Last month was such a weird one for music, it's been nice to return to a degree of normality for this edition of Now Playing.
The last time we convened to share everything we'd been listening to as roasting August turned swiftly to still-toasty September, Tom Hardy was making hip-hop albums and The Rock was threatening a country music release.
Normality is a relative term. As we're now firmly into October, the Jack-o'-Lanterns are on the front step and the tacky decorations have been recovered from the attic – it's time to embrace Spooky Season as Halloween approaches with a collection of tunes to give you and your system chills in all the right places.
Season Of The Witch by Lana Del Rey
After the infernal heat wave this summer, I can’t tell you how glad I am that we’re now in the cooler, cosier days of autumn.
And there’s no better way to celebrate the start of October – the month of changing colours in nature and all things witchy – than with Season Of The Witch. While the original 1966 song by Donovan is still a corker, it’s the 2019 Lana Del Rey cover that’s been running through my head.
Her cover is sultry and more atmospheric, with her smoky vocals and layered harmonies imbuing the song with a hazy, dreamlike quality that’s full of soft textures. Along with the exquisite vocals, it all leans into the more mystical vibe of the track that’s lovely to get lost in, whether you’re listening on a big stereo separates system or more intimately on a pair of great headphones.
Whether it’s soundtracking a horror film (as it did for Guillermo del Toro’s Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark) or playing in the background as you put up Halloween decorations, it’s a great track to get you into the spirit of spooky season.
Words by Kashfia Kabir
Placeholder by Gilla Band
Some bands sound like bands; other bands simply don’t. Gilla Band have never been a conventional sounding group, but in the case of this Irish noise-rock quartet, their sound is less a reinvention of the wheel than a recording of it slamming into a brick wall.
Placeholder comes from Gilla Band’s daring 2026 album, Pugnello. Right from the off, fuzzy, atonal synths weave with roomy percussion, strident distorted guitars and the associative, exclamatory vocals of Dara Kiely. Throughout the song, sonic perspectives are manipulated to furnish an unruly, raging core.
In one particularly chaotic 10-second stretch, listeners are thrown from labyrinthine delayed synthesizers into a brief, desperately dry reprieve of percussion, before being plunged back into what Gilla Band do best: violently maximal industrial noise. It is perhaps not a song to play on repeat, but who stays on a rollercoaster all day?
Words by Ioan Hazell
Let The Gods Decide (from A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms) by Dan Romer
Mock me for being a little late to the medieval fantasy feast, but I’ve just finished a very enjoyable time bingeing the first season of A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms on HBO Max, and by the gods, what a treat it is. Why couldn’t the last two seasons of Game Of Thrones have been as well-written and lovingly crafted as this?
Fans will know that the series reaches its mighty peak in the fifth episode, 'In The Name Of The Mother', in which protagonist-cum-walking barn door Ser Duncan the Tall finds himself fighting for his life in a seven-on-seven tourney after clouting a Targaryen lord round the chops. Spoiler alert: the blond-haired little sod totally deserved it.
Dan Romer’s score runs in the background as a gentle, sweet-natured accompaniment to the series’ more lighthearted tone, but he turns the heat up to Ramin Djawadi levels of grandeur during the most pivotal moment of the episode that precedes In The Name Of The Mother, as (minor spoilers ahead) the honourable Prince Baelor Targaryen pledges at the last minute to fight at Dunc’s side.
You know this guy is just the absolute man when the show’s composer invokes the main Thrones theme song just for you – few characters in the Westeros-iverse have ever deserved it so richly.
What happens next? You’ll have to watch to find out, but if you know… well, you know. Like Ser Duncan, I’m still in recovery.
Words by Harry McKerrell
Dracula by Tame Impala
Look, I swear that I came by Tame Impala's irrepressibly funky earworm completely independently of any youth-oriented social media platform. I don't even have a TikTok account!
I've been enjoying Dracula since it emerged from its crypt last year, especially whenever I need something light and breezy to take the edge off endless playlists filled with ear-bleeding guitars, but it felt right to wait until October before including it on any Now Playing rundown.
Plus, I'm told it's enjoying a major resurgence on Instagram and TikTok as spooky season approaches, and who am I to fly in the face of the cultural zeitgeist?
Putting everything else aside, Dracula is a devilish delight. It's about as tongue-in-cheek as Tame Impala ever gets, with the titular character used as a metaphor for the feeling of wanting to stay out all night, hence the catchy refrain of "daylight makes me feel like Dracula". Clever.
Words by Harry McKerrell
Spooky by Dusty Springfield
It might have been originally recorded as an instrumental by saxophonist Mike Sharpe, but Springfield’s version soon became the definitive one. And justifiably so – that bass is so warm and welcoming I could listen to it on loop all day, and it’s so laid back it’s practically horizontal.
But it’s Springfield’s breathy vocal that really rescues the track from its lift music origins. Detached yet sultry, she’s the epitome of swinging sixties cool as she details her on-off relationship with “a spooky little boy like you".
Even the saxophone section is superior to the original’s – it’s pared back, with little flourishes here and there without trying too hard, compared to the original’s rather twee stylings.
Is it a Halloween song? Well there’s the title, of course. And Springfield’s hushed performance lends itself to crispy leaves on the ground, dimmed lighting and pumpkin spice. But I would shelve that along with the “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?” argument (even though yes, of course it is – it’s set on Christmas Eve), in that it doesn’t really matter. It’s a great song – just put it on your system and enjoy.
Words by Joe Svetlik
We Fall In Love by Lamb
I was working my way through a Massive Attack-adjacent trip-hop playlist on Tidal when I stumbled across this testing doozy courtesy of established Manchester duo Lamb.
I'll admit now that I didn't know much about the pair before hearing We Fall In Love, but it didn't take long before I had the thought that all What Hi-Fi? writers experience with worrying regularity: "Wait a minute, I could use this as a test track."
We Fall In Love has tester written all over it. Trip-hop staples from the likes of Massive Attack and Portishead have always been popular in our listening rooms for their subtly crafted, finely poised sonic curations, and Lamb's addition to the canon is no different.
It's a wide, open soundscape scattered with all manner of shimmering bits of ear candy, from glistening percussion (is that a glockenspiel?) to quirky synths, making it a great candidate for seeing how a pair of stereo speakers handle stereo imaging and compositional competence.
Words by Harry McKerrell
As a collective, our review team listens to a lot of music. Sometimes we rely on old favourites with which we're familiar, but we are always discovering new tracks – be they fresh releases or just songs we haven't encountered before – that give us key insights into new products we are trying out.
We also know that plenty of our readers are on the lookout for new tunes, either to assess the capabilities of a new system or simply to show off the full talents of their established hi-fi set-up. That's why we have come up with our monthly 'Now Playing' playlist, a rundown of everything we've been listening to and loving recently, whether at home with a set of headphones or at work in our fabulous test rooms.
Each instalment will bring you a handful of tracks chosen by our reviews team, detailing why we love them and what they bring out of certain products. So even if you're not looking for new tunes to play on your system, we hope you find something you'll love no matter how you choose to listen to it.
We're always on the lookout for new music, so drop a comment below to share what you have been listening to!
MORE:
Read last month’s edition: 5 songs we've had on repeat in the test rooms as we head into autumn
Yes, there is an ultimate prog rock album for testing hi-fi – at least according to What Hi-Fi? readers
Check out our ultimate test tracks collection
