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Queens of Evil, Tam Lin and The Touchables – High Fashion Transitional Psych Folk Horror, Pastoral Fantasy and Dreamlike Isolation: Chapter 23 Book Images

Queens of Evil-1970-Le Regine-A Year In The Country 8The Touchables-film-1968-French posterTam Lin-1970-film poster-A Year In The Country

“There is a mini film sub-genre of pastoral fantasy, with at times elements of folk horror, wherein late 1960s and turn of the decade high fashion mixes with grown up fairytale high jinx, wayward behaviour and sometimes a step or two or more towards the dark side, all carried out in dreamlike isolation in the woods and pastoral settings.

The three main films aligned with such things are Queens of Evil aka Le Regine or Il Delitto del Diavolo (1970), Tam Lin aka The Devil’s Widow (1970) and in a more loosely connected manner The Touchables (1968).

All three of these films draw from, to varying degrees, some of the often defining themes of folk horror: being set in rural places and buildings where activities and rituals can develop or take place without easy escape to or influence from the outside world, normality and societal norms.”

Queens of Evil-1970-Le Regine-A Year In The Country 1

Queens of Evil-1970-Le Regine-A Year In The Country 4c

“Queens of Evil’s plot follows a handsome young freewheeling hippie idealist who comes across a house in the woods after he has been involved in a road accident where a materially wealthy gent was killed.

Living in this house are three young women who take him in, charm, nurture, seduce and confuse him. Everything is rosy for a while but there is something off-kilter about the setup and he cannot quite seem to leave.”

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Celia Birtwell-Ossie Clark-1960s-three fashion photographs-pastoral-folk

 “It is an at points chimeric fantasy which is largely set in sharply stylish but indolent, tree-inhabited period interiors and is full of late 1960s ethereal high-fashion along the lines of Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell’s work from then and also incorporating the period folkloric-meets-psychedelia imagery collecting of website Psychedelic Folkloristic and its reflection of a relatively brief point in time around the later 1960s to early 1970s when fashionability turned towards folk and pastoral concerns.”

daisies-1966-sedmikrásky-1 daisies-1966-sedmikrásky-2

“(In terms of) reference points it creates a sense of a gently decadent grown ups version of a tea-party in the woods, a dash of Snow White (at one point somebody says “It’s just like Snow White’s house” about the cabin in the woods), a bit more of a dash of Hansel and Gretel and its tales of leading astray, more than a touch of the earlier mentioned and loosely interconnected kidnapping and pop-art pastoral playground film The Touchables, alongside the social critique and/or dreamlike qualities of some of Czech New Wave films such as Daisies (1966) and Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970).”

Queens of Evil-1970-Le Regine-A Year In The Country 4

The Wicker Man-1973-film still-procession

It could well also be appropriate to include The Wicker Man (1973) as another reference point.

“In both films there is a similar sense of game playing, of leading a worldly innocent through a set of rituals and of differing levels of power and control in a rural setting.

Also, in common with that towering relatively modern folklore tale, apples and symbols of temptation play a part in this game.

And as with The Wicker Man, this is a tale full of its own and borrowed mythology, which seems to exist and be told in a world of its own imagining, where the outside rarely intrudes.”

Liefe & Lief-Fairport Convention-album cover art Comus-First Utterance-album cover art

“In many ways it is a story of a culture tottering right on the edge of when the utopian, carefree, sundrenched dream of the 1960s was about to fall into the darkness of its own dissolution in the following decade (Liege & Lief becomes Comus, to draw parallels with folk music’s progression at the time).”

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The Touchables-Brian Freemantle-book-novelisation-Robert Freeman 1968 film The Touchables-1968-Robert Freeman-film still

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“In terms of this loose mini sub-genre of pastoral fantasy, The Touchables is more rooted in the later part rather than the tipping point of that 1960s dream, although it does represent a world and culture which seems to have become untethered and possibly one which lacks a moral centre.

It is a very modish tale of a group of stylish sixties women who live in a huge see-through plastic bubble in the middle of the countryside who kidnap a pop star as “a temporary solution to the leisure problem” and in order make him their plaything.

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Nirvana-1968 album-All of Us-The Touchables film 1968

“Mixed in with this are the stealing of a Michael Caine dummy, gangsters, wrestlers with rather refined aristocratic tastes, a fair bit of high-fashion styling and a fine pop-psych title song by Nirvana (the 1960s band rather than the later Seattle based grunge group).

Essentially, at heart it is a caper romp but one that is more than one remove from the mainstream and quite surreal in its setting and the mixture of elements it contains.”

Performance-1970-Nicholas Roeg-Donald Cammell-James Fox-Anita Pallenberg-Mick Jagger-Michele Breton

“It was not a surprise to discover that The Touchables was based on a script by Donald Cammell (with a screenplay by Ian La Frenais), as in part it represents a proto, more pop-art, possibly light hearted take on Performance (1970), which he wrote and co-directed.

As with The Touchables, Performance also incorporates a theme of a popstar living in an enclosed bubble world, although its setting is in some ways more prosaic as it involves a former popstar who lives a reclusive, isolated life in a London flat rather than in a rurally set large-scale see-through plastic dome as is the case with The Touchables.”

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“One intriguing aspect of The Touchables is that there is not even an attempt to explain how the stylish group of female kidnappers’ bubble or lifestyle are afforded, nor why there seems to be no outside comment or interference by mainstream society, authority etc. about their quite frankly rather unusual giant blow-up see-through home that is sitting in the middle of the countryside, complete with jukebox, canopied merry-go-round etc.”

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Tam Lin-1970-opening sequence-A Year In The Country.jpg

“Tam Lin is a curious film which as with Queens of Evil and The Touchables does not easily fit into any particular mainstream genre; it is a loose modern adaptation of the traditional folkloric tale and song “The Ballad of Tam Lin”, relocated to the country home of an almost mythologically wealthy older woman which is peopled by various late 60s hipsters, hunks and prepossessing actresses of the time (including Madeline Smith, Joanna Lumley and Jenny Hanley) and soundtracked by British jazz-folk band Pentangle.”

Ian McShane-Ava Gardner-Tam LinIan McShane-Tam Lin-Stephanie Beacham

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“Hollywood legend Ava Gardner stars as that wealthy, older woman, alongside a dapper Ian McShane who plays a young man that catches her eye and Stephanie Beacham as the innocent from the world outside.”

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Roddy McDowall-Ava Gardner-Tam Lin-on setRoddy McDowall-Cornelius-Planet of the Apes

“It was directed by Roddy McDowell, who is possibly most famous for playing the lead simian character in the Planet of the Apes films that were released from 1968 to 1973.

This was the only time he directed which is a pity as this film shows that he had considerable promise in that area.”

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Tam Lin-1970-screenshot 2-Joanna Lumley-Madeline Smith-A Year In The Country.jpg

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“The plot involves an immensely rich older lady Michaela Cazaret, gathering up hip young things to come and live, play with and amuse in her country mansion; her actions seems like a scooping up or pied piper-esque leading as she heads a convoy of cars through roads walled by pylons into her country lair.

Cue childlike games (how can a game of frisbee seem so very odd?), partying, pleasing of the senses, imbibing and so forth.”

 Psychomania 1971-screenshot-A Year In The Country

“In Tam Lin there is a sense of playful opulence and a mod/post-mod sharpness to the style which could be compared and contrasted with say the murk, grime and tattiness of the also sub/counter-culture orientated folk horror related film Psychomania which was released in 1973.

They are separated by but a few years but are worlds apart in terms of the aesthetic style, societal/economic conditions, atmosphere and possibly optimism that they represent or portray.”

 Pentangle-band-group photograph

“Tam Lin was also made at a high water mark of folk rock and the returning music refrain throughout the film is traditional folk song “The Ballad of Tam Lin” from which the film takes its inspiration, performed in the film by Pentangle and which infuses and intermingles with the more conventional music score.

The film’s story follows that of its folk music forebear which with its fantastical tales underpins and layers the sense of this being an adult fairytale.” 

 

Online images to accompany Chapter 23 of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book, alongside some text extracts from the chapter:

Details of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book and the collection of its accompanying online images can be found at the Book’s Page, which will be added to throughout the year.

 

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John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness Part 2 – “This is not a dream”: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 23/52

prince of darkness title-John Carpenter-1987

In Part 1 of this post I began to write about John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, a low budget film he made in 1987 which interweaves, layers and explores horror shocks and tropes with an alternative scientific exploration/explanation of religious archetypes, with a plot where evil takes the physical form of sentient liquid that is discovered to be what we know of as the devil and the source of evil and which has been hidden and contained for millennia.

This liquid or devil is the offspring of a mass mind which is thought to controls all matter and which is bound to an anti-matter realm or universe.

Prince of Darkness-1987-John Carpenter-dream sequence-5

Members of a research group who are called in to investigate this liquid by a priest begin to have the same dream, which appears to be sections of a transmission and warning from the future where a dark foreboding figure appears at the entrance of the church where the liquid has been hidden, with the dream transmission telling those receiving it that they must change the events that will lead to this.

As I mention in Part 1 of this post, the film has a sparse, tense, ragged energy and contains within it an overarching sense of dread.

Within the film, the portal between the dark/evil universe and ours takes the form of a mirror, which a possessed or transformed human attempts to aid the father or devil figure’s through by reaching into.

(Some of these sections draw inspiration from sequences in Jean Cocteau’s 1950 film Orpheus – if I remember correctly in Prince of Darkness the liquid surfaces of the mirrors were created using liquid drained from the base of a steadicam.)

This crossing over appears to be ended or at least thwarted when one of the research group essentially sacrifices herself by running at the possessed human and carrying them both through into this other realm, immediately after which a priest smashes the mirror with an axe in order to destroy the portal.

Dream sequence-2-Prince of Darkness-1987-John Carpenter

However, after this resolving of the plot the main male hero character is shown as having the recurring dream transmission again, only this time it is broadcast in full:

“This is not a dream… not a dream. We are using your brain’s electrical system as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year one, nine, nine, nine. You are receiving this broadcast in order to alter the events you are seeing. Our technology has not developed a transmitter strong enough to reach your conscious state of awareness, but this is not a dream. You are seeing what is actually occurring for the purpose of causality violation.” (From the “dream transmissions” in the film.)

prince_of_darkness-mirror-John Carpenter 1987

In this final dream transmission the shadowed figure is shown to be the member of the research group who sacrificed herself in order to stop the crossing over: it is possibly implied in this full version that the figure which is shown emerging from the church was not previously but has now become her – that their actions have not ended but merely changed the vessel from the dark universe.

After “viewing” this version the hero wakes up to find the human who earlier in the film was possessed by the liquid or devil in his bed, he screams but this is still part of his dream. The final shot shows him rising from his bed and approaching his bedroom mirror with his hand outstretched, seemingly in a manner that implies that the Anti-God’s attempts to break through to our universe are not yet at an end.

Dream sequence-Prince of Darkness-1987-John Carpenter

As a film Prince of Darkness leaves space for the viewer’s imagination and this lack of closure is part of that.

And as a viewing experience it also imparts a lingering sense of dread, something which is in part caused by the way in which it plays with religious archetypes, alongside the dream transmissions connecting with our associations with television transmissions: these often normally are a source of relaxation, escape and comfort but here they have invaded the dreamers (or should that be viewers?) minds and are anything but.

Here they have a spectral quality, both literally as they may well show a form of super or preternatural presence and also, as I mention in Part 1, in the way that they contain the signifiers and “spectres” of analogue television transmissions – scanlines, crackles, glitches and interference.

Which brings me to hauntological spectres…

Kid-Koala-Ghost-Box-Records-The-Focus-Group-We-Are-All-Pans-People-DJ Shadow-Endtroducing

I have mentioned at A Year In The Country before how a connection could be made between say the hauntological, spectral montage cut-ups of Ghost Box Record’s artist The Focus Group and the crate-digging turntable orientated musical montaging of say DJ Shadow or Kid Koala, with both hauntological and turntablism work often utilising and even celebrating the audio artifacts and imperfections of older media such as vinyl crackles.

(As an aside The Focus Group bring to mind a parallel world late night Open University broadcast from some indefinable past era where a bearded and bespectacled lecturer attempts to explain and demonstrate such turntablism… I feel an exclamation mark would be appropriate about now – !)

DJ Shadow-Entroducing-Transmission 1-Prince of Darkness dream sequence-John Carpenter 1987

With Prince of Darkness such things are interconnected further, as the dream transmissions share an aesthetic/siginifiers (previous periods media artifacts – the aforementioned crackles, glitches etc) and unexplained nature with some of hauntology – they seem like spectres in the modern day but ones transmitted via media and technology rather than being purely supernatural in nature.

Connected to and intertwined with which, as I mention in Part 1 of this post, hauntological and some related work could be seen at times as being a form of exploring or creating modern-day magic, the mystical, the supernatural, spectres and hauntings

DJ Shadow-Entroducing-CD opened-gatefold

While Transmission 1 on DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing….. album from 1996 begins with what sounds as though it could be recordings of astronaut/control centre communications which as it plays is overlayed with sounds that may be the physical turning of tape, which then segues into samples from the dream transmisions from Prince of Darkness.

To be continued in Part 3…

Elsewhere:
The dream sequences from Prince of Darkness
The Prince of Darkness trailer
DJ Shadow’s Transmission 1 – “This is not a dream”

Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
1) Day #205/365: The interfaces between the old ways/cathode rays; twelve spinnings from an (Electric Edenic) Invisible Ghost (Juke)Box
2) Day #207/365: The Eccentronic Research Council: modern day magic on a monthly tariff and the rhyming (and non-rhyming) couplets of non-populist pop
3) Wanderings #8/52a: Dropping Science: From Endtroducing to The Electronique Void Via Haunted Tea Rooms And Pans People
4)Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 22/52: John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness Part 1 – The Sleeper Awakens

 

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Gone to Earth – Earlier Traces of an Otherly Albion: Chapter 22 Book Images

Gone To Earth-1950-Powell and Pressburger-Jennifer Jones-poster-costume-A Year In The Country

Gone To Earth-Mary Webb-Four Square Books film cover-2

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“Gone to Earth is a film from 1950 directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on the 1917 novel by Mary Webb. It is also known as The Wild Heart in a considerably re-edited version created at the instigation of producer David O. Selznick after a disagreement and subsequent court case between the directors and him.”

Jennifer Jones-Gone to Earth-1950-Powell and Pressburger-A Year In The Country-2

“In the film Hazel Woodus, played by Jennifer Jones, is a beautiful but innocent young woman who lives in the Shropshire countryside in 1897 and is very steeped in an older more rural way of life and lore. She loves and understands wild animals and whenever she has problems, she turns to the book of spells and charms left to her by her gypsy mother.”

Jennifer Jones-Gone to Earth-1950-Powell and Pressburger-A Year In The Country-4

In some ways it is a caddish melodrama, with the untamed main female character marrying the local priest (the “good man”) but being lead astray by the archetypal baddie, the local squire.

However, while containing elements of more mainstream cinematic fare of the time it also contains a non-populist or exploratory nature presented within a populist framework.

As you watch the film you can feel it straining at its period restrictions in terms of sexuality, desire, faithfulness and respectability, accompanied by expressions and considerations of sin, acceptance, redemption and retribution…

As a film it also appears to be a forebear of later culture which would travel amongst the layered, hidden histories of the land and folklore, showing a world where faiths old and new are part of and/or mingle amongst folkloric beliefs and practices. Accompanying which, in the world of Gone to Earth (and it is most definitely its own world) the British landscape is not presented in a realist manner.”

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“The film’s elements of older folkloric ways and its visual aspects combine to create a subtle magic realism in the film and the world and lives it shows, conjures and presents.

It also creates a bucolic dream of the countryside, particularly during the “Harps in Heaven” song and sequence.

In this section Hazel Woodus is pictured singing on the crest of a hill in her Sunday best dress and bonnet, accompanied on a full size harp by her father…

The song itself is reminscent of “O Willow Waly” from the 1961 film The Innocents in that it has a similar haunting quality and a purity of voice that stops and captures you in your tracks.”

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Finders Keepers Records-Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders soundtrack

“In some ways the air of not-quite-real-ness that can be found in Gone to Earth makes it seem like a forerunner to the more adult fairy tale side of the Czech New Wave (especially Valerie and her Week of Wonders from 1970 and possibly Malá Morská Víla/The Little Mermaid from 1976 and also of the style, character and imagery of a younger Kate Bush, of a free spirit cast out upon and amongst the moors.

The Red Shoes-Kate Bush-album cover artFilm Title: Retrospective -Michael Powellthe lines the cross & the curve-kate bush-miranda richardson-laserdisc cover

“The connection between Kate Bush and Gone to Earth is also further entwined in that her 1993 album Red Shoes takes its title from and was inspired by Powell and Pressburger’s 1948 film of the same name, which was also an influence on her 1993 film which accompanied the album The Line, the Cross & the Curve.”

David Sylvian-Gone To Earth-album cover art Secrets of the Beehive-David Sylvian-cover art-Vaughan Oliver-Nigel Grierson-23 Envelope-cover art David Sylvian-Taking The Veil-cover art

“In a further interconnecting of later music, David Sylvian’s Gone to Earth album from 1986 took its name from Powell and Pressburger’s film and it is possible to trace a line from my interest in Sylvian’s work and what grew into A Year In The Country.

Towards the later 1980s I was somewhat enamoured and intrigued by his 1987 album Secrets of the Beehive and the textured, layered nature based imagery of the cover by Vaughan Oliver and Nigel Grierson working as 23 Envelope, alongside being drawn to his 1986 single taken from the Gone to Earth album, A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil. Both of these seemed to sidestep the sometimes-brash mainstream bustle of culture and attempt to create some kind of respite or repose…”

Rob Young-Electric Eden-book covers-1st edition-2nd edition-US edition

Kate Bush-Never For Ever-album cover artJulian Cope-Fried-album cover artDavid Sylvian-Secrets of the Beehave-back coverTalk Talk-the colour of spring-album cover art

“…along which lines his and Kate Bush’s work are also linked in amongst related cultural and literal landscapes by Rob Young in his Electric Eden book from 2011, in a section also titled “Gone to Earth” which in part could also be connected back to some of the themes of Powell and Pressburger’s film:

“In the changed, materialistic Britain of the 1980s, the ideas about myth and magic, memorial landscapes and nostalgia for a lost golden age were banished to internal exile, but scattered links of the silver chain glinted in the output of certain unconventional pop musicians of the time, most notably Kate Bush, Julian Cope, David Sylvian and Talk Talk.””

 

Online images to accompany Chapter 22 of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book, alongside some text extracts from the chapter:

Details of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book and the collection of its accompanying online images can be found at the Book’s Page, which will be added to throughout the year.

 

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Afore Ye Go – A Final Visit to A Year In The Country at Late Junction, Accompanied by Explorations of Pastures New in Starburst and Revisiting a Highland Lament in Willow’s Songs

AYITC image and Late Junction

Just a brief note to say that if you should fancy a listen there is only one day left to listen to the A Year In The Country piece with Verity Sharp on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction:

Day 16-Willows Songs Inside-Finders Keepers-A Year In The Country

Ah well, seeing as it is May the 1st we just had to kick off with that didn’t we? It’s a tune called May Day from The Hare And The Moon. They were a band that once existed but now are they say ‘as ghosts’. Which means that they slot perfectly into a genre called hauntology and that’s something that I’m going to be exploring a little bit later on with Stephen Prince, who works under the guise of A Year In The Country and he goes seeking out what he calls pastoral otherlyness in this sceptred isle.

You don’t have to look very far for it either. I wander how many of you were up at dawn watching your local Morris side dance as the sun came up? And forget maypoles in the imagined town of Scarfolk, children would once again be dancing around that May Pylon.

“And for me personally Beltane is the thing, that ancient Celtic tradition where you can light a big bonfire and join hands with your friends and share thoughts about new beginnings. Let us celebrate all of that tonight…
(Verity Sharp, from the introduction to the show.)

The Advisory Circle-Jon Brooks-Ghost Box RecordsGather In The Mushrooms-Bob Stanley-The British Acid Folk Underground-album-A Year In The CountryThe Duke of Burgundy-Cats Eyes

The Hare And The Moon-2009 album cover art-Reverb Worship-May Day-1px strokethe-forest-the-wald-weekly-track-03-the-hare-and-the-moon-a-year-in-the-country-bcA Coat Worth Wearing-Neil McSweeney

Wander amongst the spectral fields in the company of amongst others the just mentioned The Hare And The Moon, alongside The Advisory Circle, Trader Horne and Cat’s Eyes and enter a land of imagined plenty with Neil Mc Sweeney via the BBC’s iPlayer.

Previous posts about the episode and Late Junction can be found at A Year In The Country here and here.

Thanks again to Verity Sharp and Rebecca Gaskell for inviting me on and putting together the show.

Starburst-issue 448-A Year In The Country Wandering Through Spectral Fields book review

Plus this review for the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book recently appeared in issue 448 of Starburst magazine, which was nice to see:

…aimed fiercely at turning over soil in pastures new… if you’re already interested in folk culture and want to be astonished by how deeply its roots run, you’ll treasure A Year In The Country enormously… covers everything from folkloric film and literature to electronic music to acid folk to folk horror to the dystopian fiction of John Wyndham and the classic unearthings of Nigel Kneale to the formation of under-the-furrows record labels like Trunk, Ghost Box and Finders Keepers… there are excursions to Kate Bush and Broadcast, television shows like Children of the Stones and Sapphire & Steel, the psychogeography of the Uncommonly British Days Out books and even a visit to the gentler landscapes of Bagpuss and The Good Life.”

More details on that issue of the magazine here and the review can also be read online here.

Thanks to Ian White and Ed Fortune for that, much appreciated.

Day 16-Willows Songs b-Finders Keepers-A Year In The CountryPS The above maypole image is from the booklet that accompanies the Willow’s Songs album released by Finders Keepers records, which is a collection of 12 vintage recordings of traditional British folksongs that inspired the soundtrack to The Wicker Man.

Well worth seeking out, particularly for the wonderfully evocative version of Highland Lament and its tales of social dispossession.

At the time of writing Willows Songs can be found for but a few pounds on CD at Finders Keepers and in a previous post at A Year In The Country here.

 

Elsewhere:

Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:

 

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Audio Albion – Released

The CDs are now sold out but the album is available to download at our Bandcamp page, Amazon, The Tidal Store, 7digital etc and can be streamed on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube etc.

Released today 29th May 2018.

Audio Albion-Nightfall and Dawnlight editions-front of CD albums-A Year In The Country

CDs available via our Artifacts Shop, at Bandcamp and at Norman Records.
Dawn Light Edition £11.95. Nightfall Edition £22.95.

Download  available at Bandcamp, iTunes, Amazon etc.

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Featuring work by Bare Bones, David Colohan, Grey Frequency, Field Lines Cartographer, Howlround, A Year In The Country, Keith Seatman, Magpahi, Sproatly Smith, Widow’s Weeds, Time Attendant, Spaceship, Pulselovers, The Heartwood Institute and Vic Mars.

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Audio Albion is a music and field recording map of Britain, which focuses on rural and edgeland areas.

Each track contains field recordings from locations throughout the land and is accompanied by notes on the recordings by the contributors.

The tracks record the sounds found and heard when wandering down pathways, over fields, through marshes, alongside rivers, down into caves and caverns, climbing hills, along coastlands, through remote mountain forestland, amongst the faded signs of industry and infrastructure and its discarded debris.

Intertwined with the literal recording of locations, the album explores the history, myths and beliefs of the places, their atmospheres and undercurrents, personal and cultural connections – the layered stories that lie amongst, alongside and beneath the earth, plants and wildlife.

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Audio Albion-Nightfall Edition-Nightfall and Dawn Light editions-A Year In The Country

Both CD editions are hand-finished and custom printed using archival giclée pigment ink by A Year In The Country

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Dawn Light Edition. Limited to 104 copies. £11.95.
Hand-finished white/black CD album in textured recycled fold out sleeve with fold-out insert and badge.

Audio Albion-Dawn Light Edition-front-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Dawn Light Edition-opened-A Year In The Country Audio Albion-Dawn Light Edition-notes-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Dawn Light Edition-back-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Dawnlight-edition-white-black-CD-A-Year-In-The-Country
Top of CD.                                                          Bottom of CD.

Further packaging details:
1) Custom printed using archival giclée pigment ink.
2) Includes 2.5 cm badge, secured with removable glue on string bound tag.
3) 1 x folded sheet of accompanying notes from the contributors, hand numbered on back.

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Nightfall Edition. Limited to 104 copies. £22.95
Hand-finished box-set contains: album on all black CD, 2 x sheets of accompanying notes, 1 print, 3 x stickers and 3 x badges.

Audio Albion-Nightfall Edition-all items-A Year In The Country

Audio Albion-Nightfall Edition-front cover-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Nightfall Edition-opened-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Nightfall Edition-notes-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Nightfall Edition-print and sticker-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Nightfall Edition-stickers and badges-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Nightfall-Edition-all-black-CD-A-Year-In-The-Country
Top of CD.                                                            Bottom of CD.

Further packaging details:
1) Cover and notes custom printed using archival giclée pigment ink.
2) Contained in a matchbox style sliding two-part rigid matt card box with cover print.
3) Fully black CD (black on top, black on playable side).
4) 2 x folded sheets of accompanying notes from the contributors, printed on textured laid paper. Back of one sheet numbered.
5) 1 x print on textured fine art cotton rag paper.
5) 2 x 2.5 cm badges, 1 x 4.5 cm badge.
6) 1 x 5.6 cm sticker, 1 x 3.5 cm sticker, 1 x 9.5 by 6.5 cm sticker.

 

Audio Albion-Nightfall Edition-sticker

Tracklisting:

1) Bare Bones – Marshland Improvisation
2) David Colohan – On Stormy Point
3) Grey Frequency – Stapleford Hill
4) Field Lines Cartographer – Coldbarrow
5) Howlround – Cold Kissing
6) A Year In The Country – The Fields of Tumbling Ideas
7) Keith Seatman – Winter Sands
8) Magpahi – Shepsters in the Yessins
9) Sproatly Smith – Ethelbert & Mary
10) Widow’s Weeds – The Unquiet Grave
11) Time Attendant – Holloway
12) Spaceship – The Roding in Spate
13) Pulselovers – Thieves’ Cant
14) The Heartwood Institute – Hvin-lettir
15) Vic Mars – Dinedor Hill

 

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John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness Part 1 – The Sleeper Awakens: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 22/52

Prince of Darkness-bluray-John Carpenter-collectors edition-scream factory

In the posts A Lineage of Spectres (Part 1 and Part 2) I mentioned how hauntology and some related work could be seen as a form of exploring or creating modern-day magic, the mystical, the supernatural, spectres and hauntings… which brings me to John Carpenter’s 1987 film Prince of Darkness.

I first watched Prince of Darkness a number of decades ago and I always remembered it as having a haunting after effect, one that in part was caused by the way in which it played with and interwove horror shocks and tropes and an alternative scientific exploration/explanation of religious archetypes which was left not fully explained or resolved and which allowed the mind to wander (and worry).

Well, where to start with this film. It is so culturally and theoretically layered that I could well be writing for the rest of the year.

First off, some background to the production of the film, a summary of the plot and some its themes…

(Warning: the following contains spoilers.)

Prince of Darkness-1987-John Carpenter on set with Victor Wong and Donald Pleasance
(John Carpenter on set with Victor Wong and Donald Pleasance.)

After having worked on a number of larger budget studio films and being involved in the various conflicts and compromises that can come with such a way of funding and working, John Carpenter made Prince of Darkness as a relatively low budget film, in part as a way in which he could keep control of the story, his vision and the final resulting film.

Although low budget, this is not a typical b-movie horror film but rather it has an intriguing scientific, theoretical and philosophical underpinning.

The film focuses on a group of university students, lecturer and researchers who are called in by a priest to investigate a mysterious container of swirling green liquid which organised religion has kept hidden for many centuries.

Prince-of-Darkness-John Carpenter-1987-still

The liquid appears to contain or generate some form of energy force that is growing in strength and activity. The research group deciphers text found next to the cylinder that seems to describe the liquid as a corporeal, physical embodiment of the devil. The liquid appears to be sentient and is broadcasting increasingly complex streams of data.

John-Carpenter-Prince-of-Darkness-1987-Alice-Cooper

Having setting up camp in a deserted church located in a desolate part of town where the container resides, they become trapped by threatening vagrants who seem to be part of a mob controlled by the liquid (the leader of whom is played by Alice Cooper) and its power begins to be unleashed, both psychically and literally when it escapes from the container and takes over members of the research group, leading to what could be considered forms of mind control, demonic possession and transformation…

I say could be considered as in part the film is an attempt to create a new story around the roots of evil, conjoining related religious belief with a form of scientific study, explanation and the possibility that not everything can be explained by science and rationalism.

Prince-of-Darkness-John Carpenter-1987-building

(A sense of deserted streets was a recurring theme of John Carpenter’s films, one which often seemed to invoke a sense of isolation and lurking dread in the absence, stillness and the way that it implied being amongst but at a far remove from urban civilisation.)

As the film progresses the research group discover/theorise that the liquid may be an offspring of an even more powerful mass mind that controls all matter, one that is bound into an anti-matter realm or dark mirror image of our own universe.

prince-of-darkness-1987-John Carpenter-Donald Pleasance-2

This mass mind is a form of anti-God, an evil force as opposed to the benevolent omnipotent God in our own universe as had been taught and hoped for by religion:

“Suppose what your faith has said is essentially correct. Suppose there is a universal mind controlling everything, a god willing the behavior of every subatomic particle. Well, every particle has an anti-particle, its mirror image, its negative side. Maybe this universal mind resides in the mirror image instead of in our universe as we wanted to believe. Maybe he’s anti-god, bringing darkness instead of light.” (From Prince of Darkness.)

Within the film’s plot the knowledge that “evil” has a literal physical form is said to have been known but hidden and suppressed by small subterranean sections of religion/the church for millennia, while the wider church chose to present evil as a more metaphysical concept and hence the guarding or hiding of this container.

This “body of evil” has also lain dormant for millennia but the film depicts its awakenings and attempts to reinstall its power in this universe and to bring its “father”, the more powerful dark force, from the mirror image or anti-matter world into our own. As mentioned previously it attempts this by taking over humans in a number of ways, psychically controlling human minds and actions and/or physically invading, transforming and possessing bodies.

(Donald Pleasance plays slightly against type in the film, taking the part of a possibly weak willed priest who appears to crumble as the threats unfold and who when told of the above possibilities in connection with the physical source and embodiment of evil gently, softly and almost plaintively says “Why weren’t we told the truth… only the corrupt are listened to now and they tell us what we want to hear”.)

Prince-of-Darkness-John Carpenter-1987-dream sequence

Throughout Prince of Darkness members of the research group have the same dream of a shadowed figure emerging from the front of the church where they are based, dreams which seem to be nearer to transmissions than normal dreams and which have some of the aesthetic signifiers of a semi-broken analogue television signal – scanlines, crackles, interference etc.

Aside from the more conventional horror tropes and aesthetics in the film, it is in these sections in particular that the film has an unsettling and intriguingly unexplained atmosphere: they seem to be a warning or visions of a dark future event which the viewers are instructed they must change or prevent but they have a fragmentary visual, audio and transmission quality, they appear to be broadcasts but are viewed only within dreams and throughout the film until its end the “broadcasts” are interrupted before their completion when the dreamer/viewer is awakened.

In part it is the films mixing and interweaving of the above strands, its exploration of religious and scientific theories, alternative possibilities and explanations that moves the film away from being a more conventional low budget “people trapped somewhere deserted as they fight supernatural forces” horror movie into an example of cinema when it is more explorative and can stretch and intrigue the mind and imagination.

Also at the time of the film’s making John Carpenter’s work seemed to benefit and thrive from the restrictions of a low budget which appeared bring out a sort of ragged, tight, sparse, almost street like energy to his work.

prince-of-darkness-1987-John Carpenter-Donald Pleasance

To be continued in Part 2…

Elsewhere:
The dream sequences from Prince of Darkness
Theorising
The trailer

Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 4/52a: Halloween III: Season of the Witch – A Curious Slice of Culture and Collisions with the Past

 

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Uncommonly British Days Out and the Following of Ghosts – File under Psychogeographic / Hauntological Stocking Fillers: Chapter 21 Book Images

Bollocks To Alton Towers-Uncommonly British Days Out-Robin Halstead-Jason Hazeley-Alex Morris-Joel Morris-A Year In The Country-cover

“Because of their titles the two books Bollocks to Alton Towers (2005) and Far from the Sodding Crowd (2007) on initial sighting could well be just another in a long line of Christmas market throwaway fodder. In fact, despite their jokey titles, some of the marketing and the paperback editions’ jokey covers featuring garden gnomes there is something more to these particular books than is often found in such things.

Essentially they are guidebooks for, as their subtitles say “Uncommonly British Days Out”; the books are documents of the authors’ Jason Hazeley, Robin Halstead, Joel Morris and Alex Morris’ wanderings to often small, individual or family-run museums, visitor centres, follies, unofficial non-tours of television series recording locations, neglected or unloved public art, bygone defence of the realm installations and the like…

Generally they focus on attractions and places to visit that are off the beaten track, that seem in part to hark back to a gentler, more communally-spirited, sometimes progressive time or ethos and as they progress the books become an exploration of a semi-lost or overlooked British landscape and its cultural markers.”

Uncommonly-British-Days-Out-Robin-Halstead-Jason-Hazeley-Alex-Morris-Joel-Morris-Keith-Hardings-World-Of-Mechanical-Music-Apollo-Pavillion

“One of the defining characteristics of hauntology is:

“Music and culture that draws from and examines a sense of loss of a post war utopian, progressive, modern(ist?) future that was never quite reached.”

In many ways that seems to be a subtly underlying theme of the Uncommonly British Days Out books; they are imbued with a quiet anger at the loss of what in some ways could be seen to be terribly British decency and politeness but could actually be seen to be an ire at the steam rolling, this way or the high way tendencies of the modern (but dominantly not modernistic) world.”

Uncommonly-British-Days-Out-Robin-Halstead-Jason-Hazeley-Alex-Morris-Joel-Morris-book-map

“There is a sense in the books of a Britain that is haunted, harried, hurried by some kind of potentially overwhelming loss but wherein there are little corners or enclaves of individuality, resistance and eccentricities.

At one point the text says “You are following the ghost of something interesting, and it left ages ago.”

Mark Fisher-Ghosts Of My Life-Zero Books-hauntology-A Year In The Country“Mark Fishers talked in his book Ghosts of My Life about how:

“The artists that came to be labelled hauntological were suffused with an overwhelming melancholy… In hauntological music there is an implicit acknowledgement that the hopes created by postwar electronica or by the euphoric dance music of the 1990s have evaporated – not only has the future not arrived, it no longer seems possible. Yet at the same time, the music constitutes a refusal to give up on the desire for the future. This refusal gives the melancholia a political dimension, because it amounts to a failure to accommodate to the closed horizons of capitalist realism.”

His observations could well describe much of both the spirit of these books and the people and places they feature in their pages. Yes, within the books such views are filtered through a more mainstream and humorous lens and language than Mark Fisher’s but there is nothing wrong with a good old laugh or two.”

Bollocks-To-Alton-Towers-Uncommonly-British-Days-Out-Robin-Halstead-Jason-Hazeley-Alex-Morris-Joel-Morris-book-hardback copy

“At the point of writing the paperback editions of the books are still in print. If you should buy those then at some point a small fraction of the cover cost will hopefully work its way to the author.

However, the hardback editions seem more in keeping with the spirit of the text. Particularly the first book and its depiction of a wood framed Morris Minor car on a white sea edge clifftop, with a classic seaside striped lighthouse just visible in the distance. As with the books in general it seems to conjure a quiet sense of melancholy without being chocolate box-like.”

 

Online images to accompany Chapter 21 of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book, alongside some text extracts from the chapter:

Details of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book and the collection of its accompanying online images can be found at the Book’s Page, which will be added to throughout the year.

 

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A Year In The Country – Spectral Fields – Wyrd Kalendar Mix 1; Chapters 1-13

A Year In The Country-Spectral Fields-Wyrd Kalendar Mix 1-Chris Lambert

Throughout the year Chris Lambert, author of amongst other works Tales from the Black Meadow, is planning on creating four mixes which each explore 13 chapters of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book.

Tales from the Black Meadow-Chris Lamber-Nigel Wilson-book-front and back covers

They will include a selection of music tracks, trailers, clips from the book etc which in various ways connect with and reflect the wanderings in the book.

A-Year-In-The-Country-Wandering-Through-Spectral-Fields-book-Stephen-Prince-6 copies-front cover and back cover

The first mix is now online and can be listened to at Mixcloud and read about at the Wyrd Kalendar site.

And rather fine it is. At points it made me laugh out loud, at other times it was good to revisit some old audio friends, at others just to be able to step back and appreciate the intermingling and interweaving of tracks, styles, text and ideas.

It also made me wander if it is possible to sponsor a stile, in the same way that you see say public benches that have been sponsored by people?

I’m not sure but in the meantime, hop over the Ghost Box stile and wander the Spectral Fields with Mr Lambert

I-Spy books-Trees-The Sky

A quiz for all the family:

While you wander the Spectral Fields, in an I-Spy manner, can you match the chapters and song titles below?

Rob Young-Electric Eden-book covers-1st edition-2nd edition-US edition

Chapters explored in the Spectral Fields Wyrd Kalendar Mix 1:

1. Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music: Folk Vs Pop, Less Harvested Cultural Landscapes and Acts of 
Enclosure, Old and New

2. Gather in the Mushrooms: Early Signposts and Underground Acid Folk Explorations

3. Hauntology: Places Where Society Goes to Dream, the Defining and Deletion of Spectres and the Making of an Ungenre

4. Cuckoos in the Same Nest: Hauntological and Otherly Folk Confluences and Intertwinings

Julian-House-Intro-design-Ghost-Box-Records-A-Year-In-The-Country-5-stroke

5. Ghost Box Records: Parallel Worlds, Conjuring Spectral Memories, Magic Old and New and Slipstream Trips to the
 Panda Pops Disco

6. Folk Horror Roots: From But a Few Seedlings Did a Great Forest Grow

7. 1973: A Time of Schism and a Dybbuk’s Dozen of Fractures

8. Broadcast: Recalibration, Constellation and Exploratory Pop

The Book of the Lost-Emily Jones-The Rowand Amber Mill-CD albumThe Book Of The Lost-A Year In The Country

9. Tales From The Black Meadow, The Book of the Lost and The Equestrian Vortex: The Imagined Spaces of Imaginary Soundtracks

10. The Wicker Man: Notes on a Cultural Behemoth

11. Robin Redbreast, The Ash Tree, Sky, The Changes, Penda’s Fen Red Shift and The Owl Service: Wanderings Through Spectral Television Landscapes

12. A Bear’s Ghosts: Soviet Dreams and Lost Futures

13. From “Two Tribes” to War Games: The Ascendancy of Apocalyptic Popular Culture

 

Albion Country Band-Battle of the Field

Songs etc included in the Spectral Fields Wyrd Kalendar Mix 1:

“We’re going to take a slightly different route…” – The Kalendar Host
I Was a Young Man – The Albion Country Band
Glistening Glyndebourne – John Martyn
Black Country Rock – David Bowie

Gather In The Mushrooms-Bob Stanley-The British Acid Folk Underground-album-A Year In The Country 0001-A Year In The Country-Gather In The Mushrooms-back

Love in Ice Crystals – The Sallyangie
Morning Way – Trader Horne
Children of the Stones – Sidney Sager
Caged in Stammheim by Demdike Stare

The Quietened Village-album CD cover-A Year In The Country-1px strokeThe Stone Tape-1972-logo credits-Nigel Kneale

Flying over a Glassed Wedge vs. The Stone Tape – Howlround
Playground Gateway – Belbury Poly
Mind How You Go Now – The Advisory Circle
Forgotten Places – Hoofus
The Magic Yard – Lubos Fiser

Hoofus-The Edgelands-game soundtrack-album artwork-HoofusEdgelands-Marshlight software-Hoofus-3b

Loomings – Hoofus
Witch Hunt – Frog
Trailer – The Final Programme

Dark and Lonely Water-6-A Year In The Country copy

The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water – Central Office of Information
The Be Colony – Broadcast and The Focus Group
I See, So I See So – Broadcast and The Focus Group

Noahs Castle-television series-1979-1980-John Rowe-A Year in The Country-5Noahs Castle-television series-1979-1980-John Rowe-A Year in The Country-6

Noah’s Castle – Jugg

Tales From The Black Meadow-A Year In The Country Tales From The Black Meadow-Professor R Mullins-Chris Lambert-A Year In The Country

Tales from the Black Meadow (Main Theme) – The Soulless Party
The Book of the Lost – Rowan Amber Mill and Emily Jones

Berberian Sound Studio-Equestrian Vortex-Julian House-Peter Strickland

The Equestrian Vortex – Broadcast
Corn Rigs – Magnet
Wickerman – Pulp

The Wicker Man-Trunk Records release-OST-vinyl-soundtrack-map

Gently Johnny – Magnet
How Do – Sneaker Pimps
Searching for Rowan – Magnet

The-Owl-Service-TV-program-A-Year-In-The-Country-3bThe-Owl-Service-TV-series-titles-Alan-Garner-A-Year-In-The-Country-b

The Owl Service – Ton Alarch
The Dream of Gerontius/Penda’s Fen/Robin Redbreast – Edward Elgar
The Tomorrow People – Dudley Simpson
Red Shift Trailer – Phil Ryan
The Changes vs. The Ash Tree – Paddy Kingsland

The Owl Service-Garland Sessions-album artwork

The Bear Ghost – The Owl Service

Wargames-1983 film-A Year In The Country

WarGames – clip
Dancing with Tears in my Eyes – Ultravox
WarGames Theme – Arthur B. Rubinstein
Since Yesterday – Strawberry Switchblade
The Game Begins – Arthur B. Rubinstein
I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down on Me – Nik Kershaw
Edge of the World (End Title) – Arthur B. Rubinstein
Coming Soon – The Kalendar Host

 

Thanks indeed to Mr Lambert for being such a helpful and informative Kalendar Host and for the work involved. A tip of the hat to you good sir.

Wyrd Kalendar-book cover-Chris Lambert-Andy Paciorek-Folk Horror Revival-Wyrd Harvest Press

Elsewhere:
Tales From The Black Meadow – the book (or few), the CD (or few), the project
The Wyrd Kalendar book by Chris Lambert and Andy Paciorek (published by Wyrd Harvest Press / Folk Horror Revival)
A Year In The Country – Spectral Fields – Wyrd Kalendar Mix 1; Chapters 1-13 at Mixcloud
The mix at the Wyrd Kalendar website
Tales from the Black Meadow – the book by Chris Lambert
Chris Lambert’s own writing website

Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
The A Year In The Country Wandering Through Spectral Fields book

 

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A Lineage of Spectres Part 2 – Hauntology, Hypnagogic Pop, Synthwave and the Creation of Mystical Half-Hidden Worlds: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 21/52

Sky-1975 TV series-A Year In The Country

In Part 1 of this post I discussed how hauntology and its sense of creating parallel worlds via the hazy misremembering of past eras’ source material could be seen as being part of a broader continuum and lineage.

Oneohtrix Point Never-Angel-Memory Vague-video still

Part of that broader lineage or continuum could be considered to include hypnagogic pop, with which it shares some notable signifiers and cultural approaches.

The quotes below about hypnagogic pop demonstrate this, as they could well be describing hauntology:

Hypnagogic pop artists have a tendency to: “turn trash, something shallow and determinedly throwaway, into something sacred or mystical” and to “manipulate their material to defamiliarise it and give it a sense of the uncanny”. (Adam Harper, Dummy magazine)

The genre has been likened to: “sonic fictions or intentional forgeries, creating half-baked memories of things that never were—approximating the imprecise nature of memory itself” (Stone Blue Editors)

It has been described as “tak(ing) aspects of modern culture and nostalgia and transform(ing) them into new collective memories”. (Luna Vega)

rafael-de-jongh-synthwave-neon-80s-background-marmosetv2-2

Although possibly more overtly replication than refracting orientated, the music/cultural movement of synthwave which began to develop around a similar time as hypnagogic pop, could be seen as a further example of this broader lineage.

As with hauntology, both synthwave and hypnagogic pop essentially create/recreate their own parallel worlds and cultural visions which draw from filtered, sometimes reinterpreted cultural memories.

Synthwave-lightgrid landscape

(A brief definition of synthwave from Wikipedia: “Synthwave – also called outrun, retrowave and futuresynth –  is a genre of electronic music influenced by 1980s film soundtracks and video games. Beginning in the mid 2000s, the genre developed from various niche communities on the Internet, reaching wider popularity in the early 2010s. In its music and cover artwork, synthwave engages in retrofuturism, emulating 1980s science fiction, action, and horror media, sometimes compared to cyberpunk. It expresses nostalgia for 1980s culture, attempting to capture the era’s atmosphere and celebrate it.”)

Synthwave lightgrid landscape-2

In contrast to hauntology and hypnagogic pop, synthwave has a more noticeably defined and identifiable aesthetic  – in particular retro futurist lightgrids and a Tron-esque aesthetic frequently appear.

Beyond The Black Rainbow-still-1

As part of the above lineage of hazy parallel world misrememberings and reimagining of past eras, in terms of cinema you could also look towards the likes of Panos Cosmatos’ Beyond the Black Rainbow film, which I have written about at A Year In The Country before; it draws from 1980s film, video and music culture and has been described as a “Reagan era fever dream” and creates a sense of being some lost, almost hallucinogenic cultural artifact from a darkly refracted dreamscape vision of that era.

Beyond The Black Rainbow-still-3b

At points, particularly in its driving sequences and some of the lighting structures of the underground complex which are portrayed in the film, aesthetically it intersects to a degree with some elements of synthwave, although in a possibly darker and less escapistly kitsch manner.

Beyond The Black Rainbow-Jagjaguwar-Panos Cosmatos-A Year In The Country-gatefold

Hauntology and hypnagogic pop tend to have more heavyweight theoretical, philosophical and cultural viewpoints either attached to or underpinning related work (sometimes by its creators, sometimes by third party observers and critics), while synthwave seems to also be a possibly more overtly purely escapist form of cultural entertainment.

Which brings me to some of the possible underlying impetuses for and/or attraction of some of such work.

Year 2-wanderings and perhaps revisitings-The Stone Tape-A Dream Of Wessex-Christopher Priest-Ghost Box Records-Julian House-hauntology-folk-folklore-A Year In The Country

The roots of the word hauntology come from in part Jacques Derrida’s observations that in late-stage capitalism (ie today and in relatively recent decades) society would be drawn to the nostalgic, the familiar and to become haunted by spectres of its own past.

Spectres is an interesting and possibly apposite word to use and it connects back to the just quoted hypnagogic pop artists’ attempt to create “something sacred or mystical”.

What hauntological work in particular seems to be in part is an attempt to reintroduce a sense of the unknown, the partially hidden, of the mystical into a world which is often focused on scientific and economic rationality which has little time for that which cannot be “logically” explained, categorised and organised by and within its own structures, theories and tenets/beliefs.

The Edge Is Where The Centre Is-books-Texte und tone-Pendas Fen-David Rudkin-Mordant Music

In part such attempts to reintroduce a sense of the mystical can also be connected to the confluence and interaction of otherly pastoral, wyrd or “eerie” Britain orientated work and hauntology, which as Robert Macfarlane has said could be seen as being:

“… an attempt to make sense, explain, account for and possibly act as a respite, allow refuge from and act as a bulwark against the current dominant capitalist system: in part a utilising or reconfiguring of the spectral or preternatural as a form of expression, exploration and escape from related turbulence and pressures.” (Quoting myself quoting Robert Macfarlane in The Edge Is Where The Centre Is book on Penda’s Fen.)

Prince of Darkness-bluray-John Carpenter-collectors edition-scream factory

So, hauntology could be seen as a form of exploring or creating modern-day magic, the mystical, the supernatural, spectres and hauntings…

Which brings me to John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness film from 1987… more of which coming soon…

 

Elsewhere:
Hypnagogic pop at Wikipedia
Synthwave at Wikipedia

Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
1) Day #149/365: Phase IV – lost celluloid flickering (return to), through to Beyond The Black Rainbow and journeys Under The Skin
2) Day #162/365: Hauntology, places where society goes to dream, the deletion of spectres and the making of an ungenre
3) Day #183/365: Steam engine time and remnants of transmissions before the flood
4) Day #255/365: Beyond The Black Rainbow; Reagan era fever dreams, award winning gardens and a trio of approaches to soundtrack disseminations… let the new age of enlightenment begin…
5) Audio Visual Transmission Guide #9/52a: Beyond The Black Rainbow and Phase IV
6) anderings, Explorations and Signposts 2/52: Penda’s Fen and The Edge Is Where The Centre Is – Explorations of the Occult, Otherly and Hidden Landscape
7) Chapter 3 Book Images: Hauntology – Places Where Society Goes to Dream, the Defining and Deletion of Spectres and the Making of an Ungenre
8) Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 20/52: A Lineage of Spectres Part I – From “Traditional” Hauntology to Hypnagogic Pop

 

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“Savage Party” and Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) – Glimpses of Albion in the Overgrowth: Chapter 20 Book Images

Hollyoaks-Savage Party-folklore-A Year In The Country 4

“In 2012 in the earlyish days of planning for A Year In The Country there was a trailer being broadcast for an episode called “Savage Party” of the British television youth-orientated soap opera Hollyoaks.

The trailer is basically a high street-esque take on some of the visual language, themes and tropes of the flipside or undercurrents of folkloric culture expressed in the likes of The Wicker Man (1973): a glimpse of Albion in the cultural overgrowth, a step through the gates into the secret garden (with spangly hotpants as your attire).”

Hollyoaks-Savage Party-folklore-A Year In The Country 12

“It shows the young folk entering a gated slightly magical-seeming woodland; they are often animal masked, behorned and May Queen crowned and enter an unsupervised carnivalesque atmosphere which seems to subtly hark back to earlier almost pagan times…”

Hollyoaks-Savage Party-folklore-A Year In The Country 11

“And yes the trailer is a simulacra of folklore-inspired culture but still enjoyable…

For some reason this promotional video blurs those lines a touch. It is joyous, ridiculous, a copy and also created with some sense of love or passion for its source material, even if that is but a flickering, passing moment of interest.”

Stealing Sheep-Shut Eye

Coco-Rosie-Arthur-Magazine-Devandra Banhart-Joanna Newsom

“The trailer’s soundtrack is Stealing Sheep’s “Shut Eye” (2012), which is a lovely catchy sort of psych-folk indie-pop song, with the band’s music reminding me in a way of a more youthful, British Coco Rosie  (the sister duo who were loosely connected with American freak folk in the 2000s, along with the likes of Devandra Banhart and Joanna Newsom).”

Halloween on Hollyoaks-trailer-2016

“Curiously in 2016 there was a “Halloween on Hollyoaks” trailer which drew from one of the other more flipsides of filmic culture, Italian super- natural horror and interconnected giallo, and was basically a homage to Dario Argento’s Suspiria film from 1977.”

021-Randall & Hopkirk-Charlie Higson-Vic Reeves-Bob Mortimer-Emilia Fox-Tom Baker-A Year In The Country

Randall-Hopkirk-Charlie-Higson-Vic-Reeves-Bob-Mortimer-Emilia-Fox-1

Randall-Hopkirk-Charlie-Higson-Tom-Baker-television series still

“The appearance of such less thoroughly travelled themes in mainstream culture can seem like something of an unexpected treat when it is treated in a respectful manner and done at least reasonably well.

Along which lines, a soft spot should be reserved for the turn of the millennium remake of television series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) that was broadcast in 2000-2001, and which was produced by Charlie Higson, who also wrote and directed some episodes, and starred comedians Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer alongside Emilia Fox and gloriously white-haired former Doctor Who Tom Baker.”

Hot Fuzz-film-Simon Pegg

“…it often shows a great love for a whole slew of fantasy, television, literature, crime horror and science fiction films etc. from years gone by in the way that it references and draws from them.

“The episode Man of Substance in particular, which seems to predate Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg’s Hot Fuzz film of 2007 by a year or few in a number of its themes, borrowings and the story of a sleepy country idyll gone bad and is rather folk horror-like in its setting and plot.”

John Barleycorn Reborn Rebirth-Dark Britannica-Cold Spring-A Year In The Country-collage

“I guess we should have known something was not quite right when shown the unsettling monument on the way into the village that looked as though it should have been on the cover of one of the John Barleycorn Reborn series of dark Britannica compilation albums of wyrd, exploratory, underground etc folk that were released by Cold Spring beginning in 2007.”

Randall-Hopkirk-dancers collage

stills from The Wicker Man-The Monster Club-Pendas Fen-Curse of the Crimson Altar-2

“Along the way the episode wanders into the territory of and borrows from: The Wicker Man, The Monster Club, Curse of the Crimson Altar, Hansel and Gretel, Witchfinder General, The Bloody Judge and Penda’s Fen.”

tom-baker-doctor-who-wearing scarf

“And just having Tom Baker, possibly still the archetypal Doctor Who, in amongst it all makes the episode fundamentally interconnected in the minds of watchers of a certain vintage with particular culture and tropes.”

Gareth Thomas-Blakes 7

“…and that is before we get to Gareth Thomas, who once starred as a freedom fighter in the cult science fiction series Blake’s 7 (1978-1981), who here plays a real ale pushing pub landlord who later appears in his festival garb only to be revealed as a centuries-old medieval lord of the manor.”

The League of Gentleman-Royston Vasey sign

“Randall & Hopkirk is not necessarily as dark but thinking back this episode may have shared some ground with the similar time period’s The League of Gentleman series that was broadcast from 1999-2002 and its mixing of horror and comedy in a rural setting gone bad where “You bain’t be from round here” is the general refrain.”

The Wicker Man OST soundtrack-Jonny Trunk-Trunk Records-A Year In The Country

“Just prior to its broadcast the The Wicker Man soundtrack had been first released in 1998 via the efforts and investigating of Jonny Trunk and Trunk Records and this is thought to have been one of the sparks that ignited that growing interest.

However, the number of different references to fantastic fictions from before that time in the series suggest its creator had a knowledge, interest and love of such things that stretches back some way.”

030-Randall & Hopkirk-Charlie Higson-Vic Reeves-Bob Mortimer-Emilia Fox-Tom Baker-A Year In The Country 002-Randall & Hopkirk-Charlie Higson-Vic Reeves-Bob Mortimer-Emilia Fox-Tom Baker-A Year In The Country

Doomwatch-still altered-states-1980-movie-ken russell

Raiders of the Lost Ark-last scene-warehouse Scooby Doo-unmasking

“The episode Fair Isle is set on an isolated island called Strait Isle which has its own laws and ways of doing things, produces its own unique foodstuff under the direction of an eccentric lord ruler and includes high jinx with the locals in a very local hostelry, all of which further echo The Wicker Man.

That episode also features Doctor Who-esque folkloric costumed creatures, ecological worries that have shades of the series Doomwatch (1970-1972), transformations which echo Ken Russell’s Altered States film (1980), a hiding of relics which harks back to The Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and even an “I would’ve got away with it if it wasn’t for you pesky kids” Scooby Doo-esque unveiling of the baddie.”

 

Online images to accompany Chapter 20 of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book, alongside some text extracts from the chapter:

Details of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book and the collection of its accompanying online images can be found at the Book’s Page, which will be added to throughout the year.

 

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Audio Albion – Preorder

The CDs are now sold out but the album is available to download at our Bandcamp page, Amazon, The Tidal Store, 7digital etc and can be streamed on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube etc.

Preorder today 15th May 2018. Released 29th May 2018.

Audio Albion-Nightfall Edition-Nightfall and Dawn Light editions-A Year In The Country

Available to preorder via our Artifacts Shop, at Bandcamp and at Norman Records.
Dawn Light Edition £11.95. Nightfall Edition £22.95.

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Audio Albion is a music and field recording map of Britain, which focuses on rural and edgeland areas.

Each track contains field recordings from locations throughout the land and is accompanied by notes on the recordings by the contributors.

The tracks record the sounds found and heard when wandering down pathways, over fields, through marshes, alongside rivers, down into caves and caverns, climbing hills, along coastlands, through remote mountain forestland, amongst the faded signs of industry and infrastructure and its discarded debris.

Intertwined with the literal recording of locations, the album explores the history, myths and beliefs of the places, their atmospheres and undercurrents, personal and cultural connections – the layered stories that lie amongst, alongside and beneath the earth, plants and wildlife.

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Featuring work by Bare Bones, David Colohan, Grey Frequency, Field Lines Cartographer, Howlround, A Year In The Country, Keith Seatman, Magpahi, Sproatly Smith, Widow’s Weeds, Time Attendant, Spaceship, Pulselovers, The Heartwood Institute and Vic Mars.

Both editions are hand-finished and custom printed using archival giclée pigment ink by A Year In The Country

Download preorder available at Bandcamp. Available to download on release date at iTunes, Amazon etc.

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Dawn Light Edition. Limited to 104 copies. £11.95.
Hand-finished white/black CD album in textured recycled fold out sleeve with fold-out insert and badge.

Audio Albion-Dawn Light Edition-front-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Dawn Light Edition-opened-A Year In The Country Audio Albion-Dawn Light Edition-notes-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Dawn Light Edition-back-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Dawnlight-edition-white-black-CD-A-Year-In-The-Country
Top of CD.                                                          Bottom of CD.

Further packaging details:
1) Custom printed using archival giclée pigment ink.
2) Includes 2.5 cm badge, secured with removable glue on string bound tag.
3) 1 x folded sheet of accompanying notes from the contributors, hand numbered on back.

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Nightfall Edition. Limited to 104 copies. £22.95
Hand-finished box-set contains: album on all black CD, 2 x sheets of accompanying notes, 1 print, 3 x stickers and 3 x badges.

Audio Albion-Nightfall Edition-all items-A Year In The Country

Audio Albion-Nightfall Edition-front cover-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Nightfall Edition-opened-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Nightfall Edition-notes-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Nightfall Edition-print and sticker-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Nightfall Edition-stickers and badges-A Year In The CountryAudio Albion-Nightfall-Edition-all-black-CD-A-Year-In-The-Country
Top of CD.                                                            Bottom of CD.

Further packaging details:
1) Cover and notes custom printed using archival giclée pigment ink.
2) Contained in a matchbox style sliding two-part rigid matt card box with cover print.
3) Fully black CD (black on top, black on playable side).
4) 2 x folded sheets of accompanying notes from the contributors, printed on textured laid paper. Back of one sheet numbered.
5) 1 x print on textured fine art cotton rag paper.
5) 2 x 2.5 cm badges, 1 x 4.5 cm badge.
6) 1 x 5.6 cm sticker, 1 x 3.5 cm sticker, 1 x 9.5 by 6.5 cm sticker.

 

Audio Albion-Nightfall edition-print

Tracklisting:

1) Bare Bones – Marshland Improvisation
2) David Colohan – On Stormy Point
3) Grey Frequency – Stapleford Hill
4) Field Lines Cartographer – Coldbarrow
5) Howlround – Cold Kissing
6) A Year In The Country – The Fields of Tumbling Ideas
7) Keith Seatman – Winter Sands
8) Magpahi – Shepsters in the Yessins
9) Sproatly Smith – Ethelbert & Mary
10) Widow’s Weeds – The Unquiet Grave
11) Time Attendant – Holloway
12) Spaceship – The Roding in Spate
13) Pulselovers – Thieves’ Cant
14) The Heartwood Institute – Hvin-lettir
15) Vic Mars – Dinedor Hill

 

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The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones and Mishaps and Misadventures in the British Countryside: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 20/52

The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones-1

The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones film from 1976 is something a curiousity and a curious mixture of a film, one which positions the British countryside as a space for farce and romps in a very British Carry On film/seaside postcard kind of manner – in tone and plotting it is not all that far removed from say a period set Carry On film from a similar era.

Loosely inspired by the 18th century novel by Henry Fielding, it was directed by Cliff Owen, who also directed other 1970s British nudge-nudge-wink-wink comedy films, alongside the likes of an episode of The Avengers, The Vengeance of She, the first cinema outing for Steptoe and Son and numerous episodes of television series in the 1950s through to the 1970s.

The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones-2

The plot involves Tom Jones who is a good-natured young man who was adopted by a country squire but who must run away from home when he is set up by his jealous cousin who is in competition with him over a romantic partner/potential wife. He has numerous misadventures in boudoirs, fields, country estates, high society and taverns, with him trying to maintain his devotion to true love in the face of his mishaps, setbacks and libidinous temptations, all of which he must maneuver his way through and around.

The cast is something of an A-Z of British talent from back when (and sometimes today): sometimes undead Psychomania biker Nicky Henson as Tom Jones, classic English sometimes cad Terry Thomas, Dad’s Army leader Arthur Lowe, Georgia Howe and the perennial Joan Collins (who both coincidentally also appeared in 1973’s British horror portmanteau film Tales That Witness Madness), the iconic Bond, Carry On and Hammer actress Madeline Smith and Murray Melvin – who was in the also iconic British new wave film A Taste of Honey, which the Bawdy Adventures also has another connection with…

The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones-4

There was an earlier Tom Jones film in 1963 starring Albert Finney and directed by Tony Richardson – who also directed the likes of iconic British new wave films A Taste of Honey and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. That Tom Jones was critically lauded, nominated for and won a number of Oscars and so on but a decade or so later the next cinematic incarnation of this good-natured Jack-the-Lad did not have quite the same critical reception or positioning.

Rather it loosely sits in amongst 1970s British-cinema-gone-to-seed sex and exploitation romps and comedies from the time but also seems to exist slightly to one side of such things, to have a certain layering or craftsmanship to it in comparison to some of 1970s British exploitation cinema.

Watching it is one of those “Hey? What is this?” kind of viewing experiences. Which I don’t write in a dismissive manner, more just that it seems to straddle so many different areas and aspects of film, sometimes more or less all at once: just a few of those aspects include the way in which it is a period sex comedy/farce that sometimes here and there decides that it is a musical just for a moment or two, while alongside it’s bed hopping/roll in the hay romp’n’farce aspects it also has an odd sort of innocence to it and almost seems to be harking back to earlier eras of film in its dealing with the course of true love.

The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones-3

The film is somewhat lost to time. It was released on VHS only in America I think back in 1987, I assume as an attempt to hopefully connect with Joan Collins’ success in American soap opera Dynasty. As far as I know it has never had another official home release, so it is now quite hard to find, although snippets of it can be found online…

 

Elsewhere:
The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones at IMDB
The trailer
Behind the scenes photographs

 

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The Ballad of Shirley Collins and Pastoral Noir – Tales and Intertwinings from Hidden Furrows: Chapter 19 Book Images

Shirley Collins-Davy Graham-Dolly Collins-Harvest Years-Anthems in Eden

Shirley Colins-America Over The Water-Alan Lomax-recording equipment in the boot of his car

“Shirley Collins is known in part for her contributions to the English folk revival of the 1960s and 1970s; beginning in 1959 she released a number of solo and collaborative albums with amongst others her sister Dolly, Dave Graham and Ashley Hutchings/The Albion Band.

She also worked with Alan Lomax on various projects including folk song collecting in the Southern States of the USA in the late 1950s, which she wrote about in her 2005 book America Over the Water.”

Lodestar-Shirley Collins-album cover and reverse-Domino

“After 1982 Shirley Collins lost her singing voice due to what has been considered psychogenic dysphonia: a condition which affects the throat and which is associated with psychological trauma. Although she lectured, wrote and appeared on radio she did not release another album for several decades until 2016’s Lodestar.”

The Ballad of Shirley Collins-film poster

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The Ballad Of Shirley Collins-6shirley-collins-death-and-the-lady-nick-abrahams-a-year-in-the-country-5

“Prior to that new album Rob Curry and Tim Plester began work on a documentary of her work and life called The Ballad of Shirley Collins, which at the point of writing was nearing completion, with an accompanying trailer having been released.

The tone and presentation of the trailer and related publicity appear in part to show the film as reflecting how Shirley Collins and her work now seem to be intertwined and connect with modern day tropes, themes and interests in what could variously be called underground, neo or wyrd folk, folk horror and a sort of Arcanic Britannia.

In particular this is the case with what presumably are images, sequences and characters within the trailer created by Nick Abrahams (who created similar work for the video of her song “Death and the Lady” from the Lodestar album) which are of a folk horror-esque or otherly folkloric nature.”

Shirley Collins and The Albion Country Band-No Roses-cover artwork and gatefold

Early-Morning-Hush-Folk-Underground-Bob-Stanley-album-CD artwork-Shirley Collins-Bob Stanley

“Looking back at her recording of the traditional folk song “Poor Murdered Woman” (as featured on her 1971 album No Roses and the Bob Stanley-curated compilation Early Morning Hush – Notes from the UK Folk Underground 1969-1976 released in 2006,1 although it was inspired by true events, listening to it today with its dark unsettling tone it could well be seen as a pointer or harbinger for the darker elements of folk and folk horror.”

Fountain of Snow-Shirley Collins-Current 93 presents

“Moving towards such strands and areas within and around Shirley Collins’ work may also be connected back to David Tibet of Current 93’s championing of it for a number of years and his releasing a compilation of her 1960s and 1970s recordings called Fountain of Snow back in 1992…

(Current 93’s) music has been called neo-folk, a form of often dark, experimental folk music which emerged from post-industrial circles. Such neo-folk could also be seen as a further forebear for contemporary interest in wyrd folk and related folk horror-esque music.”

Horse Rotorvator-Coil-Englands Hidden Reverse-David Keenan

“Those post-industrial strands of experimental music also include Nurse With Wound and Coil, which while musically different and not necessarily folk-orientated, has been described and connected as being “England’s Hidden Reverse” by David Keenan, in the title of his 2003 book of the same name in which he writes about their work.

That title creates and captures a sense of the hidden, flipside, underlying strands and patterns of culture which their work often seems to reflect and explore – which also connects back to the likes of wyrd folk and its exploration of similar areas and undercurrents within a more pastoral, landscape and rural based context.”

Cyclobe-Stephen Thrower-Ossian Brown

Ossian-Brown-Haunted-Air-three images

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“Alongside the connection to David Tibet, such strands are further connected with Shirley Collins’ recent work due to Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown performing on her new album, both of whom have worked with Coil.

They currently work together as Cyclobe and their releases mix and combine aspects of folk or traditional music and instruments amongst other elements including drone, audio collage, soundscaping and electronic instrumentation within an experimental or exploratory context.”

In a further intertwining of the underground, darker, flipside and undercurrents of folk-related culture, Ossian Brown compiled a book released in 2010 called Haunted Air which collects found photographs of Halloween from previous eras.

The images in Haunted Air, despite them having originally been family snapshots etc., over time have often gained a genuinely unsettling, otherly air.”

The Ballad Of Shirley Collins-3

“Such a gathering and layering of the uncanny over time is also present within The Ballad of Shirley Collins trailer; at one point a framed photograph is shown of Shirley Collins and her sister Dolly standing either side of what is either a folkoric totem or possibly somebody in a traditional folkloric ram’s head costume.

…in the overall context of the trailer and the above cultural points of connection it seems to belong to considerably more shadowed, unsettled furrows.”

"Pastoral Noir" exhibition at Wood Street Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA, 2016."Pastoral Noir" exhibition at Wood Street Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA, 2016.

"Pastoral Noir" exhibition at Wood Street Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA, 2016."Pastoral Noir" exhibition at Wood Street Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA, 2016."Pastoral Noir" exhibition at Wood Street Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA, 2016.

“Interconnected to such shadowed furrows, writer, artist and curator Justin Hopper used the title Pastoral Noir as the name of an exhibition he curated at Wood Street Galleries in Pittsburgh, USA in 2016, describing it as being a collection of avant-rural work by British and Irish artists:

“…whose work is situated in the edgelands between what we once called human and the natural… Pastoral Noir will look at artists whose work calls into question the dichotomies between past and present, city and countryside, natural and man-made, within the landscape of the British Isles.

Through their visual, sonic and sculptural investigations into the English landscape, the artists in Pastoral Noir have discovered a dark and eerie place. Using science and language, memory and myth, these works immerse the viewer in uncanny landscapes both real and imagined.””

The work shown included Tessa Farmer, Jem Finer, Ghost Box Records, Tony Heywood & Alison Condie, Autumn Richardson and Richard Skelton and could be considered an exploration of where the further reaches of folk and pastoral culture meet, intertwine and interact with what has come to be known as hauntology.

The use of the phrase pastoral noir may be part of a seemingly wider, ongoing process of experimenting with and searching for names that could possibly serve to encompass and define such intertwined cultural explorations.”

 

Online images to accompany Chapter 19 of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book, alongside some text extracts from the chapter:

Details of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book and the collection of its accompanying online images can be found at the Book’s Page, which will be added to throughout the year.

 

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A Lineage of Spectres Part 1 – From Hauntology to Hypnagogic Pop: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 19/52

Hauntology-images-Demdike Stare-Ghost Box Records

Although not exclusively so, hauntological orientated work tends to use and refer to British culture from approximately around the late 1960s to the late 1970s, to be a re-imagining and misremembering of reference points and that era’s music and other culture to create work that seem familiar, comforting and also often unsettling and not a little eerie.

The resulting  work often conjures a sense of parallel worlds that are haunted by spectres of our cultural past (to loosely paraphrase philosopher Jacques Derrida).

One of the possible reasons for the hauntological work focusing on/drawing from the above time period often quite specifically is that from the late 1970s onwards there could be seen to have been a swing towards the right politically, socially and economically within Britain. The starting point for that movement is often considered to be the 1979 election of Margaret Thatcher’s right-leaning government in Britain.

Within hauntological work there is often a mourning for lost progressive futures, sometimes overtly and sometimes as an underlying cultural trope or atmosphere, which essentially demarks the above time as a tipping point for an ending of the prevalence of related hopes and dreams – hence the cutoff of the late 1970s in terms of points of reference and inspiration within much of hauntological work.

Although, as I have mentioned before, author David Peace has commented that:

“…people often talk about 1979 and the election of Margaret Thatcher as a sea-change. But these things rarely take place overnight. And I still think her re-election in 1983 represents the clearest marker of how far things had changed. And of what was to come…”

The 1980s could be seen as a transitional, liminal period which involved ongoing conflict and rearguard actions from older, progressive/social consensus ways of thinking.

This could allow for a less era delineated sense to hauntological work, less of a quite well defined cut-off point than the late 1970s. Hauntological-esque spectres and parallel world refracted reimaginings could well draw from a later period.

Which leads me to…

Oneohtrix Point Never-Angel-Memory Vague-video still

Work such as hypnagogic pop shares a number of similiarities with hauntology  – it also utilises misremembered, re-imagined cultural memories/reference points and creates a parallel cultural world the draws from past eras and often creates work which David Keenan called “pop music as refracted through the memory of a memory”.

However, it is American rather than British culture orientated and it draws from the 1980s and early 1990s and in this sense it illustrates that hauntology could be seen as being part of a continuum or broader lineage of such work.

Oneohtrix Point Never-Angel-Memory Vague-video still-2 copy

(A brief definition of hypnagogic pop from Wikipedia: “Hypnagogic pop – sometimes used interchangeably with “chillwave” or “glo-fi” –  is a 21st-century style of pop music or general musical approach which explores elements of cultural memory and nostalgia by drawing on the music, popular entertainment, and recording technology of the past, particularly the 1980s. The genre developed in the mid to late 2000s as American underground artists began reaching back to retro aesthetics remembered from childhood, such as 1980s radio rock, new age, MTV one-hit wonders, and Hollywood synthesizer soundtracks, as well as analog technology and outdated pop culture.”)

Tdk c60-cassette-hypnagogic pop

One of the signifiers of hauntology is an interest in and utilisation of the signifiers of previous era’s recording media and its related audio artifacts – such as vinyl hiss and crackle, tape wobble etc – with such aesthetics being used in order to create or conjure a spectral, edge of memory sense of the past.

The use of such signifiers is also present within hypnagogic pop but in its case these are more likely to be the likes of video cassette, 1980s-esque computer graphics and early internet aesthetics.

BBC Records and Tapes-The Radiophonic Workshop-A Year In The CountrySeasons-David Cain-Jonny Trunk-BBC-A Year In The Country

In contrast to hypnagogic pop, hauntology does not tend to be all that pop orientated – it may draw from areas of pop culture such as 1970s childrens’ television dramas but it is more likely to be presented in for example the form of Radiophonic-esque/inspired electronica.

However, “traditional” hauntology does not have one overarching musical style – rather it is defined by a shared music and cultural approach than a shared musical style, something which critic Adam Trainer has also identified in connection to hypnagogic pop.

rafael-de-jongh-synthwave-neon-80s-background-marmosetv2-2

Which brings me to synthwave…

To be continued in Part 2 of this post… coming soon…

 

Elsewhere:
Hypnagogic pop at Wikipedia

Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
1) Day #183/365: Steam engine time and remnants of transmissions before the flood
2) Day #162/365: Hauntology, places where society goes to dream, the deletion of spectres and the making of an ungenre
3) Day #125/365: Journeying through The Seasons with David Cain (or maybe just July and October)
4) Chapter 3 Book Images: Hauntology – Places Where Society Goes to Dream, the Defining and Deletion of Spectres and the Making of an Ungenre
5) Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 17/52: David Peace, Texte und Töne, The Stink Still Here and Spectres from Transitional Times – Part 2

 

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From The Unofficial Countryside to Soft Estate – Edgeland Documents, Memories and Explorations: Chapter 18 Book Images

Karl Hyde-Kieran Evans-Edgeland-Outer Edges-A Year In The Country-lighter

“Edgelands is a word that refers to the edges of towns and cities that are neither urban nor rural; transitional, undeveloped or developing areas such as the land surrounding power stations, scrublands, wastelands, semi-derelict areas, semi-industrial areas and so forth.

These are often the places where society creates, stores, repairs, discards, forgets about and disposes of the things it physically needs and they can also be starkly aesthetically neglected, though in contrast and in part because of that neglect or overlooking can also become something of a haven for nature and wildlife.”


veloelectroindustrial-edgelands-wasteland-photography-harworth-machine-a-year-in-the-country-2(Above: photograph by Veloelectroindustrial.)

“Marion Shoard was the first person to use the term “edgelands” to describe these areas in her Edglands essay from 2002, where she eloquently describes and defines them and considers how they are often overlooked by society:

“Britain’s towns and cities do not usually sit cheek by jowl with its countryside, as we often casually assume. Between urban and rural stands a kind of landscape quite different from either. Often vast in area, though hardly noticed, it is characterised by rubbish tips and warehouses, superstores and derelict industrial plant,office parks and gypsy encampments, golf courses, allotments and fragmented, frequently scruffy, farmland. All these heterogeneous elements are arranged in an unruly and often apparently chaotic fashion against a background of unkempt wasteland frequently swathed in riotous growths of colourful plants, both native and exotic… Huge numbers of people now spend much of their time living, working or moving within or through it. Yet for most of us, most of the time, this mysterious no man’s land passes unnoticed: in our imaginations, as opposed to our actual lives, it barely exists… As we ash past its seemingly meaningless contours in train, car or bus we somehow fail to register it on our retinas.””

The Unofficial Countryside-Richard Mabey-original edition and Littler Toller edition

“In a continuum from Marion Shoard’s observations, an extensive body of literature and creative work exists which has focused on these hinterlands. One of the early and most renowned documents or celebrations of such overlooked, often unloved parts of our world was Richard Mabey’s The Unofficial Countryside book, originally published in 1973 (and reissued in 2010 by Little Toller Books, who specialise in work which takes in a gentle flipside of rural, pastoral and landscape concerns).”

UNOFFICIAL COUNTRYSIDE-richard mabey-television program film still-1975
(Above: image from a 1975 television programme also called The Unofficial Countryside, which featured Richard Mabey.)

“The Unofficial Countryside records Richard Mabey’s explorations and wanderings through edgeland areas and the natural world, which has made a home in places that had previously often been considered inauspicious for plants and wildlife such as inner city car parks, gravel pits and rubbish tips.

Rather than being purely a natural history document, within the book he also proposes another way of seeing and experiencing nature during our daily lives, whether wild flowers glimpsed from a commuter train, fox cubs playing on a motorway fringe or a kestrel hawking above a public park.”

Edgelands-Paul-Farley-and-Michael-Symmons Roberts-hardback and paperback books

“Edgelands – Journeys into England’s True Wilderness is a 2012 book by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts and is a literary, poetic exploration of such areas, in which the authors document their travels, personal memories and connections to these transitional landscapes, taking in along the way childhood dens, container ports, wastelands, ruins, mines and the endpoints for society’s automobiles.”

Karl Hyde-Edgeland-CD-Kieran Evans-The Outer Edges-film-stroke

Karl Hyde-Kieran Evans-Edgeland-Outer Edges-A Year In The Country 4

“In a more audiovisual manner the film, music and photography project by Karl Hyde and Kieran Evans’ Edgeland/The Outer Edges presents a psychogeographic expressive, creative and documentary wandering through what feel like semi-uncharted lands and lives, ones which are overlooked, strewn with debris and contain a faded battered beauty amongst the mixture of nature and pylons.”

Edward-Chell-Soft-Estate-Bluecoat-Cornerhouse-book cover and 2 other images

“Edward Chell’s 2013 Soft Estate also makes use of multiple forms, including a book, traditional gallery exhibiting and what are effectively returning to their source installations. It takes as its subject matter such edgeland places when they are found at the side of motorways.

The phrase soft estate refers to the description given by the UK Highways Agency to the natural habitat that the motorways and trunk roads it manages occupy; an often unstopped-on hinterland that most of us only view as a high-speed blur from the corner of our eyes as we travel past these autobahn edgelands.”

laser-etched stainless steel, 3D work by Edward Chell

“Soft Estate interacts with and documents these verges and landscapes, sometimes in a quite literal sense as some of the work is printed using road dust from such places, other work uses (presumably) engine oil, features plant life illustrations from these verges laser etched onto brightly chromed exhaust pipes or uses the same materials and colours as road signs.”

Edward-Chell-Soft-Estate-Bluecoat-Cornerhouse-3 artworks

“In (Edward Chell’s) paintings of the tubing which protects sapling trees (many millions of which have been planted on such lands), the mind’s eye sees them rather as gravestones…

Indeed there is a ghostly, spectral quality to these paintings; they have a hauntological aspect in that although they are created in contemporary times, they also seem like documents of modernity’s future and past.”

Edward-Chell-Soft-Estate-Bluecoat-Cornerhouse-Little Chef-cafe

“Intriguingly, some of Edward Chell’s work has been installed in Little Chefs, which are British roadside family cafes/restaurants.

For many British children, these provided a first taste of what are now regarded as American-style burgers and fries…

On now-rare sightings of Little Chefs, they feel like endangered species: a quaint remnant of times gone by before the ubiquity of transnational chains and the utilitarian installations of motorway service stations.

It brings a smile to think of Edward Chell’s work in them, which seems like an apposite, humorous coming together of cultures.”

 

Online images to accompany Chapter 18 of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book, alongside some text extracts from the chapter:

Details of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book and the collection of its accompanying online images can be found at the Book’s Page, which will be added to throughout the year.