Apart from the occa­sion­al Blair Witch Project, scary movies need scary scores. But much like mak­ing a gen­uine­ly scary movie, com­pos­ing gen­uine­ly scary music becomes more of a chal­lenge all the time. By now, even the most timid movie­go­ers among us have sure­ly grown inured to the throb­bing bass, the tense strings, and all the oth­er stan­dard, increas­ing­ly clichéd instru­men­tal tech­niques used to gen­er­ate a sense of omi­nous­ness. Giv­en the ever-grow­ing pres­sure to come up with more effec­tive­ly dread-induc­ing music, the inven­tion of the Appre­hen­sion Engine was sure­ly inevitable. A part of the stu­dio of film com­pos­er Mark Kor­ven, it looks unlike any oth­er musi­cal instru­ment in exis­tence, and sounds even more so.

With a nor­mal instru­ment, says Kor­ven in the Great Big Sto­ry Video above, “you’re expect­ing it to have a sound that is pleas­ing.” But with the Appre­hen­sion Engine, “the goal is to just pro­duce sounds that, in this case, are dis­turb­ing.” What we hear is less music than a son­ic approx­i­ma­tion of the abyss itself, which some­how emerges from his manip­u­la­tion of a vari­ety of strings, bars, wheels, and bows attached to a wood­en box — as ana­log a device as one would ever encounter in the 21st cen­tu­ry. “I orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned the Appre­hen­sion Engine because I was tired of the same dig­i­tal sam­ples, which result­ed in a lot of same­ness,” says Kor­ven. “I was look­ing for some­thing more exper­i­men­tal, more acoustic, that would give me a lit­tle more of an orig­i­nal sound.”

Luthi­er Tony Dug­gan-Smith rose to the chal­lenge of craft­ing the Appre­hen­sion Engine. “You’re deal­ing with things that stir pri­mal emo­tions and feel­ings,” says Dug­gan-Smith of the sound of the instru­ment. Kor­ven thinks of it as “not music in the tra­di­tion­al sense at all,” but “it def­i­nite­ly evokes emo­tion, so I would call it music.” In a com­po­si­tion career more than three decades long,  Kor­ven has learned a thing or two about how to evoke emo­tion with sound. His best-known work so far is the score of Robert Eggers’ The Witch, which no less a hor­ror and sus­pense con­nois­seur than Stephen King has named as one of his favorite movies of all time. “The Witch scared the hell out of me,” King tweet­ed. “And it’s a real movie, tense and thought-pro­vok­ing as well as vis­cer­al.” And as the gui­tar-play­ing, music-lov­ing King under­stands, we react to noth­ing more vis­cer­al­ly than that which we hear.

Though the first Appre­hen­sion Engine was built by its very nature as a unique instru­ment, it has­n’t remained a one-off. The first Appre­hen­sion Engine begat an improved sec­ond ver­sion, or “V2,” and now, accord­ing to the instru­men­t’s offi­cial site, “there is an offi­cial V2+ mod­el which we are ready to pro­duce in small num­bers.” Upgrades include cus­tom mag­net­ic pick­ups, a “Hur­dy Gur­dy mech­a­nism,” and your choice of two dif­fer­ent mount­ing loca­tions for the reverb tank. A hand­made Appre­hen­sion Engine of your own won’t come cheap, and all pro­duc­tion runs will no doubt sell out as quick­ly as the first one did, but if you need to strike true hor­ror into the hearts of your lis­ten­ers, can you afford not to con­sid­er what Bri­an Eno, no stranger to the out­er lim­its of son­ic pos­si­bil­i­ty, has called “the most ter­ri­fy­ing musi­cal instru­ment of all time”?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Creepy 13th-Cen­tu­ry Melody That Shows Up in Movies Again & Again: An Intro­duc­tion to “Dies Irae”

The Musi­cal Instru­ments in Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Get Brought to Life, and It Turns Out That They Sound “Painful” and “Hor­ri­ble”

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

The Strange, Sci-Fi Sounds of Skat­ing on Thin Black Ice

A Big Archive of Occult Record­ings: His­toric Audio Lets You Hear Trances, Para­nor­mal Music, Glos­so­lalia & Oth­er Strange Sounds (1905–2007)

Meet the World’s Worst Orches­tra, the Portsmouth Sin­fo­nia, Fea­tur­ing Bri­an Eno

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

It’s hard to imag­ine that in the late 60s, the band who would become the most famous of the psy­che­del­ic era was still an obscu­ri­ty to most U.S. lis­ten­ers. Nowa­days “Pink Floyd may be the only rock band that can cred­i­bly be com­pared to both the Bea­t­les and Spinal Tap,” writes Bill Wyman in a Vul­ture ret­ro­spec­tive of their entire cat­a­logue. Indeed, it’s pos­si­ble their sta­di­um-sized pop­u­lar­i­ty has been under­es­ti­mat­ed. Accord­ing to the data, they’ve actu­al­ly sold more albums world­wide than the Fab Four.

But they had to pay dues in the States. “In the last week of April 1973,” notes KQED’s Richie Unter­berg­er, Dark Side of the Moon “reached No. 1 on the Amer­i­can charts. In the last week of April 1970, though, they had yet to crack the U.S. Top 50 after three years of record­ing and per­form­ing.”

Their first singer/songwriter, and lat­er trag­ic muse, Syd Bar­rett, had come and gone after their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. They were already well into what Wyman describes as the sec­ond phase of “four, or arguably five, Pink Floyds.”

This ver­sion “was one of the founders of pro­gres­sive rock, a psy­che­del­ic, space-rock­‑y, qua­si-impro­vi­sa­tion­al ensem­ble.” They were excel­lent live musi­cians and mas­ters of mood and atmos­phere. But their exper­i­men­tal direc­tion didn’t sell. “At that point, they were real­ly anx­ious to have what­ev­er pub­lic­i­ty they could,” says Jim Far­ber, who co-pro­duced the hour-long TV con­cert film above for KQED, San Francisco’s pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion.

We did not have much of a bud­get. Pink Floyd did the per­for­mance and offered the rights for a cer­tain num­ber of air­ings for prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing. My mem­o­ry is we paid them $200.

The band played in the emp­ty Fill­more Audi­to­ri­um for a film crew. The venue wasn’t emp­ty because no one showed up. They could draw a crowd and had already played the Fill­more West and toured the U.S. three times. But, “for as strong an under­ground fol­low­ing as they were build­ing in the Unit­ed States,” writes Unter­berg­er, they “were so eager for an Amer­i­can audi­ence that they played a free con­cert at UCLA a week lat­er” after the KQED tap­ing.

The sta­tion, which in 1970 “was more known for Sesame Street than psy­che­del­ic rock,” had already begun to move into con­cert films. “Local icons” like “Big Broth­er & the Hold­ing Com­pa­ny, Jef­fer­son Air­plane, and Quick­sil­ver Mes­sen­ger Ser­vice all got air­time.” But Pink Floyd was some­thing dif­fer­ent indeed. The film, broad­cast in Jan­u­ary of ’71, “got an incred­i­bly pos­i­tive response when we aired it in San Fran­cis­co,” says Far­ber. “After that, it had two nation­al broad­casts on PBS.”

You can watch the full “Hour with Pink Floyd,” as the pro­gram was called, just above. At the top, see the band play “Astron­o­my Domine” in footage cut from the orig­i­nal broad­cast. Fur­ther up, see the six­teen minute “Atom Heart Moth­er,” a tes­ta­ment to how far out Pink Floyd could go, and how much a local pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion was will­ing to go with them. The track opens with five min­utes of aer­i­al footage of the San Joaquin Val­ley, the band nowhere in sight. When Pink Floyd final­ly arrives onscreen, the desert vis­tas con­tin­ue to weave in and out.

In “Grantch­ester Mead­ows,” below, for­est sounds and images intro­duce the song. The effect was to trans­late the mys­tique British lis­ten­ers asso­ci­at­ed with Pink Floyd to U.S. audi­ences just on the verge of being blown away by a very dif­fer­ent-sound­ing band who released Dark Side of the Moon three years lat­er.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Hour-Long Col­lec­tion of Live Footage Doc­u­ments the Ear­ly Days of Pink Floyd (1967–1972)

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

How Pink Floyd’s “Com­fort­ably Numb” Was Born From an Argu­ment Between Roger Waters & David Gilmour

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Though the ‘80s didn’t invent music videos, they did become an essen­tial form of cul­tur­al cur­ren­cy, as high pro­file direc­tors, big bud­gets, and a chan­nel that played them non-stop pushed them into our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness. But it’s only recent­ly that those orig­i­nal videos–most shot on film, not video by the way–have been get­ting the remas­ter treat­ment that Hol­ly­wood block­busters and art house clas­sics receive. Last month, we saw the film grain and roman­tic light­ing in Wham’s “Last Christ­mas” video remas­tered in 4K. And now anoth­er inescapably ‘80s ear­worm gets the treat­ment: “Take on Me” by Norway’s finest, A‑ha.

For those who haven’t seen the video, it’s a fairy­tale of a down-on-her luck girl who falls in love with the hero (A‑ha’s lead singer Morten Har­ket) in a com­ic book, then falls into the com­ic book where both become pen­cil draw­ings. Under attack from wrench-wield­ing bad guys, she escapes back into the real world and in a love-con­quers-all mir­a­cle, Morten makes it into the real world and into the arms of his love. All in three min­utes and change.

A‑ha might have been seen as a one-hit won­der band by some, but the lov­ing doc on the mak­ing of the song and video demon­strates there’s no such thing as an overnight suc­cess. The band strug­gled for years to make it, and “Take On Me” wasn’t even their first choice for a song–the band called it “Juicy Fruit” because its relent­less cheer­ful pop sound­ed to the band like an Amer­i­can chew­ing gum ad.

And they strug­gled to get the song right–an ear­ly ver­sion was released three times but failed to catch on. They even record­ed a ver­sion and filmed a bland music video for it. For some groups, this fail­ure might have been it, but you have to admire A‑ha. They were hun­gry and they knew, just knew, that the song should be a hit.

As the doc shows, sev­er­al music indus­try execs thought so too. The band plead­ed and got them­selves a new pro­duc­er: Alan Tar­ney. He went back to the group’s orig­i­nal demo and brought back what their first pro­duc­er had tak­en out, but lay­ered on synth after synth as well. From orig­i­nal demo to the hit sin­gle, it had tak­en four years.

For the video, Warn­er Bros. exec Jeff Ayeroff want­ed some­thing com­ic book based, and co-work­er John Beug knew what might work. He had seen a stu­dent ani­ma­tion called “Com­muter” by Can­dace Reckinger and Mike Pat­ter­son, and the two were hired to recre­ate their roto­scoped tech­nique for the video, tak­ing months and months of hand-drawn hard work to com­plete.

The result­ing video, direct­ed by Steve Bar­ron is a clas­sic. It’s been par­o­died on Fam­i­ly Guy and as a Chil­dren In Need char­i­ty spe­cial. And it still works as a mini nar­ra­tive: each verse adds an ele­ment to the sto­ry, the fre­net­ic piano instru­men­tal bridge brings in the ele­ment of dan­ger, and the final cho­rus brings it all togeth­er with a tear and an embrace. (The influ­ence of Ken Russell’s Altered States is not men­tioned in the doc, but it’s an obvi­ous touch­stone.)

The young woman co-star­ring in the video is Bun­ty Bai­ley, who appeared in sev­er­al oth­er ‘80s videos (like this one for Bil­ly Idol). For a lump in the throat moment reunion, keep watch­ing through to the end, where old friends get reunit­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A‑ha Per­forms a Beau­ti­ful Acoustic Ver­sion of Their 1980s Hit, “Take on Me”: Record­ed Live in Nor­way

A‑ha’s “Take On Me” Per­formed by North Kore­an Kids with Accor­dions

19-Year-Old Russ­ian Gui­tarist Plays an Inge­nious Cov­er of Michael Jackson’s “Bil­lie Jean”

The Trick That Made Ani­ma­tion Real­is­tic: Watch a Short His­to­ry of Roto­scop­ing

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.