400 Lonely Things - The New Twilight

400 Lonely Things have done something unique and quite startling on The New Twilight. Each of these 11 tracks are ethically sourced from horror films released during the 1970s and 1980s. Yet the sampling here isn't obvious, largely avoiding dialogue snippets. Instead Craig Varian looks to the more overlooked and understated sounds within the films as ripe for sampling and subjected them to looping and manipulation and when accompanied by 400 Lonely Things' eerie, melancholic and nostalgic ambient and atmospheric music it becomes beguiling and even more mysterious.

400 Lonely Things have a history for this. Two of their earlier albums Tonight of the Living Dead and Nigths and Profecy focussed on specific films, The New Twilight expands that approach to the whole genre, and specifically the glut of VHS films that stuffed the shelves of video rental shops in the eighties and nineties. Varian was undoubtedly an avid fanatic of these slasher, splatter, serial killer and horror films, often castigated as video nasties.

The New Twilight combines elements of these films subtly manipulated and mixed with the ambient drone and melancholic melody of their own work; their recent albums Apophrenia and especially Mother Moon really caught our attention and The New Twilight continues that approach in these eerie, slow paced tracks sampled from the horror genre.

The wavering synths of 'Life Plus' is textured with indistinct chatter and surrounded in shudders, returning in grainy pulses for a second part. The sustained synth drone of 'Dark And Lonely Water' is accompanied by ripples of water and the creak of a ghost ship navigating the seas, flowing into deadlier waters conjuring the spectre of a hooded figure and the sinister voice of Donald Pleasence - "I am the spirit of dark and lonely water" - from a UK public information film that aired in the 1970s warning children of the dangers of water. It still haunts me.

There's a pervading insidious almost sinister atmosphere to the title track. Bird calls, waves lap to shore, feet shuffle on a shingle beach, keys ominously chime and arcs of panning grainy distortion are unleashed while watery drips lead to a sombre ending. 'Nitrates Web' seems set in deep woodlands with a gentle melancholic synth figure floating over a beastly eroded undercurrent. It's this perfect balance between haunting melodies and unsettling ambience that makes this so deeply immersive. 'VHS-M155' is just creepy; a combination of ululating bleeps and tones and swirling hypnotic ambience accompanied by menacing wordless hums and the ominous tick of a clock.

I may have leant heavily on sounds more akin to field recordings but voices from films are also used and often subject to subtle manipulation. 'The Fifth Wind' blows to blurry nocturnal dark atmospherics filled with textured rustling and nightmarish burrowing ambience, punctuated by a slowed down drawled song rendered as if a mass or invocation. Elsewhere, there's the haunting beauty of 'The Lake' where glockenspiel chime and cello score is woven through 'The Lake' riddled with recordings of wooded scenes of birds calls, shuffling feet and the clank of a closing car doors. At various points a voice quietly intones, "I exit the lake" and it's clear that there's something living those in those murky waters.

'A Used Ohm' is a suspenseful cinematic horror synth score riddled with shudders, echoes and taps. Everything seems to occur with a room of a house, and it carries that sense of foreboding also found in the woozy feel of Mother Moon, a previous must hear album based on a woodland mansion and a haven for outsiders, misfits and artists. So too does, 'Potter's Bluff' which for the most part of its 10-minute duration is locked to a haunting looped melody layered with grainy synth lines and ratchety effects which gradually die away before a ghostly piano score smeared in distortion arises.

I should have mentioned this earlier but The New Twilight really needs to be listened to on headphones as there are some startling spatial effects, especially on 'The Sun Stood Still'. Synths gently shimmer amidst rustling effects passing into dreamy pastoral realms with chiming piano keys and a gently flowing filmic melody. There's a distinct sound reminiscent of classic British horror and could that be Gillian Hills of Beat Girl and Blow-Up fame and one of the actors in folk horror/hauntology favourite The Owl Service in the accompanying image for this track?

The closing track, 'Take Me To Your Secret World Again', is something entirely different, and sort of builds on the forlorn looped guitar of 'Blessings From The Sun' from Apophrenia. Here, the guitar pickings of its country folk origins are looped and given a wyrd Americana makeover; its repeated sung title shadowed in textured atmospherics as it slips in and out of a dreamspace.

I'm in awe of the works of 400 Lonely Things. Those that I've heard have been thematic and conceptual and even this one focussing on sampling sounds from 70s and 80s horror genre still retains that haunted nostalgic feel, arising from looped drone and melody. You may wonder why no film titles have been mentioned. That's because the accompanying art booklet/download provides manipulated imagery from the films providing clues to the source film used in each track. You can have fun guessing the film. I failed in identifying many but got lost in the haunting and menacing beauty of The New Twilight; a weirdly sinister album subtly manipulating samples from understated audio from horror films, with eerie ambience and haunting melancholia. Truly remarkable and another great album from the wonderful 400 Lonely Things. Get this and don't miss out on Apophrenia and Mother Moon, an album from a group we can't recommend enough. The New Twilight is available digitally from 400 Lonely Things bandcamp and digitally and as a CD from Cold Spring bandcamp and Cold Spring