Buttkickin’ Halloween Songs: “Salem’s Secret” — Peter Gundry (2015)

No quoted lyrics this time around. We’re featuring our first instrumental piece of the season.

While doing my annual summertime due diligence, where your host starts looking for new and fascinating pieces to feature for our Halloween playlist, I discovered the work of Australian composer Peter Gundry. Gundry has released numerous albums that specialize, according to his bio, in Fantasy, Celtic, Dark, and Magic-themed musical compositions.

And I pretty much fell for his work almost immediately.

While I’m not going to put on airs that I’m somehow all knowledgeable about Gundry’s music, I can honestly say that the album’s that I’ve looked into are some of the most enjoyable and compelling fantasy-based orchestrations I’ve listened to in a good while. His ability to conjure foreboding (but also sometimes delightful) imagery through music alone is intoxicating.

I’ve mostly listened two of his albums, The Edge of Darkness and his latest album .Goëtia. You could honestly put on either LP on Halloween night and have the perfect playlist for moody, haunting, evocative, thrilling music all evening. I went with Salem’s Secret as my choice tonight because it was one of the first of his tracks I discovered.

I’m a sucker for cello and piano working on polyphonic concordance. Combined with a powerful choral backbone and interspersed, almost unintelligible whispers, and Salem’s Secret becomes that much more riveting.

Don’t even listen to me anymore. Click the video below for a much stronger argument.

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