Clive Barker wants music to go with his new stories. Compositions of the Dead is an original horror soundtrack built as a companion to Library of the Dead, the three-volume anthology whose Kickstarter campaign has now carried past $1.75 million.
The album unlocked as a stretch goal on that campaign. Every backer gets the digital version free, and a limited vinyl pressing is planned, with backers first in line to buy one once the campaign closes. The production team is aiming to deliver the digital album before the first book arrives in early 2027.
Barker said he has wanted to do something like this for a long time and that the campaign made it possible, calling it a chance at “giving our backers the chance to experience my fiction in a new way.” On the collection itself he has been blunter: “The stories in Library of the Dead do not resemble each other at all.”
The Composers Are Not Named Yet
No roster has been confirmed. The campaign describes the plan as a mix of established horror film composers and emerging artists Barker picks himself. A list he assembles personally is a different proposition from a label compilation, and his taste in a score has been reliable for forty years.
The Composers on Barker’s Own Films
Christopher Young scored Hellraiser in 1987 and Hellbound: Hellraiser II the year after. Danny Elfman took Nightbreed in 1990, and Simon Boswell handled Lord of Illusions in 1995. Music has never been an afterthought on a Barker production.
The Three Books
The trilogy runs Fear Eternal, Pyres of Bedlam and Dark Descents, edited by Phil and Sarah Stokes and published through Clive Barker Ink and Ensata Press. It is billed as a spiritual successor to Books of Blood, and it mixes new stories with previously out-of-print ones, alongside black and white illustrations and poems by Barker. The books are sold only through the campaign.
Earlier stretch goals on the same campaign produced a remastered two-volume Books of Blood omnibus and an Art of Clive Barker portfolio. More than 7,000 people have backed it, and late pledges are still open ahead of that early 2027 release.