Light Widening & Whatever Heaven - A Halloween Album II - Cassette Tape

Owen Nelson (Light Widening) and Jeremy Leasure (Whatever Heaven) team up for the sequel to Light Widening’s 8-song record "A Halloween Album" released in 2017. It’s seven years later and the sequel no one expected is finally here. After obsessing over 1980s horror films for years, Leasure desired to take his experimental ambient project Whatever Heaven into the realms of John Carpenter, Tangerine Dream, and Angelo Badalamenti scores. Initially just replicating those sounds, it became apparent that the songs felt hollow without the visceral narratives of those films juxtaposing against the cold synthetic synthesizers and wailing guitars of those composers' best work. Owen Nelson was brought into the fold with the idea of bringing the gothic folk horror of "A Halloween Album" into the VHS era. 

With the addition of Nelson, the songs slowly became more pop-oriented while simultaneously stranger. Gone were the ambient soundscapes, now every song felt like it could soundtrack the end credits of the most obscure horror VHS in your local Blockbuster. Nelson wrote lyrics and melodies while Leasure handled all of the instrumentation on the record. Eventually, their friend Emily Monnig was recruited to sing lead and backup vocals throughout the record. The lyrics play out as a series of classic horror tropes; ghosts, zombies, serial killers, and werewolves butting up against an interest in new age mysticism, occult lore, and mysterious storytelling that absorbs the listener into the strange uncanny universe of each song.