevolent. Stitched together out of the sound of pistols firing, windows smashing and a strangulated vocal reminding the listener that “you are dead”, ‘Dead Long Time’ (Remix) is the aural equivalent of staring down the barrel of a Benelli M4 – and not in a nice way.

SPACEGHOSTPURRP
‘MYSTICAL MAZE’

With its looped samples of screams and fire, you’d be forgiven for mistaking ‘Mystical Maze’ – the intro to Florida rapper Spaceghostpurrp’s lo-fi masterwork God of Black – for the intro to a Resident Evil game.

BROADCAST
‘THE EQUESTRIAN VORTEX’

Berberian Sound Studio, Peter Strickland’s extraordinary tribute to the European horror cinema of the 1970s, wouldn’t have been half the movie it was without an impeccable, witty score by Broadcast. Conceived by James Cargill and Trish Keenan shortly before the latter’s untimely death, it peaks with the wildly psychedelic title theme for film-within-a-film The Equestrian Vortex. The full Berberian soundtrack is to be released by Warp Records in January.

DEAD FADER FEAT. SENSATIONAL
‘FISHSH’

Anything off John Cohen’s brutal work it, no fits the bill: his serrated brand of lathe-tronica takes all the scuzzier elements of IDM, hip-hop and dubstep and fuses them into something uniquely nasty. ‘Fishsh’ is probably the freakiest of the bunch, setting shamanic vocals from raving soothsayer Sensational over a beat that sounds like Sir Killalot having the night sweats.

LOGOS
‘KOWLOON’

On the other side of the coin to Beneath’s granite-carved basslines, you have Logos, who’s emerged in the last eighteen months as a master of sparse, almost weightless, Event Horizon-style grime. ‘Kowloon’ is still his best.

RUSSELL HASWELL
‘BLACK METAL INSTRUMENTAL DEMO’

‘Black Metal Instrumental Demo’ might be the most accessible thing Haswell’s made in years, but it’s still plenty harrowing: a grim, impressionistic tribute to the early BM concerts the Coventry native experienced first-hand in Northern Europe in the ’90s.

LE1F
‘GAG’

Remember 1995 hero flick Species, where Forest Whitaker and Michael Madsen had to capture Natasha Henstridge’s alien hybrid before she mated with a human? Dark York freakylude ‘Gag’ sounds like the unfortunate end of a blind date with Sil. Le1f‘s music is pretty forward across the board, but where ‘Wut’ is ludic and lurid, ‘Gag’ is borderline terrifying, like being locked in the honeymoon suite with an incubus.