Collins : VHS

We are less than a week away from Halloween. The best stuff always goes by way too fast, doesn’t it? We wait and anticipate the spooky season for most of the year that when October 1st arrives, November 1st shoves its way to the front of the line. I’ve been working on a little music project to put out in honor of October, Autumn, and those chilly, windy overcast days preceding Halloween arriving. Thanks to, well, life, I don’t think that project will arrive before Halloween stops in for a quick haunt and exits stage left. But that’s okay because Gary Collins and Spun Out Of Control has us covered.

Gary Collins, aka Collins, has been putting out heart pounding, dark electro synth for a few years now. In 2018 he dropped Suzy Went Missing with Spun Out Of Control, an album brought into our dimension via inspiration found in a vocal sample. Collins also released the Autophobia EP with Giallo Disco back in 2016 with undulated 80s club beats and sweaty darkness.

Well, for those of you looking for some eerie noises with a horror disco backbone need not look anymore, as Collins presents VHS. VHS is slathered in late 70s disco funk, ala Patrick Cowley, Bobby Orlando and Giorgio Moroder. It has the feel of finding some ghostly video store in the ether of reality and fantasy. Inside is a wall of dusty VHS cases on some back room wall. Sleazy slashers, inconceivable supernatural horrors, and exploitative video nasties lay before you in a display of the macabre, scored with the dankest disco grooves that taunt as much as titillate. Jamie Lee Curtis approves.

What do you get with VHS? Playful 70s AM strut like “The Deuce(1979)”, or the sinewy “four on the floor” groove of “Deathstalker(1987)”. You also get lusty Moroder fare like “Sleaze Cruiser(1980)” and the slasher funk of album opener “Another Lover(1981)”.

I’m particularly fond of “Lazerwave(1990)” and it’s retro-futurist dance groove that’s equal measures erotic and psychotic. And album closer “Caustic Sunrise(1984)” leans heavily into moody synths and a sparse electro heartbeat that is a masterclass in slow burn, moody vibes.

Collins VHS pretty much has it all. If you grew up watching movies like Prom Night, The Funhouse, Nightmare, Slumber Party Massacre, and Fear No Evil, then VHS will satiate your appetite for sleazy visuals and the lusty, sweaty sounds that go so well with them. The sounds of the erotic, exotic, and psychotic coming together in one hot, balmy record.