One hot day in July, Katie & Joe stopped by a thrift store in the Philly suburbs to dig through piles of old clothing and defunct media, as is traditional in their culture. Joe was scoping out the VHS section when he noticed a guy next to him, also looking at tapes, wearing a funny Ghostbusters t-shirt. They struck up a conversation, and the guy turned out to be Matt Cannon, the mastermind behind Lapses, a really fun, cool synth project Katie and Joe had recently seen perform at the Found Footage Festival.
We felt it: A future collaboration was on the wind.
Sure enough, a few weeks later Matt came over to our home studio to talk about his various projects and see if we could make something together. That's when we learned about HEXERCISE, a hilarious short horror film Matt had created and scored in 2019.
"A normal day in the life of aerobic instructor, Kelly Gold, consists of leading classes, dealing with her sleazy boss, and fighting off demonic forces, all while barely breaking a sweat. With the help of a heroic detective, will Kelly be able to exorcise the ever-present evil? This gym truly gives a new meaning to the phrase 'getting ripped.'"
Bingo! As huge lovers of campy 80s horror we really wanted to do something with the soundtrack, which is a wild hybrid of 80’s workout tunes and classic horror movie scores created entirely by Lapses (aka Matt).
Together the three of us decided to do 2 projects at once: a re-release the film on VHS (as it is meant to be seen) and an album release of the soundtrack onto 12", lathe-cut, clear records. We’ve been hard at work in our studio, and are proud to say both things have come out really well.
We launched a Kickstarter to back the projects, and it will be up for just one more week. Go there to pre-order the vinyl record, the VHS, and/or the digital version of both. Just in time for spooky season!
Love this VHS cover art by Hayden Hall
Amazing album art by Jimmy Giegerich
HEXERCISE soundtrack lathe-cut onto clear, 12-inch vinyl by Consonant Collective