“Fascinating CD. I found the album very memory invoking. Listening to Tonight of the Living Dead was like musically leaping back in time to relive all the nuances of my character Barbra’s struggle to survive all the horrific night terrors forced on her in Night of the Living Dead. Thank you so much for creating such a soul searching CD.”
Judith O’Dea - “Barbra” in George A. Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
A remix project over a year in the making, Tonight of the Living Dead is a collage of treated audio and a 12-page booklet of treated imagery taken from the 1968 George Romero film Night of the Living Dead.
With their tendency for darkish music told mostly through samples, remixing Night of the Living Dead
is a project ideally suited to 400 Lonely Things. While so many are indebted to this movie for introducing
them to the world of horror cinema, Tonight of the Living Dead pays tribute to a lesser-known legacy of
this film: the ground-breaking precedent of plunderphonics and remixing established in the
composition of the original 1968 soundtrack.
Crew and cast member Karl Hardman, under the editorial supervision of George Romero, used recordings by other composers from stock film music libraries - many of which had already appeared in other movies and television shows - and then “augmented them electronically” to form their own original score for Night of the Living Dead. 400 Lonely Things has extended this notion of augmentation by using mutated samples from the film itself (many with their excellent foley work intact) as the only ingredients, and weaving these treatments into a subtle and creepy, dialog-free, instrumental companion that should appeal as much to fans of the film as it would to listeners of dark ambient, plunderphonics and experimental music. That appeal may even extend to fans of classical music (and soundtracks in general) who have a taste for things on the fringe.
While the film is noted for how it straddles a line between social commentary and drive-in shlock with a kind of clunky elegance, 400 Lonely Things’ Tonight of the Living Dead is concerned with the more understated and haunting moments of this movie, focusing on the fragility of “Barbra” and drawing out the sense of bewildering relentlessness and hypnotic inevitability of waiting in an old farm-house for the world to end.
It is hoped that Tonight of the Living Dead will somehow add to the legacy of this film in some tiny way, rather than take from it. It is respectfully dedicated to the late Karl Hardman and all who worked on the original soundtrack, the imagery is dedicated to Judy O’Dea, “The Music Box” is for Kyra Schon, and of course the big picture is for George Romero.
Fully Packaged Edition
With Uncompressed Audio
$15 - Post Paid World Wide
Buy with Paypal Add to Cart
— or —
Send check or money order to
Craig Varian · P.O. Box 471 · Bryson City, NC 28713 · USA
(Please notify us of your order in advance by emailing 400lonelythings at gmail.com)
reviews of Tonight of the Living Dead
“It’s clear from the finished product that 400 Lonely Things’ album is meant as a sincere tribute to the zombie masterpiece.” - RUE MORGUE MAGAZINE
“400 Lonely Things has nailed a hard-to-find sub-genre of dark music on the head, that many of us in the horror community have been yearning for… More than just a CD for fans of the macabre.” - BLOODYDISGUSTING.COM
“A genuine tribute to a deserving classic.” - DREADCENTRAL.COM
“A fantastic dark atmosphere.” - MIDNIGHT PODCAST
“Awesome… A must have for genre-fans.” - KILLER REVIEWS
“…A tool for horror fans to relive one of the greatest horror films ever made in a whole new way. Highly recommended.” - SEND MORE COPS
“The mood evoked in Tonight of the Living Dead remains consistent throughout… a pervading, quiet terror.” - SCOTT KENEMORE, author THE ZEN OF ZOMBIE
“We can tell you first-hand the album is seriously cool.” - SCARS MAGAZINE
“Tonight of the Living Dead is a long melancholic walk through the shadows in George Romero’s world. It is a compilation of sound that evokes the raw grittiness of the film. In the movie, you see Barbara’s horrific flight from a zombie that killed her brother. With Tonight of the Living Dead, you actually feel it.” - A WORLD ON FIRE