The great director John Carpenter probably thought he was all done with churches after he wrapped filming on John Carpenter’s Vampires in 2001. Maybe he was! He was not, however, done with Chvrches. The Scottish synthpop trio is preparing to release the new album Screen Violence, and they reached out to one of the all-time masters of screen violence for a remix.

Carpenter, who composed the creeping instrumental scores for most of his films and who’s been cranking out more dark synth-ooze for the past few years, took on Chvrches’ track “Good Girls,” which means we get to hear a 73-year-old film legend’s take on a song about how killing your idols is a chore but we don’t need them anymore. He’s layered his ominous drones all over the track and changed its tone significantly.

In return, Chvrches have offered up their version of “Turning The Bones,” one of the bleak instrumentals from Lost Themes III, the album that Carpenter released earlier this year. With their remix, Chvrches show how well Carpenter’s haunted film-score sound works with some drum-machine thumps. Both remixes will appear on a forthcoming split 7″. Check out both remixes below, as well as what Chvrches and Carpenter had to say about the team-up.

Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry says:

As horror fans, we know that John Carpenter is the godfather and the gold standard, so we’re so excited to get to work with him in any capacity. His films and music have been so impactful on us over the years, and without the stories he created, I am not sure that the concept of Screen Violence (and female narratives within the album) would exist in the way they do. On every album, we get “remixes,” but given the themes of this record, we had the idea that maybe we could get a song reimagined by a composer who has worked in that cinematic universe. John was top of our wishlist, but we never really thought he’d reply, let alone that he’d send back something better than the original.

Carpenter says:

Chvrches reached out to us through our tour manager, asking if we would be interested in remixing one of their songs for their upcoming album. They sent us three or four tracks for us to listen to and decide which one we wanted to remix, and we went from there. We chose the track we did because we connected with it the most and felt it would adapt best to our style. After we finished our remix, we asked them if they could also remix one of our songs in return, and they thought it was a great idea.

The Chvrches/Carpenter split 7″ is out 12/10 on Sacred Bones; pre-order it here. Screen Violence is out 8/27 on Glassnote. Lost Themes III is out now on Sacred Bones. Also, the great film podcast Blank Check starts its John Carpeter miniseries this weekend, and that should be a lot of fun.