Category: Halloween

It’s That Time of Year! The Holidays Are Upon Us…

Usually I try to make a bit of a production about the holiday season, doing weeks and weeks of Holiday Broadcasts, and producing some killer radio content… for those who enjoy this time of year. So when I realized that it is already over HALFWAY through October when I had a chance to sit down and think about the Holiday Season, I realized that this year was not going to get the same kind of treatment that I try to offer most years.

However, as it happened, I managed to produce a fair amount of musical content, all centered around the holiday. Namely: three of the projects I’m involved with actually produced holiday items this year. And there’s plenty of other items to choose from, too, if you want to enjoy material from over the years, too. So this card is a little shortcut to all of that stuff. Here’s a little more detail, for those who are interested:

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1.) The Eleven-SixtyFours new HOLIDAY VIDEO, “An Open Grave”!

The Eleven-SixtyFours are brand new this year, and have already released to singles. This track is from their forthcoming EP, “Sack The Sacklers,” and this is the first video from that EP. Perfect for Halloween, this is our theme song this year, helping get us in the mood when we’re just not feeling it.

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2.) DEATH MUTATIONS – THE RITUAL EP (Postcard)

October’s postcard this year is a new release by DEATH MUTATIONS, with a new EP of Experimental Horror atmospheres. This is perfect for putting on the porch, and letting it play for anyone who passes by the house. It also works magnificently on it’s own, in your home or on the bus, commuting to work. Not for the faint of heart.

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3.) IVO – Salientia Cassette

At least a couple years in the making, this new project is the collected effort between Le Petit Sac and Mini-Mutations, and offers an experimental horror release that is a frantic and chaotic as one would expect, with long passages of eerie, spooky sounds that are perfect for setting the mood.

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4.) Mini-Mutations – May The Circle Be Unbroken Split CD w/ Michael Cosma.

Produced and released last year, this split CD contains 30 minutes each from both Mini-Mutations and Michael Cosma, exploring some of the more eerie sides of experimental music. For the Mini-Mutations side, you are treated to an immersive audio narrative, with music, that takes you to some terrifying locations. This release now comes with a download code that offers an EXTENDED version of the story, and instrumental versions of the primary tracks. This is an excellent release that you can’t get anywhere else.

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5.) Austin Rich Reads “The Ways of Ghosts” by Ambrose Bierce

One of the earliest attempts I made at spoken word, this collects all the pieces that I aired on the radio, plus some bonus bits that hadn’t been released yet, to create this holiday offering. The CD and the digital release each contain slightly different bonus tracks, making your preference determine what sort of extras you’re likely to hear.

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6.) Mini-Mutations – Hallotide Harmonies (Live Digital Album)

Recorded during the first Mini-Mutations tour, opening for Mark Hosler in 2018, this digital album collects all the spooky and scary material that I performed. Two and a half hours of live, mutated and creepy performances, guaranteed to put you in the mood for an All Hallow’s Celebration!

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7.) Austin’s Annual Halloween Spook-tacular Podcast!

For the past 18 years, I’ve been collecting and presenting Halloween Radio, every year around this time. Now, you can listen to all of those broadcasts, covering a number of shows with over 100 hours of programming. Music, Old Time Radio, listeners calling in with scary ghost stories, live performances, experimental radio, and plenty of vintage audio fun, as we mine all of recorded history for anything scary, spooky, sinister, or just plain full of Halloween Fun. It’s all right here, for you to enjoy!

Halloween Spook-tacular, Twenty Twenty!

A Roundup Of Halloween-y Things You Might Enjoy!

I started getting serious about Halloween radio in 2003, and since then, I’ve done my best to offer some very cool sounds that complement this time of year. With that in mind, I have a few Halloween themed audio albums that you can enjoy, and a Halloween podcast that you’ll want to subscribe to! We had a lot of fun this year, and I’m pretty proud of what it out there. So, maybe you can add these to your holiday playlists?

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HORRIFYING HARMONIES!

The Cosma-Mutations Split CD.

Part of Hal McGee’s Electronic Cottage Splits series of releases, which has paired 40 artists in a number of complementary and impressive ways, and created an excellent body of work that displays a great cross-section of experimental artists working today. Michael Cosma & I cooked up a little Halloween release, with eerie tunes and a spooky original story set to music. An hour of experimental Halloween sounds that will complete any home. You can pick up a digital or CD version from the EC Bandcamp Page, or get a CD version from the WTBC Store.

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The Ways of Ghosts by Ambrose Bierce (Read by Austin Rich)

Now five years old, this release compiles some recordings made for Halloween Radio, with some new recordings and other bits and bobs, to present our first Spoken Word release. The centerpiece is a reading of an Ambrose Bierce collection of stories, with music and SFX that highlight the supernatural eeriness of these creepy tales. You can pick up a digital copy form the WTBC Store.

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Hallowtide Harmonies by Mini-Mutations

Recorded live, while on tour with Mark Hosler during the first Mini-Mutations tour, the shows were building up to a big Halloween performance at the Re-Bar. This digital album collects almost two and a half hours of halloween atmospheres, creepy cut-ups, collage stories about trains & haunted houses, with lots of ghosts flitting about the entire time. While this only captures the “spooky” parts of that tour, those were some of the most fun, and they’re all here, for you to enjoy. You can pick up a digital version form the WTBC Store.

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BONE-CHILLING BROADCASTS!

Somewhere In-Between: A Radio Zine

This program launched in 2020, and it’s a collection of all sorts of stories about life in these modern times. For October, I read stories and poems that help put listeners in the holiday spirit, with selections from Richard Brautigan, Ambrose Bierce, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mark Twain, Robert Frost and O. Henry, some classic tales that are perfect for those late-night flights of fancy. The last installment of this four episode series airs tomorrow on KMUZ at 10:30 AM, but you can also catch all the shows by Subscribing To The Podcast.

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Mid-Valley Mutations

Keeping in-step with our annual tradition (going back to 2003), we offer four new radio broadcasts, with live music, a returning a guest, and a long trip to the movies… in an at-home, safely quarantined kind of way. It all begins with a live Mini-Mutations / forest journey into an ancient place I’ve never been to before, so I can catch a performance by Daona in a clearing. Then, I get lost on my way home, wind up in a House on Haunted Hill, then get stranded on Horror Island, and finally, get to the radio station where I get to hang out with DJ Victrola, who is more than game to talk Horror Movies with me. It’s a little MST3k, a little “live music overdrive,” a little “podcast hang with a friend you care about,” and all of it is very, very “in the mood.” The best way to stay in touch with this show is to subscribe to the podcast, here on iTunes, which includes roughly the last year or so of podcasts. But you can always visit midvalleymutations.com, to find all the back-episodes.

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Austin’s Annual Halloween Spook-tacular! 

If you want immediate access to hundreds of hours of free Halloween radio, then this is your one-stop shopping for all the fun. We have done it all over the years. Phone calls from people who had ghostly or supernatural experiences? Check. Recordings of Old Time Radio Horror broadcasts? Absolutely! 60’s monster songs and spooky frankenstein dance numbers? Undoubtedly. Trips through the Punk-In-Patch? In a Misfits shirt and everything! I even get guests to come and read scary stories on the radio, use Ouija boards, play live, or just enjoy the ambiance. I re-run all the old Closet Radio Halloween programs, and feature my annual sister-in-radio, DJ Victrola! This feed offers all the episodes, from all the shows, and give you the chance to enjoy some one-stop shopping for everything Halloween Radio. You will most definitely want to subscribe to this iTunes Feed so your party will have the right vibe! Can you dig it?

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Be Seeing You!

This has been an excellent season, and I look forward to it every year. Hopefully this brought a little joy to your ears, and helps set the tone for a fun a excellent season. This year has been hard. Maybe some fun music and radio will soothe you, for a little while, anyway.

Take care.

Look — A Ghost!

Austin’s Annual Halloween Spook-tacular! 

Subscribe in iTunes.

Subscribe with an agnostic feed.

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Halloween has always held a very special place for me, in that it is such a different holiday than almost anything else. Fall is setting in, the actual seasonal change fills you with a sense that you should celebrate the spookier elements in our lives. Dressing up, passing out treats, becoming in tune with the past. It is something we don’t do in that way at any other holiday, and for that, I am actually pretty excited. It has bee fun to see, in the last several years, the holiday become something that is celebrated for months in advance. It feels like something that I could even sense, way back in 2003, and I could tell there was a hole in the musical landscape, that could be filled by Halloween Music.

While there were certainly others who were collecting halloween music, and certainly I was only an amateur back then, I had hit upon this idea that summer, and needed to see it through: let’s put together a Halloween Mix to accompany the party my roommate was holding on The Day. To that end, I assembled a several hour mix of songs that I found, many in my collection (but certainly others from the internet and friends collection, as was the style at the time).

The mix was quite successful, so the following year, throughout the month of October, I brought this mix to my radio program on KPSU. And, since then, I’ve done my best to bring variations on this mix to the airwaves, to help ring in the season, usually beginning at the end of September.

Now, 16 years later, there are a number of shows available for you to enjoy, all with spooky novelty songs, scary Haunted House sound FX records, Old Time Radio in the horror and supernatural genre, and everything in-between, and, of course, plenty of visits from Vincent Price and Edgar Allen Poe. Over one hundred hours radio for you to enjoy, perfect for parties, putting out on the porch, or enjoying late at night, with all the lights out!

This is also a good time to pick up a copy of the new Halloween Release by Michael A. Cosma & Mini-Mutations. Designed like a Halloween record from the old days, this release contains songs and a spooky story (with SFX), that works perfectly out on the porch, on repeat.

And while you’re waiting to enjoy the music, check out the podcast. You won’t be sorry.

 

WTBC 0025: Michael A. Cosma / Mini-Mutations Split CD

A split release as part of the EC Split series by The Electronic Cottage. The CD includes download codes for “Hallowtide Harmonies” and “The Ways of Ghosts.” You should pick up the digital version from HalTapes, if you can!