A World on Fire - A Zombie Blog

This month’s giveaway prize is a signed copy of 400 Lonely Things’ Tonight of the Living Dead. This is a dark melodious journey into the zombie filled apocalypse as depicted in George Romero’s groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead. You can get a sample of this music right over here.

This is the first part of interview that will span the entire month. If you have any questions that you’d like ask 400 Lonely Things just post your comment on the facebook page, or reply to this post.

Who is 400 Lonely Things?
400 Lonely Things is just Jonathan McCall and myself (Craig Varian). We’ve been recording for over 20 years, but didn’t hit upon the name and theme of 400 Lonely Things until 2001 or 2002. The name itself was just something I’d scribbled on a pad where I would write down phrases and words that I liked. I didn’t think much of it when I first wrote it, but a few days later I realized that it described an obvious thread in our music that I’d never really noticed before: this kind of disconnected nostalgia that was equally creepy and comforting. I think we are driven by some primordial homesickness, for a feeling of belonging that seems lost, but may have never even existed in the first place. Like the phantom limb of a phantom limb.

What music has influenced 400 Lonely Things?
Because our music is extremely self-referential and introspective and private, I don’t feel that 400 Lonely Things is directly influenced much by other artists. Although a lot of what we do is sample-based, we often sample ourselves or our surroundings and when we sample other sources (like songs or films) – it’s usually to try to capture a feeling, time or association that belongs to us and not to the source material.

Do you listen to a lot of music?
Although I’ve thinned my collection of vinyl somewhat, I still have about a thousand pieces and I have a couple thousand cds boxed up somewhere in the house and am currently halfway through filling up a 160gb iPod. I listen to a lot of dub, especially Prince Far I and the Arabs and Scientist. I never get tired of Cocteau Twins’ pre-Capitol recordings. Lately I’ve been digging some of the 80′s music I loved when it was new (like Public Image Limited, Dali’s Car, Wolfgang Press, Echo and the Bunnymen) and some of the 80′s music I missed like The Sound and Siouxsie and the Banshees. I also love Ween! I’ve seen them at least six times.

Who are some of your favorite artists?
There are two artists who over the years have really come to mean a lot to me, and that’s William Basinski and Boards of Canada. I hear this same sensibility of nostalgia, homesickness, and repetition in a lot of their recordings that I feel is both a method and a thematic territory we have in common. Plus there’s just textural similarities that come from working with found sound. There’s also two albums that I couldn’t do without – David Sylvian’s “Gone To Earth” and Aphex Twin’s “Selected Ambient Works Vol II”.