It's spooky season! The leaves have turned, the weather's getting worse (or better, depending on your perspective), and we're all getting re-acquainted with our favourite chunky sweaters. Summer, we hardly knew ye.
We haven't completely doubled down on the spooky tunes for this month's edition of Now Playing – there's a dedicated best Halloween test tracks rundown if that's your jam – but we have made a few nods to this very special time of year in the list below.
What all of the tunes have in common is that they'll shock your system into bringing its A-game, be that via brain-melting basslines or blissed-out progressive house beats.
Oh, and there's a tune from a plucky up-and-comer called "Taylor Swift", who has a new album out. Apparently, it's rather a big deal...
- Listen to our Now Playing playlist on Tidal
Uh Uh by Thundercat
If you want a song that will make you question your life choices for just over two minutes, Thundercat’s Uh Uh will almost certainly do it to you. That’s because his fast-paced electric bass guitar playing verges on superhuman, as he effortlessly plucks the strings at an incredible speed.
This makes for excellent sound testing, as even the most premium soundbars and surround-sound speaker packages can struggle to get enough detail into every note. There’s really no hiding place here, with subtle changes in tonality and bass giving life to the track.
Quiet vocals accompany the drums and guitar, providing an extra layer of subtlety that can catch some systems out. Get it wrong, and the track will sound more like an undefined and jumbled mess.
The track's beginning also acts as a brilliant test for your surround speakers, as a distorted whooshing passes around the listener to create a dizzying tunnel of sound. While it may be short, Uh Uh will tell you everything you need to know about your speakers.
Words by Robyn Quick
The Fate Of Ophelia by Taylor Swift
In case you somehow missed it, a new Taylor Swift album has just been released, so of course I couldn’t help but highlight a track for this month's edition of Now Playing.
The Life Of A Showgirl is a lot glitzier and energetic than her previous effort, The Tortured Poets Department, which served up an onslaught of melancholic tracks, and while I still need time to assess this new album, I can already vouch for its opening salvo.
The Fate Of Ophelia opens with a deceiving bar of sombre-sounding piano that invokes the vibe of her last album, though it quickly gives way to a funky bassline which then opens up to an explosive, dangerously catchy chorus.
The track keeps up the pace from here, with a compelling storyline running throughout and a moody bridge that ramps up to one final punch of that infectious chorus.
It sets the tone for the album as a whole, leaning into the theatrics and energy that embodies The Life Of A Showgirl, and it’s an exceptional hook to get you invested into what surely must be one of the most anticipated records of the year.
Words by Lewis Empson
Zombie by The Cranberries
This month I went on a bit of a journey, revisiting Irish protest songs after watching Netflix’s latest divisive show about the Guinness family.
In doing so, I revisited one of my favourites tracks of all time, Zombie by The Cranberries, which also feels oddly appropriate given that the spooky season is upon us.
Written and delivered with fiery fury by lead singer Dolores O'Riordan, the song is a masterpiece from start to finish, full of emotive, evocative lyrics lamenting the violence in Northern Ireland at the time, in particular the tragic loss of children during an IRA bombing in 1993.
With changing dynamics, grungey, distorted guitar parts and shouted lyrics, the song is vastly different to most of the band’s other work and remains one of its best and most memorable to this day.
For hi-fi fans, O'Riordan’s incredible vocals, which rapidly alternate in both volume and pitch remain a benchmark only the best hardware will do true justice to.
Whether it’s simply to enjoy the amazing track, or give your separates a run for their money, If you haven’t heard it, I’d strongly recommend giving Zombie a listen, especially given its ongoing relevance in today’s troubled world.
Words by Alastair Stevenson
Eyepennies by Sparklehorse
Eyepennies joins my list of sad/tender songs – alongside Nick Cave's Into My Arms, Elliott Smith's Between The Bars, and Tom Waits' Martha – that make truly terrific test tracks.
Why? It's less about specific musical elements and more about conveying the emotion of the song: the sombre weight of the track, the heart-achingly tender but definite piano notes, and the late Mark Linkous's whispery soft but carefully sung lyrics. PJ Harvey's guest vocals offer another dimension, but the steady repetitive beat is also a great test of a system's handling of rhythm and dynamics.
This song could easily sound monotonous or dreary through a less capable system, or not have the appropriate balance of weight and delicacy – it's a tightrope that should have your attention hooked to the song's narrative while also feeling every inch of emotion seep into your skin.
Words by Kashfia Kabir
K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack
Some songs are just fun. There's no need to pick them apart to parse which note or instrument is faithfully conveyed through your headphones or speaker – they come through as a whole meal, concocted as a perfect pop song for pure enjoyment.
And KPop Demon Hunters has a whole soundtrack full of them.
The mega-hit animated film about a K-pop girl band fighting demons has a cracking soundtrack that I've had on repeat for the past two months – and I'm yet to tire of it. The triple threat of Takedown, How It's Done and Golden are absolute bangers that will be stuck in your head for days and weeks on end. They're propulsive, punchy, catchy and fizzing with energy. Just pure fun.
Words by Kashfia Kabir
You Make Me Feel Like It's Halloween by Muse
![Muse - You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween [HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/dQXnLAY_-9w/maxresdefault.jpg)
It's nearly Halloween, and that means it's time for scary movies, scary costumes and, if you can find then, even a few scary songs. While Werewolves Of London might be a bona fide belter, it's a little too simplistic to be labelled as test room fodder, so it's time to turn to our favourite Teignmouth trio for a scarily good time instead.
We included You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween as part of our best Halloween tracks to test your hi-fi system a couple of years back, and, like a zombie crawling from its earthy grave, it feels appropriate to resurrect it now that October is in full swing.
As far as guilty pleasures go, this is as much fun as Muse have been in a long while. A completely overdone pantomime of over-the-top guitar screeches and Psycho-inspired strings, you’ll want a system that can bring out the blend of anxiety and pure camp from the composition.
Words by Harry McKerrell
The Happy Dictator by Gorillaz
Gorillaz have been around so long they're essentially doing side quests at this point. It's not easy to keep up with the band's fictitious overarching story, a tale whose disparate plot points have included the commandeering of a piratical submarine, extended stints in prison and the establishment of a semi-Satanic cult in America.
Suffice to say that, as the title of the band's new track reveals, we're now on to the formation of a totalitarian dictatorship in an unspecified Eastern nation. It's a natural progression.
As the Gorillaz project has never been shy in bouncing around its bizarre narrative, the group has reflected such eclecticism in its musical output. This time, it's the Mael brothers, AKA Sparks, who have been recruited for The Happy Dictator, bringing their idiosyncratic, pleasingly camp electro-pop stylings to Gorillaz's latest release.
It's an odd one on first listen, a sort of airy, chirpy number that borders on the parodic. Once you can accept that's the whole point, of course, it's hard not to get it out of your head as Ron and Russell repeatedly sing, "Oh, what a happy land we live in / Oh what a happy land, oh yeah."
Faux propaganda has rarely been so catchy.
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:
8 standout tracks we've been enjoying in our listening rooms this past month
17 memorable hi-fi and AV products turning 25 in 2025
Check out our ultimate test tracks collection
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