THE STORY BEHIND THE ALBUM

The starting point for Haunting Times was a simple question: what happens when the language of dreams and nightmares begins to feel increasingly appropriate to the waking world?

The album developed around that idea.

Dreams distort things we recognise. Familiar people and places appear altered. Time behaves strangely. Images from childhood collide with adult fears. Things can feel simultaneously real and impossible.

That became the visual and musical language of Haunting Times.

The album begins in a world in which something already feels slightly wrong and gradually moves further into uncertainty. Across the record there are recurring ideas of childhood and memory, isolation, masks and identity, fear, conflict and the search for something authentic beneath the noise.

Musically, those ideas are reflected in songs that move between intimate passages and larger progressive and cinematic arrangements. Guitar, piano and voice remain central, but the scale and texture change considerably across the record.

Despite its title, and with an ironic wink towards the release date, Haunting Times is not intended as a horror record, nor as an exercise in pessimism or darkness.

The starting point is akin to waking in the middle of surreal dream or nightmare to find things slightly off before moments of reality and recognition kick in -  but its trajectory is ultimately towards resistance and renewal. The closing stages of the album become increasingly defiant before Ascension provides a quieter sense of emergence: not necessarily an answer to everything that has come before, but the possibility of seeing things differently.

FALLING DOWN

The first song being introduced from Haunting Times, Falling Down, sits near the beginning of the album's descent into its dream world.

The song grew from the contrast between the innocence of childhood and the considerably less innocent world encountered as an adult.

At its centre is the familiar echo of a nursery rhyme — something associated with play and childhood — placed against images of division, instability and human vulnerability.

That contrast leads to one of the ideas running through the song and the wider album: however separate we may imagine ourselves to be, what happens to one ultimately affects us all.

The accompanying film extends that idea visually, moving between childhood imagery, recognisable human figures and an increasingly fragmented and surreal world.

WATCH / LISTEN

Falling Down

Official video and streaming links will be added following release.

Advance press access: Private album listening and advance video links are available to journalists, reviewers and broadcasters on request.

Haunting Times — Album & Channel Trailer

Available ahead of release.

ABOUT DAVID ELL

David Ell is a Scottish singer-songwriter, musician and composer whose work moves between alternative and progressive rock, acoustic songwriting and cinematic instrumental music.

His songs frequently explore identity, relationships, memory and the tension between private experience and the world outside, while his work as a composer draws on piano, orchestral instrumentation and contemporary cinematic textures.

That crossover increasingly informs both sides of his music. Rather than treating songwriting and soundtrack composition as separate disciplines, Haunting Times brings elements of the two together: conventional song structures can open into more atmospheric passages, while the album's visual and conceptual world is approached with the narrative sensibility of a film score.

His previous releases include Welcome to the Ball, an album centred on identity and the masks people adopt in everyday life.

With Haunting Times, those concerns move outward into a broader landscape of dreams, anxiety, distortion and ultimately awakening.

David Ell has released three prior albums, “Wreckingball”, “Dance of the Furies” and “Welcome to the Ball” and is based in Scotland.

SELECTED PRESS

“music of real character ” (The Times)

“as a songwriter, David Ell compares favourably with great songwriters like U2 and Radiohead” (Is This Music) 

“Atmospheric, poetic, gentle Goth tinged post-punk meets a kind of vaudevillian sensibility, a steely music hall vibe for end times” (The Even Ground) 

"Songs are immaculate in their delivery...." (Skope)

PRESS ASSETS

High-resolution press materials are available for editorial use:

Haunting Times — album artwork
High-resolution square artwork

David Ell — press photographs
High-resolution portrait and landscape images

Haunting Times — track listing

David Ell — artist biography

Advance album listening
Private link available for reviewers and broadcasters

Falling Down — advance video
Private viewing link available prior to public release