You’re sitting in a room with the lights off. Maybe you’re wearing headphones. Suddenly, a piano riff that sounds like it was recorded through a thick wool blanket starts to loop. Then come the samples—voices from 1950s seances and snippets of paranormal researchers talking about ghosts. This is the world of Giles Corey, the solo project of Dan Barrett.
If you know Dan, you probably know him from Have a Nice Life. You know "Bloodhail." You know the "Arrow Heads" memes. But Giles Corey is a different beast entirely. It’s not just "acoustic Have a Nice Life." Honestly, it’s much more dangerous than that.
Why Dan Barrett named his project after a man pressed to death
Naming your band after a victim of the Salem Witch Trials is a choice. A heavy one. Giles Corey wasn't just some guy who got hanged; he was a farmer who refused to plead guilty or innocent. Because he wouldn't speak, the law at the time required him to be "pressed." They laid a board on him and piled on heavy stones.
His last words? "More weight."
Dan Barrett didn't just pick the name because it sounded "metal" or "goth." He felt a kinship with that level of obstinacy. In various writings and the 150-page book that originally accompanied the 2011 self-titled album, Barrett talks about the "immorality of execution." He views Corey’s death as a political act. The man made them murder him. He made it ugly.
When you listen to a track like "No One Is Ever Going To Want Me," you can hear that weight. The song starts as a lonely acoustic crawl and ends with Dan screaming "Open up your heart!" while the production disintegrates into a cacophony of horns and static. It’s the sonic equivalent of those stones being piled on one by one.
The Robert Voor connection
If you’ve spent any time on the Enemies List (Dan's record label) website, you’ve seen the name Robert Voor.
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Is he real? No.
But Dan writes about him like he is. Voor is a fictional cult leader and afterlife theorist created by Barrett. He’s the bridge between Deathconsciousness (Have a Nice Life) and Giles Corey. In the Giles Corey book, Barrett details the "Voor’s Head Device"—a terrifying-looking hood designed to facilitate out-of-body experiences through mild asphyxiation.
It’s easy to dismiss this as edgy art-school stuff. But for Dan, it was a way to process a very real, very dark period of suicidal depression in 2009. He used the fictional mythology of Robert Voor to explain the "nothingness" he was feeling. It’s basically a mask. Sometimes you have to pretend to be a cult member to talk about why you don't want to be alive anymore.
The sound of "Acoustic Industrial"
Most people call this album "folk." That’s a bit of a stretch. Sure, there’s an acoustic guitar, but there are also:
- Binaural beats designed to mess with your brain waves.
- Drums that sound like they were programmed on a version of Fruity Loops from 2004.
- Layers of "EVP" (Electronic Voice Phenomena) recordings.
Dan has described it as "acoustic music from the industrial revolution." It’s dusty. It’s grainy. It feels like finding a box of old tapes in a basement that you definitely weren't supposed to enter.
Take "Blackest Bile." It’s seven minutes long. It starts with a funereal organ and Dan’s breathy, defeated vocals. Then, about halfway through, it turns into this stomping, triumphant, yet terrifying anthem. It shouldn't work. A guy recording in his bedroom shouldn't be able to make something that sounds this massive, yet here we are.
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What people get wrong about Dan Barrett's "persona"
There's this myth that Dan Barrett is this abyssal, unapproachable figure who lives in a cave of sadness. If you've ever seen an interview with him or read his AMAs on Reddit, you'll know that's not true.
He’s a dad. He runs a business. He’s actually... kind of a normal, nice guy?
In 2016, an interviewer from the University of Melbourne mentioned how terrified they were to email him, expecting a response like "FUCK YOU" or just silence. Instead, they got a businesslike reply with a link to a scheduling app. His avatar was a photo of him smiling.
This is the central tension of the Giles Corey project. It represents a specific "slice" of Dan’s psyche. It’s the part of him that felt "beyond help" in 2009. But it isn't the whole him. He has often said that "pain is inevitable, but suffering is not." Making the music was a way to externalize the suffering so he didn't have to carry it around anymore.
The "Jumpscare" in "No One Is Ever Going To Want Me"
We have to talk about it. If you've heard the song, you know the part. Around the five-minute mark, the guitar gets quiet. You think the song is ending. Then—BAM. A wall of noise hits you.
Fans call it the "jumpscare."
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It’s become a bit of a legendary moment in underground music circles. It’s not there to be cheap, though. It represents the "cathartic outburst" that follows "quiet desperation." It’s the moment the depression stops being a dull ache and starts being a scream.
Beyond the self-titled album
While the 2011 record is the "big one," the Giles Corey project didn't stop there.
- Hinterkaifeck (2013): A shorter EP named after a famous unsolved mass murder in Germany. It’s even more minimalist. "Winter’s House" is a standout here—it’s remarkably bleak.
- Deconstructionist (2012): This one is weird. It’s three tracks, over 90 minutes long, consisting almost entirely of binaural beats and drone. It was released with a "primer" explaining how to use the audio to induce trances.
Dan eventually moved on to other sounds. He started Black Wing, which is more "digital gloom" and electronic. He kept making music with Have a Nice Life (Sea of Worry in 2019). But Giles Corey remains the most "human" thing he’s ever done. It’s the rawest nerve.
How to actually approach this music
If you’re new to Dan Barrett’s work, don't just shuffle it on Spotify while you're doing chores. You’ll miss the point.
- Read the book. You can find PDFs of the 150-page accompaniment online if you can't find a physical copy. It provides the context for Robert Voor and Dan's own mental state.
- Listen in order. The album is structured like a story arc. It starts with "The Haunting Presence" (the feeling of being watched by your own sadness) and ends with "Buried Above Ground."
- Acknowledge the fiction. Don't get too bogged down in whether the cult stuff is "real." It’s a metaphor. The ghosts aren't real, but the feeling of being haunted is.
Giles Corey is a reminder that you can be at the absolute bottom—the "bottom of a well," as Dan screams on the opening track—and still find a way to make something beautiful out of the dirt. It’s a cult classic because it doesn't pretend things are okay. It just sits with you in the dark until you're ready to get up.
To dive deeper into Dan Barrett's world, your next move is to look up the "Enemies List Home Recordings" catalog. Start with the "Deathconsciousness" liner notes to see how the Robert Voor mythology began years before the Giles Corey album was even a thought. This provides the necessary "lore" to understand why the themes of the afterlife and "The Will" appear so frequently across his different projects.