The Late Show

Artist: 400 Lonely Things

Album: The Late Show

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Formats:

Uncompressed audio on compact disc, with two-panel insert available at 400lonelythings.com

Download this album at:

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Catalog Number: 400LT-2 • PIMALIA-2

UPC: 754422713726

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Late Show began life with a song originally recorded in 2002 by long-time friend and collaborator Erek Gita (Patrick Ware, now guitarist for Athens, GA metal heroes Savagist) entitled Speaker For The Dead after the Orson Scott Card novel. All elements of this song were originally generated by one of Erek Gita’s many electric guitars. It was lonelied up a bit, adding some stray parts from other Erek Gita songs as well. The resulting mix Sleeper For The Dead that appears on this album was the nucleus around which the album was assembled.

One of The Late Show’s most difficult passages is Pounder. It’s a lengthy improvisation using a few mistreated samples of Skip James and Lee Hazlewood among others. The result is disorienting and even a bit ominous; a swirling blend of bewildering desperation whose peak feels like grief pulled inside out - finishing its messy climax in a disquieting stillness. Hyperbole aside and realistically speaking, it should be a pretty challenging listen to some and not easy to classify to most.

The most curious and puzzling track on this album is Bullfight at Swan Lake. It’s a bit of a cover song, and a bit of a mashup - taking pieces of several versions of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and merging it with a few tiny samples of David Sylvian’s Before the Bullfight from his 1986 album Gone To Earth. These were arranged into a lengthy soundbed that is at once pastoral and spacey. Winding it’s way through this landscape is a vocal narrative (a rarity for 400 Lonely Things), the lyrics to David Sylvian’s song, “sung” by perhaps by a Gollum impersonator (Thus the song’s subtitle, A Tone Poem for Tchaikovsky, Sylvian and Gollum).  Material for this album was originally recorded between 1996 and 2008, with most of the album itself being assembled in 2005-2008.

400 Lonely Things is Craig Varian and Jonathan McCall.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Reviews:

“The Late Show is a luxurious experiment in the layering of sound.  Each song seems to be a vignette, setting for us a place, a mood, and a tale set to our own imagination.  The apparatus used and genres combined is nothing new, but here it is done with a skilled hand, and most importantly a sense of humor.  That in itself takes away any pretentiousness from it, making it a satisfying voyage both musically and intellectually.” - Heathen Harvest, issue 76.  Read the entire review here.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tracklisting:

  • 1 Eating Bees in an Airport
  • 2 For You, Two (Part Three)
  • 3 Pounder
  • 4 Sleeper for the Dead
  • 5 BRB
  • 6 Fragile X in the New Age
  • 7 Dracula Needs Glasses
  • 8 Bullfight at Swan Lake (A Tone Poem for Tchaikovsky, Sylvian and Gollum)
  • 9 Wings Found in my Things
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Download one-sheet pdf here.

Email 400 Lonely Things here.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Artist Links:

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________