Description

400 LONELY THINGS - 'Creature Comforts' + 'Why I Went To The Woods'

CSR360CD (9 January 2026)

2 x CD in 8-panel digipak with booklet.
Barcode: 0641871746767

CSR361CD (9 January 2026)

2 x CD in 8-panel digipak.
Barcode: 0641871746774

400 Lonely Things present two beautiful, entwined releases - one, the soundtrack to a perceived isolated apocalypse filled with psychoactive melancholia and ugly lullabies, evoking an acute sense of horror, bewilderment and bereavement... and its twin, devouring hauntological dream worlds inspired by the fictional filmed landscapes of psychedelic folk and benignly sinister pagan nights in the wild forests...

"These albums are opposite sides of the same coin, which is why they are being released in tandem. The coin being, in this analogy, the 2024 National Election in the US and its place in the world's entropic trajectory, and my own emotions in the time since. Thematically different, they are both visceral reactions to these subsequent points in time in which they were made".

With a massive 2.5 hours of music over two discs each, these albums are available for purchase individually, or together as a bundle.

CREATURE COMFORTS:

I started recording "CREATURE COMFORTS" with 'Allegiance' on the night of November 4th, as the election results were coming in. I found myself craving lullabies, but ugly and reflective ones, that saw the world with an acute sense of horror and bewilderment and bereavement. Lullabies that didn't protect me from these feelings - or rather did protect me, but did so through immersion. I finished recording on March 10th of 2025.

Visual inspiration came from a series of mixed-media works by my gifted friend, the lovely and talented painter David Irvine, whose homely, ruggedly fragile characters appear to be comforting each other on their way to their own personal exits.

With the idea that this album would be lullabies for the end of a world, I started seeking out soothing vocal samples and hypnotic audio beds and simple melodies and set about roughing them up to form a soundtrack to my perceived isolated apocalypse. These songs would be ugly on the surface, sad and angry and defeated and more than a little unhinged but, like David's paintings, hopefully have a heart that would show through the scarring.

There's a saying along the lines of "show me a cynic and I'll show you a wounded idealist" and I needed to record this music to combat that encroaching cynicism. The songs are long and beaten up and the music just kept coming and 2.5 hours worth of recordings later, I had pushed through.

2CD in glossy, flood-printed 8-panel digipak with paintings by David Irvine. Includes 12-page booklet.

WHY I WENT TO THE WOODS:

With "WHY I WENT TO THE WOODS", I retreated once again into my hauntological dream worlds. With the woods being the place one traditionally goes to clear one's head, I went there with these recordings to fortify myself with a deliberate rejection of the Now.

Inspired equally by both the fictional filmed landscapes of psychedelic folk - the bucolic British countryside of the 1960s and 1970s which, though I've never witnessed in real life, still fill me with an inexplicable melancholic yearning to return home - and the benignly sinister pagan nights of our young wild forests here in the States.

Over this period, I was frequently visited by samples of wistful, psychedelic minor-key acoustic guitars and forlorn flutes, the occasional wordless vocal, sounds of nature being devoured by tape noise and the medicated, thick synthesizer sounds that often watched over the various media of this time period with loving grace. "Why I Went To The Woods" began on April 19th and was finished on September 16th 2025.

I've toyed with calling my music Dark New Age for the New Dark Age for a while now, and musically this album comes the closest to fleshing that concept out. The samples and arrangements here are made from rustic pieces of psychedelic folk, 70's analog synthscapes, schmaltzy vintage British TV music and rural ambience and they all reinforce that hauntological vision: melodic and droning fake pastoral memories shaped into tediously mystical elations both blissful and haunting. Music that would be suitable for all woodland creatures and ethereal beings of the melancholy forest.

2CD in matt-laminate, flood-printed 8-panel digipak with paintings by David Irvine.

Head here for 'Creature Comforts' | Head here for 'Why I Went To The Woods'