400 Lonely Things

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.