400 Lonely Things — Creature Comforts and Why I Went to the Woods
A project that has been releasing works for twenty-three years, Craig Varian’s 400 Lonely Things (co-member Jonathan McCall passed away in 2020) should be a haunted household name when it comes to the “pagantronic” and “ghost ambient” genres of electronic music. 400 Lonely Things is self described “Rustic Ambient Psychedelia” and “Analogue Folk Dronescape,” an amalgam of decayed samples, ethereal electronics, and detourned field recordings that conjure up a visionary, eldritch place that exists at the crossroads of hauntology and folk horror. Varian creates a sonic cosmos that fuses past, present, and future sonorities, a cinematic effect that plunges the listener into an uncanny atmosphere. While 400 Lonely Things’ recordings are indeed “hypnotic,” the music is actually quite complex and evocative, a diffuse layering of sounds, ambiances, moods, and effects.
The ambitious dual release of Creature Comforts and Why I Went to the Woods, two 2-CD sets, represents “two sides of the same coin,” pensive responses to the 2024 US Presidential election and all its social, political, and psychic fallout. Reflecting the entropy and eschatology of the state of the country as well as a more personal “isolated apocalypse,” these twin albums project a tragic and mournful spectral dejection, but simultaneously, also exhibit a seductive artistry that invokes hidden realms and enigmatic states of being. These albums look back to move forward, beyond the turbulence, desperation and futility of the present.
Creature Comforts consists of elegiac soundscapes that are both desolate and alluring at the same time. The pieces are long (only one track is under 5 minutes with most exceeding 7 minutes) and take their time to unfold their grandeur. Opening appropriately with the downcast “When I Fall,” the track is centered around a looping spoken refrain of “I fall,” as a somber saxophone wanders in and out of the mix, sounding like a more gauzy take on Vangelis’ music for Blade Runner. “Once Upon a Time” is an allegorical journey, a soothingly eerie piece filled with tones and echoes that call back to America’s past with slurred vocal samples floating over the mix, descending into crispy static and baleful shimmering. The track feels like if one stumbled into the ballroom scene of The Shining but in a foreboding forest of dancing ghostly villagers .
Tracks such as “Allegiance,” “Lost and Found,” “Alleluia,” and “A Sweet Melancholy Tune” offer bleak, strident resonances, starkly ominous refrains and strange discordant voices that point to a portentous fate by invoking memories that are dissipating in the face of neglect and inhumanity. “Lexie,” “Hue Faded Soothe,” “Soothe Faded Hue,” and “Some Sad Ocean” express a wavering, transient sadness that washes over the listener with a hovering, lonely majesty, offering a soundtrack for the abandoned Saltair Pavilion Resort in Carnival of Souls. Amongst the melancholia are also points of hope as well as simmering anger. “The Chains Will Fall” alternates between a joyous roar and indignant cacophony, while “Lost and Found” rides a rising tide of fuzzy din and erratic rhythms.
The cover and interior art consisting of David Irvine’s folk expressionistic visuals add to the dark reveries of Creature Comforts, looking like a more feral and unhinged cousin to Tor Lundvall’s somberly painted surrealism.
Why I Went to the Woods might be “Dark New Age for a New Dark Age,” but sounds more optimistic than its conceptual twin with a nostalgic and benign feel as the thematic focus shifts from the United States to the UK or at least a psychogeographical facsimile of Great Britain. Harkening back to the rich history of British psychedelic folk and an imagined Albion drawn from 1960’s and 70’s media, Why I Went to the Woods sounds like if The Stone Tape and The Wicker Man had an occult offspring. Using woozy, wobbly samples, natural melodies, and plaintive, pulsing modulations, Why I Went to the Woods could be an alternate score for Children of the Stones, The Tomorrow People, or the BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas series with many of the tracks having the length of a television production cue.
“The Woods Within,” “Defective Hours,” “Far Woven Charm,” and “The Queen of the Forest” surround the listener with bucolic wonder as birds, flutes, keyboards, and strings meld into earthy drones. Weathered guitars resonate, weave, and blur through the 70’s haze of “Mayday" and “Lights Out.“ The legendary mages of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop are conjured up in “Outset Topaz,” “Machine Manitous of Loving Grace,” and “Witches of Hazel Moor.” Connoisseurs of old school horror classics will appreciate the sinister, hissing vibrations of “Amicus,” “Frankenstein Mountain,” and “To the Old Earth,” as whispers, murmurs, and trills create a pleasing terror. The first and last tracks “Badger” and “Badgers” act as opening and closing themes for this imaginary crepuscular world, mysterious motifs and spooky climaxes that reverberate in the listener’s mind long after the album has ended.
The album graphics merge images of Henry David Thoreau and the Green Man, offering the fantasy of escaping to the countryside and the rejuvenating energies of the rustic, and yet the question remains of whether this break-away is still possible in a world devastated by environmental destruction, globalization, and rural neglect. Is this retreat only possible through the music, tv and films of yesterday or in half-remembered sentimentality?
400 Lonely Things posits its work as music for “wounded idealists,” and these two prescient releases certainly justify this moniker if only for their existence in a time of frustration and defeatism. Rather than being overwhelming or monotonous, Creature Comforts and Why I Went to the Woods are sprawling epics that trace a musical trajectory across the forlorn to the beautiful, from the sorrow of mourning and pessimism to the return of pastoral comfort and faith in humanity. With these two extraordinary releases, 400 Lonely Things can justifiably be afforded the honorific title of America’s most compelling hauntological electronic artist.