Sold Date: August 17, 2023
Start Date: June 17, 2023
Final Price: $32.00 (USD)
Seller Feedback: 661
Buyer Feedback: 0

Brand new copy of Oooky Spooky sold by Projekt Records, the label that released this. Unopened copy, shrinkwrap. Mint. Shipped media mail from Portland Oregon.   Aurelio Voltaire’s 5th album from 2007
LP on 140-gram Magenta w/Black Marble vinyl, includes full-color lyric sleeve.
First time on LP, edition of 600
Remixed in 2021 by Aurelio Voltaire & Tom Gardner at Rift Studios, NYC
Mastered by Martin Bowes of Attrition in The Cage, England.
Includes a track from the Cartoon Network movie Billy and Mandy’s Big Boogie Adventure
Includes a duet with Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls

Carpe Noctem: “…what you might expect to hear while getting drunk at a Mexican restaurant in Transylvania on the Day of the Dead – that is, an inspired and irreverent mix of European folk and Spanish influences, with touches of swing, New Orleans jazz, country, and ska thrown in for good measure.”

Returning to the original joyfully macabre multi-track recordings, Aurelio Voltaire completely remixes his 5th album. Sounding fresh, luscious and ever-so dark and spooky, hidden elements of the original recording are heard for the first time. There’s a warmer string texture and enhanced overall sound.

“It’s a Halloween party in a digipak,” Voltaire comments about Ooky Spooky, his most hilariously irreverent CD to date. The album contains a duet with The Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer, a track from a Cartoon Network movie (“Billy and Mandy’s Big Boogie Adventure”) plus his crowd-pleasing songs about zombies, devils and dancing skeletons. In fact necrophilia, cannibalism, the undead, blasphemy, sacrilege and going to hell in a hand basket are just a few of the charming topics covered on Ooky Spooky.

Back are the violins and cellos but new to the Voltaire sound is a horn section that brings to mind images of a mariachi skeleton band. But there is no doom and gloom here, mind you. The album bounces along with a mixture of klezmer, swing and ska that brings to mind such spooky-fun classics as Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man’s Party” or “Hell” by the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Voltaire’s love for Cab Calloway is evident in the song “Cannibal Buffet” (which seems straight from a Betty Boop cartoon) and more so in “Land of the Dead” which Voltaire wrote for the opening credit sequence of the Cartoon Network movie “Billy and Mandy’s Big Boogie Adventure.”

As serious as it gets on Ooky Spooky is “Stuck With You,” a duet with The Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer. It’s about a bickering married couple, but even on this one kittens are drowned, Korean bayonets are employed and skeletons sing to each other from side-by-side coffins. “I got all of the serious songs out of the way on Then And Again,” comments Voltaire, “specifically so that Ooky Spooky could be a non-stop party of fun songs about the undead and hell and devils and skeletons and all of the other fun stuff that’s so close to my heart.”

All Music: “A full new winner in the realm of truly black humor. With Voltaire happily embracing mariachi horns as a new element to his music — not perhaps as sudden a shift as Johnny Cash adding them to “Ring of Fire,” but with a similarly enjoyable effect, matched with the great cover art — the result is probably one of the best musical fusions all around, not to mention a perfect Tejano album under another name (not too strange when you realize the Eastern European origins of both that and Voltaire’s previous efforts as a whole). The kick-up-your-heels, if your feet haven’t rotted away, kick of lead single “Zombie Prostitute” was already familiar — “I had a stiffy/For the stiff in front of me” is just one perfect line of snark among many — and unsurprisingly benefits from both the swirling strings and the brass interjections in equal measure. Meanwhile, seemingly the-joke-is-all-in-the-title efforts like “Bomb New Jersey” and “Reggae Mortis” prove to be thorough gutbusters, while Amanda Palmer from the often similarly-minded Dresden Dolls takes a great guest turn on “Stuck with You,” a duet between obsessively dueling lovers who take it all the way to the grave and beyond. Throughout, Voltaire’s excellent singing remains his not-so-secret weapon, jauntily vocalizing about white boy bullfighters and cannibal banquets with total élan.”

LP: 140-gram Magenta w/Black Marble vinyl, with full-color lyric sleeve. Limited Edition of 600. Meticulously remixed from the original multi-track. Released September 2021.