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Mother Moon (CSR319CD)

by 400 Lonely Things

supported by
Dave Turner
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Dave Turner A beautiful atmospheric ambient exploration of the memory of Banning Mill in Georgia USA and of the painting (and artist) found within. Mesmerising stuff and the supplemental book is equally essential. Hopefully Cold Spring will reissue the other 400 Lonely Things album on CD soon, so we can experience more of Craig Varian's unique work. 10/10 Favorite track: You Must Sail To The Haunted Stars.
kickingmachine
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kickingmachine The tone of this reminds me of the scene in Walter Hill's Southern Comfort where Stuckey is slowly and agonisingly sucked into a sticky, leaf strewn bog whilst a rescue helicopter drones powerlessly overhead.
A mogadon-drenched, heavy-lidded, slow-motion nightmare, one of the very best of 2023 thus far. Unconditionally recommended. Favorite track: In Darkness.
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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    CD in 6-panel spot-varnished digipak with cover art by Richard Scott Hill.

    Orders via Bandcamp receive a bonus 44-page supplemental digital book.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Mother Moon (CSR319CD) via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 7 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      £11.99 GBP or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      £6.99 GBP  or more

     

1.
Good Morning 07:55
2.
3.
4.
Many Moons 09:20
5.
In Darkness 06:01
6.
Oh My Soul 07:16
7.
Banning Mill 10:41
8.
9.

about

The new album from 400 LONELY THINGS, produced by WILLIAM BASINSKI, is a dark ambient, sample-based séance to the Banning Mill - a real-life decaying "mansion" and haven for artists, freaks and misfits in the backwoods of the American Deep South in the 1970s-1990s - and an extraordinary piece of art that lived there.

An archaeological excursion in found sound - wandering through the art and memory of a real place, "Mother Moon" is an origin story for 400 Lonely Things. In the 1990's, Craig Varian was fortunate enough to frequent the Mill in the years before it closed. It was here that he was exposed to the artwork of Richard Scott Hill. The impact is hard to overstate.

Built on the Snake River in the early 1800's as a textile mill, it operated until the late 1960's and when its doors closed on that era, and reopened on another. In 1971, the Mill was purchased by a young wealthy "eccentric" (to use the vernacular of the time). He was openly gay in the deeply bigoted Old South, a collector of fantastic and surreal art, a drug enthusiast, an owner of at least one mental illness, and a self-described entrepreneur with a vision. In the years that followed, he turned this sprawling, mildewed structure into a private hippie art collective, music venue and refuge for Southern misfits - gays and gender-benders, visual artists, musicians, mystics, ghost-hunters, wizards, pagans, intellectuals, poets, nerds and psychedelic explorers by the dozens drifted in and out, creating their own alternate universe in its hundreds of rooms.

One of these artists was Richard Scott Hill. Hill's work stood apart from everything else at the Mill. It was all black and white or hand-coloured photography - typically stark portraits of people - almost always wearing masks. These photos were disturbing and disarming, hilarious and crazed, unsettling and aggressively surreal in their confrontational simplicity. His work both captured and fed into the Mill's sinister yet playful undercurrents of mania and depression. By the conservative 1980's, the Mill became a very different place. A dark and quiet ectoplasmic hangover haunted its rooms with just a handful of tenants, remaining so until its doors closed for good in the late 90's.

Varian had friends that lived there, and after hearing quiet legends of the Banning Mill since the late 80's, was finally able to visit. While the Mill itself was transformative enough, turning down a disused hallway, Varian encountered the image on the cover of this album and quite simply became a different person. A lifetime spent as a Southern misfit had led to fruitless artistic, philosophical, spiritual and psychedelic pursuits as relief. At this time, an obsession with visual collage and audio sampling had been brewing and upon seeing this image, boiled over. He realized that the sounds and images he'd been seeking had been sought by many others and that for a time, these seekers had lived here in the secret winding halls of Banning Mill in the wilds of the Deep South. In particular, this nude cow-faced woman was the Minotauress who sat at the heart of that maze.

Since the days of the Mill (and Varian's subsequent purchase of Hill's "Minotauress" shortly before the Mill closed), Varian, along with best friend and musical partner Jonathan McCall, found a thread of music they'd been consistently making yet had previously failed to notice - melancholic instrumentals with weathered sampling at its core - going back to their earliest recordings in the late 1980's. Eventually, this music was called 400 Lonely Things, and eventually an album would be attempted to honor both the Mill and Richard's "Minotauress".

The Mill has been closed for about 25 years now and all that remains of it is a gutted skeleton covered in yellow caution tape. After a dozen albums, Jonathan McCall has since passed on to the next realm. But this album, born out of that first visit to the Mill, is finally here - an imaginary soundtrack to the many years of solitude the Minotauress spent hanging in that musty hallway.

For this album, Varian reached out to Mr. Hill and a friendship and artistic relationship has developed. Richard - now in his 80's and an established figure in the established art world - still creates fantastically bizarre works daily from his home studio, just a mile from the remains of the Mill. He says that the music of 400 Lonely Things is from another dimension and he hopes you enjoy it and his previously unpublished art gracing the cover.

Presented in a 6-panel spot-varnished digipak.

Watch the offical video for 'Parlor Tricks': youtu.be/Inkmp9R512k

Watch the promo video: youtu.be/9zLq2v0ZjFk

credits

released April 11, 2023

Produced by William Basinski
Additional Mixing and Mastering by Preston Wendel
Covert art by Richard Scott Hill

"Mother Moon is a cypher that saves an important hidden fragment of cultural history from erasure." Ben Ponton, Zoviet France.

"Mother Moon is darkness calling. It will take you to the outer limits and leave you there. Guaranteed to twist your mind." Andrew Hulme, O Yuki Conjugate.

"A wistful, burrowing, beautiful nightmare." Daniel Kraus, NY Times Best Selling Author of The Living Dead with George A. Romero, and The Shape Of Water with Guillermo Del Toro.

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Cold Spring England, UK

We are a UK-based record label / mailorder store / distributor, specialising in all forms of esoteric / industrial music, but particularly: Industrial, Dark Ambient, Black Ambient, Japanese Noise, Neoclassical, Dark Folk, Orchestral, Power Electronics, Noise, Drone, Doom, Death Industrial, Dark Soundtracks and Experimental music. ... more

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