Music for the End of Days: A Playlist for the Apocalypse by Fantastic Twins

10Minute Read

Music

Not all apocalypses announce themselves with a thunderclap. Some creep in quietly, wrapped in ethereal reverb and ghostly choirs… Others roar, their synthetic pulses mimicking collapsing infrastructures and burning sky. Then there’s the fascistic incumbents… but let’s not dwell on that too much right now.

Suite of Rooms, Fantastic Twins’ latest album, is based on the epic Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and is reworked from her composition for a dance piece performed for children called ‘Méandres’. It’s a mesmerizing odyssey of “leftfield techno, exquisite kosmische, and vintage soundtrack atmospheres.” The album moves through a sonic labyrinth where myth meets machine, ancient echoes dissolve into dystopian soundscapes, and the listener is left wandering through the wreckage.

It’s in this same spirit that this playlist Julienne Dessange’s playlist unfolds—a collection of tracks that feel like they belong to some grand, unravelling finale. Shoji Yamashiro’s *Battle Against Clown* (from the *Akira* OST) sets the tone with its cyberpunk frenzy, a clash of polyrhythms and chants fit for a neon-lit wasteland. The Threshold Houseboys Choir channels digital mysticism, trance-state rituals captured in flickering VHS hues. Elsewhere, Pharmakon’s *Crawling On Bruised Knees* grinds through industrial despair, while Wendy Carlos’ adaptation of Purcell’s *Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary* (immortalized in *A Clockwork Orange*) reminds us that all endings, no matter how brutal, deserve a proper requiem.

Between these are moments of eerie beauty: Elizabeth Fraser’s spectral voice in *Song to the Siren* feels like a transmission from another realm, and Fantastic Twins’ own reworking of *Wicked Game* drapes Chris Isaak’s classic in radioactive glow, as if it’s playing from a half-melted jukebox in a David Lynch fever dream.

Songs for watching the horizon burn, for dancing in the rubble, for finding poetry in oblivion.

Endings are inevitable. The soundtrack, at least, is up to us.

Shoji Yamashiro / Geinoh Yamashirogumi – Battle Against Clown (Akira OST) (from 03’10)

The blueprint of ancient futurism. Seminal cyberpunk post-apocalyptic synthesis, chants and polyrhythms, noh meets prog rock. Motorbikes riding across our entire emotional spectrum. Sonic storytelling brought to a whole new dimension.

The Threshold Houseboys Choir

Peter Christopherson filmed the video footage of Form Grows Rampant at Ginjae Festival which takes place in the South of Thailand every 9th full moon of the year. Young boys in trance-induced states perform rituals “to keep the world spinning on the correct axis”, to scare away evil spirits and prevent from misfortune. Pure digital ecstasy from Sleazy and his tormented computer-generated choir of vocalists. Profound, eerie, sublime.

Pharmakon – Crawling On Bruised Knees

Gospel for my fellow goths out there.

Church Universal And Invocation For Judgement Against And Destruction Of Rock Music

(starts from 9:45). All evil. Scooby Dooby Doo and Ghostbusters too.

Wicked Game (Fantastic Twins Trinity Version)

My own nuclear test on Chris Isaak’s classic and a personal love letter to David Lynch.

Outer Space – Memory Bomb

Cascades of lava and burning liquid synths pouring out of my brain every time I listen to this. Lethal <3

Song To The Siren

The mother of ethereal music, haunting reverbs, deep waters and eerie, infinite dark blue skies. And Elizabeth Fraser’s soul-crushing voice luring you to the other side.

Oneohtrix Point Never – Back Snow

Morning chaos. Midnight chaos. Eternity Chaos. Necronomicon, radioactive waste, City On Fire, Habitat, Joyride to Nowhere, and vitamins. Superb!

Wendy Carlos – Title Music From A Clockwork Orange (Henry Purcell)

Henry Purcell, Wendy Carlos and Stanley Kubrick reunited for the funeral. Sadly Carlos’ version is unavailable on Youtube, so you get a tutorial from Wendy instead. At least we won’t die stupid.

Stream on evil platforms here or why not consider finally doing the right thing and supporting the artists directly Suite of Rooms | Fantastic Twins