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John Carpenter Night Music Video
John Carpenter Night Music Video

Watch Film Legend John Carpenter's Haunting, Futuristic Music Video For "Night"

Lenny Kravitz, Grace Jones, Lauryn Hill, Lion Babe, Thundercat, SZA & More Rock The Afropunk Festival 2015 in Brooklyn, NY.

We at Okayplayer are big fans of the films of thriller and horror auteur John Carpenter, and so it's with much cinematic excitement that we bring news of his just-released music video for the ominous single "Night." The brief but captivating clip stars Carpenter himself, who uses an Oculus Rift-style headset to play the role of a masked robotic figure who drives the streets of a city at night before ultimately pulling over. (We won't spoil the strange ending.) The video was directed by Gavin Hignight and Ben Verhulst, and Hignight said inspiration for its scenes struck almost immediately. "Upon hearing 'Night' by John Carpenter, my head was instantly filled with these nighttime highway road dreamscapes," Hignight said. "Someone or something, haunted, traveling the road alone in the late hours. Our goal was to take that feeling and put it into a video that paid tribute to the film work of Carpenter but at the same time gave him a new world to play in... in this case, literally through Virtual Reality."

"Night" is taken from Carpenter's debut non-soundtrack LP, Lost Themes, and is a piece of haunting brilliance. Underpinned by a cycling synthesizer line that inspires just the right amount of dread, the track is one massive, patient false crescendo. Warbling keyboards, dark noises, and glassy guitars enter from unseen places, but the song never explodes; Carpenter has spared listeners the trauma on this one, and the song fades gently into parts unknown. "Night" is but a deep shadow that passes as we all hold our breath. Watch the video below, and purchase Lost Themes on iTunes today.