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A Bear’s Ghosts – Soviet Dreams and Lost Futures: Chapter 12 Book Images

Jan Kempenaers-Spomenik-A Year In The Country-5 (2) Jan Kempenaers-Spomenik-A Year In The Country-5

Jan Kempenaers-Spomenik-A Year In The Country-7 Jan Kempenaers-Spomenik-A Year In The Country (4)

“There have been a number of books and photography projects which could be seen to document a form of former Soviet Union hauntology; work that often focuses on monuments and remnants of Cold War era striving, dreams and far reaching projects…

Jan Kempemaers’ Spomenik from 2010, contains his photographs of structures that were created in Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s as memorials to the Second World War but which now apparently are largely abandoned.

These take a largely abstract, geometric, concrete modernist form and there is a brutalist beauty and fascination to them, while they also seem to have tumbled from both the future and the past; despite the all too real history which inspired them, they now seem almost like impossible fictions or props from the fantasies of a cinematic story.”

Soviet Bus Stops-Christopher Herwig-Fuel-A Year In The Country Soviet Bus Stops-Christopher Herwig-Fuel-A Year In The Country-4Soviet Bus Stops-Christopher Herwig-Fuel-A Year In The Country-2

“The structures photographed in (Christopher Herwig’s Soviet Bus Stops) could also be considered in the eyes of some beholders to have gained elements of being utilitarian or pragmatic accidental art.

As with the Spomenik photographs, in Soviet Bus Stops some of the more architecturally brutalist designs appear to be artifacts from lost futures, of a time when an empire reached for grand horizons and even the stars.”

 Danila tkachenko-Restricted Areas-Dewi Lewis Publishing-A Year In The Country-2Danila tkachenko-Restricted Areas-Dewi Lewis Publishing-collage gs-A Year In The Country-4

“…Danila Tkachenko’s Restricted Areas book from 2016, the photographs in which focus on abandoned hardware, secret cities and installations from the Soviet Union during the Cold War period…

Danila Tkachenko says of the places, structures, equipment, vehicles and mechanisms he has photographed:

‘Those places lost their significance together with the utopian ideology which is now obsolete. The perfect technocratic future that never came.’

And as with Spomenik and Soviet Bus Stops the spirit of these photographs seem like a different time and place’s hauntology: a differing but also partly parallel strand to that which has come about in the UK and the West and its sense of reflections on, mourning and yearning for a more utopian future which did not occur.”

abandoned-soviet-space-shuttle-hangar-buran-baikonur-cosmodrome-kazakhstan-ralph-mirebs-7 abandoned-soviet-space-shuttle-hangar-buran-baikonur-cosmodrome-kazakhstan-ralph-mirebs-20

“Today there is a considerable amount of photography out in the world and particularly online that focuses on derelict buildings, machinery and so on and which is sometimes referred to as urban exploration or urbex photography.

However, in amongst the masses of such photography, Ralph Mireb’s images of abandoned and incomplete Soviet era space shuttles (which are a curious simulacra of the American space shuttle in terms of design and can be found at the website Bored Panda) stand out.

This is in part due to the sheer scale of the infrastructure and buildings that surround them which they document – the space shuttle hangar is many storeys high and dwarves the other structures nearby.”

abandoned-buran-wooden-wind-tunnel-model

“In photographs that act as an accompaniment to Ralph Mireb’s, Alexander Marksin has documented the discarded wooden wind-tunnel models of these space shuttles.2

Due to the materials used, these bring to mind thoughts of a folk art project rather than an institutionally and nationally funded attempt at space exploration, which is heightened as they have been left outside to age, weather, crumble and be slowly reclaimed and covered by nature.”

 abandoned-Raketas-or-Rockets-that-once-plied-the-Volga-and-other-great-rivers-of-the-Soviet-Union-during-the-Cold-War-years

“In terms of vehicle design, in the Soviet Union there is a cul-de-sac that could well be called “The Shape of the Future’s Past” which takes in abandoned Soviet era hydrofoils and which were known as river rockets.

These were made from the mid-1950s to mid-1970s and viewed now with their sleek, finned, almost space vehicle like designs appear as prototypes for a mid-century modern, atomic age take on how the future was to be.

There is a bravery, an optimism, a genuine progressive modernism and venturing onwards and outwards to designs like these that seems to have been lost somewhere along the way, surrendered to a more day-to-day practicality in design.”

 Rebecca Litchfield-Soviet Ghosts-book cover

“Throughout this chapter a number of times (I refer) to a sense of the science fiction-esque or fantastical, often accompanied by a grand sense of an empire and its once ambitions, which many of these photographs imply.

This is particularly captured by the cover of Rebecca Litchfield’s Soviet Ghosts, a book released in 2014 which focuses on the extent of abandonment in the former Soviet Union and its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc.

In the book’s cover image an abandoned and derelict circular stadium has been photographed, capturing the enormous scale and futurist grandeur of this structure…

To the Western eye, as is similar to varying degrees with much of the above photography and structures, it conjures more a vision of a Flash Gordon-esque empire and future than something grounded in 

the reality of a still relatively recent earthbound political, economic and societal system.”

 

Online images to accompany Chapter 12 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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The Sun in the East – Norfolk & Suffolk Fairs and Albion Unenclosed – Part 2: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 12/52

Richard Barnes-The Sun in the East-British festival book-1983-Norfolk and Suffolk Fairs-Albion Barsham-8-cover

In Part 1 of this post (which can be read here) I wrote about three photography orientated books which document British alternative/counter cultural outdoor festivals from the 1960s to 1980s: Jeremy Sandford and Ron Reid’s Tomorrow’s People (1974), Richard Barnes’ The Sun in the East – Norfolk & Suffolk Fairs (1983) and Sam Knee’s Memory of a Free Festival – The Golden Era of the British Underground Festival Scene (2017).

Part 2 of this post focuses further on The Sun in the East, a book which via a collection of Richard Barnes’ and other photographs alongside articles, cartoons, fliers and posters, interviews, memories and reflections on the festival etc presents a snapshot of a set of smaller scale fairs or festivals including the Barsham Faires and Albion Fairs, which took place in a particular area of Britain between 1972-1982.

Richard Barnes-The Sun in the East-British festival book-1983-Norfolk and Suffolk Fairs-Albion Barsham-2

As referred to in Part 1 of the post, in large part the overall aesthetic and culture presented and captured in the book is what could be loosely called latter period hippie-esque and possibly proto-new age traveller (with a few punks/anarcho-punks sneaking in towards the end).

Richard Barnes-The Sun in the East-British festival book-1983-Norfolk and Suffolk Fairs-Albion Barsham-4

And as also mentioned in Part 1, accompanying those aesthetics some of the fairs in The Sun in the East were medieval themed, with the entertainers and some of the attendees costumed or dressed in that manner. This may have reflected an early 1970s folk related interest in such things, an almost Arcadian wish to return to the land and the old ways that was often interconnected with hippie-esque culture and which has been described as a form of “imaginative time travel” (to quote Rob Young).

(As an aside, some of the posters/fliers for the festivals show the entrance fee as being 30p or 20p if in costume, which allowing for inflation is approximately £2.50 to £1.50 at contemporary prices – which seems somewhat cheap compared to the modern day festival ticket prices that can run into hundreds of pounds).

Richard Barnes-The Sun in the East-British festival book-1983-Norfolk and Suffolk Fairs-Albion Barsham-1

The festivals the book features are different from most of those in Tomorrow’s People and Memories of a Free Festival in that they weren’t big name band orientated, rather they featured performers nearer to say street performers – mimes, clowns, puppeteers, stilt walkers, small scale theatre shows etc.

In the photographs these performers seem nearer to being just another part of the festival, with them often performing literally in amongst the other attendees.

Looked at now, the festivals and in particular their entertainments in part seem not all that dissimilar to say a new age/eco leaning contemporary family friendly festival that was possibly organised or sponsored by for example a local council or a grant funded organisation of some form – which is also possibly in part a reflection of the incorporation and acceptance by wider society, governing bodies and authorities of some elements of what was once more fringe and counter culture.

Richard Barnes-The Sun in the East-British festival book-1983-Norfolk and Suffolk Fairs-Albion Barsham-7

Alongside the medieval and hippie-esque aspects and those just mentioned performers, looking through The Sun in the East there are at times old time music hall, cabaret and burlesque aspects to some of the performances, which is an intriguing prefiguring of the more recent revivals in such things.

Hare and Tabor-Albion Fair tshirt-Barsham Fair poster flier

The Sun is in The East is now long out of print and at the point of writing not all that cheap to buy second hand but it’s worth seeking out as a document of a semi-forgotten corner of cultural history.

I was first pointed in the direction of the book by undercurrents-of-folklore explorers and merchandisers Hare and Tabor, who as I have mentioned around these parts before have produced a t-shirt which is inspired by artwork for the Albion Fair, proceeds from which go towards funding the Fairs Archive, which is a travelling exhibition that documents the Fairs.

Their Albion Fair t-shirt page also contains some interesting background on the fair and related links. Well worth a visit.

Richard Barnes-The Sun in the East-British festival book-1983-Norfolk and Suffolk Fairs-Albion Barsham-3

Elsewhere:
The Albion Fair t-shirt at Hare and Tabor
The Fairs Archive
The not-so-pocket-money-friendly out of print The Sun in the East book
Rob Young’s Electric Eden

Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
1) Day #4/365: Electric Eden; a researching, unearthing and drawing of lines between the stories of Britain’s visionary music
2) Day #40/365: Electric Eden Ether Reprise… from the wild woods to broadcasts from the pylons…
3) Week #6/52: Tomorrow’s People, further considerations of the past as a foreign country and hauntology away from its more frequent signifiers and imagery…
4) Audio Visual Transmission Guide #46/52a: Barsham Faire 1974 and a Merry Albion Psychedelia
5) Chapter 1 Book Images: Electric Eden – Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music – Folk Vs Pop, Less Harvested Cultural Landscapes and Acts of Enclosure, Old and New
6) Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 11/52: The Sun in the East – Norfolk & Suffolk Fairs and Albion Unenclosed – Part 1

 

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

Redshift-Robin Redbreast-The Changes-BBC-BFI-DVD-A Year In The Country

Robin Redbreast-A Year In The Country-BFI DVD-1970-2John Benjamin Stone-A Record of England-folk customs and traditions-A Year In The Country-5

“Robin Redbreast is a 1970 television programme, which although it was originally made and broadcast in colour, now only a black and white version is known to exist. It contains a plot and atmosphere that draw you in, grip and unsettle you…

(It is not) an as-overtly visual representation of folkloric rites as say The Wicker Man is (apart from one brief moment where the locals gather, clad in folkloric attire, which could almost be a photograph by late 19th/early 20th century documenter of folk customs Benjamin Stone or a modern day re-enactment of his photographs); it does not have the broad cinematic sweep or cult musical accompaniment of that film but this is a different creature.

It is a more intimate, enclosed story, a television play with I expect a relatively small budget, a small cast and a quite limited number of locations but none the worse for it.”

The Omega Factor-TV series-A Year In The CountryNoahs Castle-1979 TV series-John Rowe Townsend-A Year In The Country-6Quatermass-1979-The Conclusion-Nigel Kneale-A Year In The Country 2

“…some of the most intriguing pieces of work leading up to and during the creation of A Year In The Country have been the introduction and end title sequences to some of those television series and plays from the late 1960s to mid 1970s; this probably extends to around 1980 to take in Children of the Stones (1977), Sky (1975), The Tomorrow People (1973-1979), Noah’s Castle (1979), The Omega Factor (1979) and the final series of Quatermass (1979).

They often seem to represent a very concise, at points quite surreal capturing of the otherly spirit of the various series, related flipside and undercurrents of bucolia, hauntological concerns and a particular era…”

The Tomorrow People-4 intro credits stills-1970s

Penguin Modern Poets-Julian House-Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age-A Year In The CountryJulian House-Intro design-Ghost Box Records-A Year In The Country

“The intro sequence for The Tomorrow People is a collage of images that include geometric science fiction-esque shapes, a single eyeball, cosmological swirls, a hand opening and closing, a shadowy figure in a doorway etc.

It could be a mixture of the stark, darkly pastoral covers of The Modern Poets series of book covers from the 1960s and 1970s and Julian House of Ghost Box Records’ design work tumbling backwards and forwards through time, filtered somehow through an almost Woolworths-esque take on such things but still having a particularly unsettling air.”

The Owl Service-TV series titles-Alan Garner-A Year In The Country-1200

The Owl Service TV program-A Year In The Country 2 The Owl Service-TV series titles-Alan Garner-A Year In The CountryThe Owl Service TV program-A Year In The Country 3 The Owl Service TV program-A Year In The Country

“The Owl Service’s intro sequence mixes and layers imagery that includes tinted largely monochromatic images of the forest, pulsating geometric circles, a candle flame flickering against a black background, hands making bird silhouettes and a mirrored illustration where the same elements can be seen as both owls and flowers.”

Children Of The Stones-TV series-A Year In The Country The Children Of The Stones series-intro 3

“Children of the Stones’ intro is presented in a more realist, visually conventional manner, though it still more than hints at flipside tales of the land.

To a soundtrack of a memorable, spectral, eldritch and wordless choir, it features multiple images of ancient standing stones, variously shown as ominous looming structures, with the sun refracting over them or in a layering of the past and present as they are pictured next to local village housing.”

Sky-1975 TV series-A Year In The Country

Sky-1975 TV British television series-A Year In The Country 3 in a row

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Sky is another of those “Hmmm, what was in the water at TV commissioning meetings in the seventies to think that these were quite normal programmes for children’s television?” series, which over time has grown layers of exoticism…

It is a sort of rurally-set children’s television version of The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), with a cockney alien and ecological overtones which the promotional information describes somewhat esoterically as:

‘Out of the sky falls a youth, not of this place or time, ‘part-angel, part-waif ’, a youth with powers he can neither control or understand… nature itself rejects him and takes on the cadaverous body of Goodchild in sinister personification of the forces of opposition… He speaks of time travellers ‘Gods you call them’ who had tried again and again to help the people of Earth… Sky must find the mysterious juganet, the cross-over point in time, that is the key to his return to his own dimension.'”

The Changes-1975-BBC-A Year In The Country-8The Changes-1975-BBC-A Year In The Country 4 The Changes-1975-BBC-A Year In The Country 2

The Changes-1975-BBC-A Year In The CountryThe Changes-1975-BBC-A Year In The Country 5

“(In The Changes) black and chain-wearing louche beatnik styled robbers and brigands roam the land and at points the series wanders off into a milder version of Witchfinder General (1968) territory where those who are suspected of using machinery or even saying their names are seen as “wicked sinners” and considered to be witches…

..in one of the memorable phrases from the series overhead electricity (and so on) cables become known as “the bad wires” and people are not able to pass underneath them as this brings a return of The Noise and the madness which compelled people to destroy technology…

The source of The Noise and the machine smashing/rejecting madness is eventually tracked down by Nicky and her companion to a form of sentient lodestone which has been uncovered in quarry workings.

Although it is not explained what this stone is or how it came to be, we are told that it had given magical powers to Merlin in ancient historical times and it is now trying to take Britain back to what it considers to be a better pre-industrial time by psychically inducing the rejection of machinery…

How on earth did this come to be made as children’s entertainment? In particular the first episode where the madness has gripped mankind and the machines are being smashed in the streets: the scenes of which have an unnerving intensity…

…The Changes could be seen as a reflection of some of society’s fears of social breakdown at that time and the threats represented by a reliance on modern technology which needed modern fuel, which was at that time under threat due to a crisis in oil supplies.”

The Ash Tree-David Rudkin-MR James-A Ghost Story For Christmas-The BBC-A Year In The Country 2

The Ash Tree-David Rudkin-MR James-A Ghost Story For Christmas-The BBC-A Year In The Country 5The Ash Tree-David Rudkin-MR James-A Ghost Story For Christmas-The BBC-A Year In The Country

The Ash Tree-David Rudkin-MR James-A Ghost Story For Christmas-The BBC-A Year In The Country 6 The Ash Tree-David Rudkin-MR James-A Ghost Story For Christmas-The BBC-A Year In The Country-10

“(The Ash Tree television play from 1975, based on a story by M.R. James) shares some themes with Witchfinder General in its dealing with folk horror and persecution.

M.R. James’ short story was adapted for television by David Rudkin, who for a while seemed to be the go-to chap for otherly Albion-ic television and also wrote Penda’s Fen…

In many ways The Ash Tree could sit quite comfortably amongst the not-so-salubrious fare that littered the faded cinemas of mid 1970s Britain; it has that nasty, unsettling feeling to it that a fair few cinematic releases from that period did, possibly reflecting a wider sense of corruption and malaise in society…

There is little beauty in this landscape and its rolling fields. Bleak is a word that comes to mind; these are moors and feeding grounds full of judgement, punishment, voyeurism and unexplained carrion.”

Pendas Fen-David Rudkin-A Year In The Country 5 Pendas Fen-David Rudkin-A Year In The Country 8 Pendas Fen-David Rudkin-A Year In The Country 7

Pendas Fen-David Rudkin-A Year In The Country 3 Pendas Fen-David Rudkin-A Year In The Country 2 Pendas Fen-David Rudkin-A Year In The Country

“(Penda’s Fen) is a tale which takes in the revival of ancient pagan kings, hidden underground government facilities (cities?), left-wing truths, ranting and paranoia, substitute Mary Whitehouse-esque self-appointed moral majority figures, awakening sixth form adolescent sexuality, alternative religious histories and theological study, fancying your local milk man, demons, army cadet forces, William Blake’s Jerusalem, the threat and worry of the never stopping industrial conveyor belt, returning dead classical musicians who wish to see the silver river and verdant valleys but who are actually staring at a flaking brick wall, the battle of religion against older gods, a birthday cake, adoption, fertility, almost breaking the fourth wall self-criticism about himself in David Rudkin’s script, angelic riverside visitations and Kenneth Anger-esque phallic firework dreams…

It could be a head spinning melange and collage of freakish, cult film making but it is not; although in its hour and a half (actually, its first half hour) it manages to have covered more topics than a whole catalogue of other films may do, this is a very cogent and coherent film which at its core deals with conformity, coming of age and mankind’s sacred covenant with the land.’

Play-For-Today-1200-Red Shift-Alan Garner-BFI-BBC-A-Year-In-The-Country-smaller Red Shift-Alan Garner-1978-BBC-Play For Today-A Year In The Country-2 darker Mow Cop-David Byrne-Red Shift-Alan Garner-A Year In The Country

“Red Shift from 1978 shares some similarities with Penda’s Fen: it is a visionary take on the landscape and its stories and histories, older forms of worship, tales of coming of age and a priggish not always likeable teenage protagonist…

In part it could be seen as an exploration of the literary, intellectual and cultural idea that similar, interconnected things continue to happen in the same places over time, almost as though places become nodes or echo chambers for particular occurrences or a kind of temporal layering occurs: something which is also explored in Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape from 1972.”

Filming The Owl Service-Alan Garner-Peter Plummer-A Year In The CountryFilming The Owl Service-Alan Garner-Peter Plummer-A Year In The Country 3

Filming The Owl Service-Alan Garner-Peter Plummer-A Year In The Country 8 Filming The Owl Service-Alan Garner-Peter Plummer-Dafydd Rees-A Year In The Country

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Filming The Owl Service-Alan Garner-Peter Plummer-A Year In The Country 10Filming The Owl Service-Alan Garner-Peter Plummer-A Year In The Country 2Filming The Owl Service-Alan Garner-Peter Plummer-A Year In The Country 9

“Filming the Owl Service (1970)… is long out of print and rare as hen’s teeth to find second hand, which is a shame as it is a fine companion piece to the series, full of rather lovely photographs, artifacts, anecdotes, background story, prop sheets and designs from the filming and the series itself.

The book is split into three parts; an “Introduction” by Alan Garner in which he discusses the making of the film, some of what inspired the original book, the coincidences around it and so on, “Our Diaries” by his children who took nine weeks off school while it was being made to be on and around its filming and “Making the Film” by its director Peter Plummer.

Some of the points of interest from the book are:

(Please note: there are 12 such points in the A Year In The Country book.)

5) When Peter Plummer introduced the actors to Alan Garner for the first time and asked if they looked right, Alan Garner’s recollection of it was that it was a “nasty experience”:

“I wanted to run. They looked too right. It was like a waking dream. Here were the people I’d thought about, who’d lived in my head for so long; but now they were real. I couldn’t accept that they were only actors.”

6) Alan Garner had based the part of Huw on Dafydd, an actual gardener from one of the locales of filming, but a Dafydd as he had imagined him being at the age of forty. When he saw them together he said that it “was like seeing father and son”. Apparently the two people in question when they saw one another said:

Dafydd: “I wish I was young and forty again.” Raymond: “Now I know what I’ll look like at eighty.”

The book leaves a sense that Dafydd was a very particular kind of person, one of those people who seem to have been part of the land forever, an archetype almost.

11) Alan Garner is one of the villagers in one scene in the series and apparently he was a foot taller than all the actual local people who were in the series and they all found it hard to behave normally when the man-made storm rain hits them.

Alan Garner: “…as soon as the solid water hit us we all gasped and yelled, and looked like anything but villagers out in a storm.” Dafydd: “We must be dumb and waterproof.”

Alan Garner: “That scene is still odd, because I was about a foot taller than anybody else, and I look like the village freak – which may be what Peter was after all the time.”

12) The end of Alan Garner’s section is a quote taken from a letter sent by Dafydd, referring to the time during the filming and The Stone Of Gronw, which the production had commissioned to be carved, prepared and set in place for the series:

“It was a good time… I have been to the stone. It is lonely now.”

 

Online images to accompany Chapter 11 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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The Sun in the East – Norfolk & Suffolk Fairs and Albion Unenclosed – Part 1: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 11/52

British festival books-Tomorrow's People-The Sun In The East-Memories of a free festival

To my knowledge there are three main photography orientated books which document British alternative/counter cultural outdoor festivals from the 1960s to 1980s: Jeremy Sandford and Ron Reid’s Tomorrow’s People (1974), Richard Barnes’ The Sun in the East – Norfolk & Suffolk Fairs (1983) and Sam Knee’s Memory of a Free Festival – The Golden Era of the British Underground Festival Scene (2017).

These books document and capture a time when festivals weren’t an accepted mainstream and/or commercial orientated activity.

Jeremy Sandford and Ron Reid-Tomorrows People-British festival photography book-1974

Tomorrow’s People, which I have written about previously at A Year In The Country, focuses on the 1960s and 1970s, a time when in part festivals were an experiment in alternative ways of living and thinking, often inspired by hippie, new age, utopian and later anti-authoritarian ideals and sometimes took place without charging an entrance fee – they could be seen as part of an attempt to create short-lived temporary autonomous zones where such experiments and ideals could take place and flourish.

(In terms of further reading Rob Young covers such festivals extensively in his Electric Eden – Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music book in the chapter Paradise Enclosed.)

Although the above ideals and beliefs were part of festivals around this time and may well have been believed fervently and/or wholeheartedly by some of the organisers and participants, to a degree such aspects could be seen as ancillary or possibly more in part a reflection of the interest in and adoption of then fashionable beliefs and associated aesthetics and mindsets.

Jeremy Sandford and Ron Reid-Tomorrows People-British festival photography book-1974-2 copy

Such beliefs may have been part of the impetus that lead to such festivals creations but looking through these books, what really strikes me is that these were gathering spaces for younger folk to let their hair down, party, indulge in a brewed/distilled or otherwise manufactured intoxicant, watch a band or two and so on – places outdoors for people to have fun basically.

For myself these books are strongest when they are documenting the festival attendees rather than the “known” bands on stage. When they turn their gaze away from the main stages and onto the general public they seem to capture more of a sense of time and place, of a world and events that although a part of relatively recent history now seem quite far away from our own times.

Richard Barnes-The Sun in the East-British festival book-1983-Norfolk and Suffolk Fairs-Albion Barsham-8-cover

Along which lines Richard Barnes’ The Sun in the East book focuses quite specifically on a set of smaller scale fairs or festivals including the Barsham Faires and Albion Fairs, which took place in a particular area of Britain between 1972-1982.

Richard Barnes-The Sun in the East-British festival book-1983-Norfolk and Suffolk Fairs-Albion Barsham-9-fliers and posters

The book brings together his and other’s photographs alongside articles, fliers and posters, cartoons, interviews, reflections and memories on the festivals etc.

Although professionally bound and produced this book has an intimate, almost small press or fanzine layout and atmosphere – something which may in part reflect both the smaller scale, home grown nature of the festivals alongside Richard Barnes’ own connection to and enthusiasm for the festivals, of which he was variously involved as an attendee, photographer, vendor and helped prepare the festival sites by literally digging a trench or two.

It captures a very particular time in British culture, when latter period hippie culture intermingled with medieval aesthetics (some of the fairs were medieval themed) and although not overtly expressed within the book it documents such culture’s move towards a form of proto-new age traveller/crustie culture and even here and there an interrelated anarcho-punk scene.

To be continued in Part II…

Richard Barnes-The Sun in the East-British festival book-1983-Norfolk and Suffolk Fairs-Albion Barsham-2

Elsewhere:
The Fairs Archive
The not-so-pocket-money-friendly out of print The Sun in the East book
Rob Young’s Electric Eden

Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
1) Day #4/365: Electric Eden; a researching, unearthing and drawing of lines between the stories of Britain’s visionary music
2) Day #40/365: Electric Eden Ether Reprise… from the wild woods to broadcasts from the pylons…
3) Week #6/52: Tomorrow’s People, further considerations of the past as a foreign country and hauntology away from its more frequent signifiers and imagery…
4) Audio Visual Transmission Guide #46/52a: Barsham Faire 1974 and a Merry Albion Psychedelia
5) Chapter 1 Book Images: Electric Eden – Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music – Folk Vs Pop, Less Harvested Cultural Landscapes and Acts of Enclosure, Old and New

 

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The Wicker Man – Notes on a Cultural Behemoth: Chapter 10 Book Images

 The Wickerman-rating

“The Wicker Man… has become something of a towering cult celluloid behemoth. This is particularly the case amongst all things on the flipside of folkloric, as well as within areas of culture that have come to be known as folk horror…

At its heart, The Wicker Man could be viewed as a mystery thriller, although in actuality it is a film which defies categorisation, mixing elements of fantasy, horror and musical.

Within its enclosed rural setting it intertwines folkloric practices, pagan rituals, reimagined and reinterpreted traditional and folk music, unfettered sexuality and an older religious faith in conflict with a more contemporary Christian belief system.

These elements, along with a background of its at-times troubled production and distribution, have come to create a heady mixture, which includes imagery and a soundtrack that have gained iconic status and the creation of an almost myth-like set of stories and reference points which surround it and that have reverberated throughout wider culture.” 

The Wicker Man-Dan Mumford poster-A Year In The Country 

“In 2013 a ’40th Anniversary’ – possibly misleadingly named – Final Cut of the film, running at 91 minutes, was released cinematically as well as on DVD and Blu-ray.

This was not a complete, cinematic quality version of the film but rather an intermediate director-approved version which, as with earlier restored versions, featured segments which had varying levels of reproduction due to original source materials not being available.

In one sense, the sections where the quality varies are appealing; the shift in quality can give these scenes a slightly surreal, almost parallel plains of 3D or cutout look, similar to the effect that viewing a faded set of images through a Viewmaster children’s toy might do.

It would be interesting to see the entire film represented in this manner, to step away from the ongoing quest for a picture perfect representation of the tales of The Wicker Man and to embrace its otherworldliness more overtly with regards to its visual presentation.”

 The Wicker Man Collage-A Year In The Country-1080 

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The Wicker Man book collection

“While waiting for an actual final complete version there have been an ever-proliferating number of re-releases of the film and its soundtrack that have been released on video tape, DVD, Blu-ray, CD and vinyl, alongside period and modern associated posters, trading cards, books, zines, magazine articles and so forth.

The resulting releases have become part of a whole not-so-mini industry that could keep industrious collectors busy but there are a few related items of particular interest.

One is Willow’s Songs: an album released in 2009 by unearthers of rare and sometimes previously lost recordings Finders Keepers Records and which aims to showcase the British folk songs that inspired the soundtrack to The Wicker Man…

Its lyrics tell a tale of agricultural dispossession and intriguingly it is not credited to a performer on the album, which in these times of instant knowledge about almost everything via online searches adds a certain appealing mystique that this author is loath to puncture.”

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“One of the curious things with The Wicker Man soundtrack (and indeed the film itself ) is that this is a case of where something authentic has been created from an inauthentic or commercially-orientated premise.

The soundtrack has come to feel as though it features songs which have belonged to these isles for centuries: ones which are deeply rooted in the land, its folklore and history, when in fact a number of them were written and all were recorded especially for the film.”

 Ritual-David Pinner-First Edition-Finders Keepers Edition

“Finders Keepers Records also reissued Ritual in 2011, which is the 1967 book by David Pinner, the basic idea and structure of which was in part the inspiration for what became The Wicker Man after David Pinner sold the film rights of the book to future Wicker Man cast member Christopher Lee in 1971.

In both, a police officer attempts to investigate reports of a missing child in an enclosed rural area and has to deal with psychological trickery, seduction, ancient religious and ritualistic practices.

The Finders Keepers reissue contains an introduction by writer and musician Bob Stanley called “A Note On Ritual”, which serves as an overview of and background to this very particular slice of literature which deals with pastoral otherlyness, the flipside and undercurrents of bucolia and folklore:

‘…be warned, like The Wicker Man, it is quite likely to test your dreams of leaving the city for a shady nook by a babbling brook.’ (Bob Stanley on Ritual from the introduction.)” 

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The Wicker Man has been extensively written about over the years, both online and in print, including Allan Brown’s entertaining and extensive unearthing and researching of the background and myths that surround the film in his book Inside The Wicker Man: How Not to Make a Cult Classic…

A concise and revealing look at the film is also included in the 2002 book Your Face Here by Ali Catterall and Simon Wells…

There is a rigour to the research in the book without it stepping into the sometimes drier grounds of academia and the text reflects a genuine love for and appreciation of these films…

…the chapter now reflects a sense of the ongoing and growing story of this now quite well harvested in one form or another film, albeit one which through its ongoing appreciation and cultural inspirations/reverberations still occupies apparently quite fertile and not yet completely unearthed or unburied ground.” 

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“Of the reams of writing on The Wicker Man, Vic Pratt’s article “Long Arm of the Lore” from the October 2013 issue of the BFI’s Sight & Sound magazine is well worth seeking out…

The article intertwines the cultural and historical context of the film, the romance of analogue recording techniques and the inner and wider myth and folkloric aspects of it…

In it Vic Pratt places The Wicker Man in its period cultural context of changing times and mores, considering how the children of the 1960s had grown up and taken their place in respectable society and sometimes the media, bringing or infiltrating their countercultural interests with them, possibly having lost some of their political fervour while also looking for the more authentic or spiritually fulfilling but not via traditional avenues.

The article describes how accompanying this was a sense of folk custom, witchcraft and the occult no longer being quite such marginalised or extreme interests; they had become the stuff of relatively mainstream film, television, music and publishing and a reflection of this can be seen in the themes of The Wicker Man…

In many ways, both this and the issue of the magazine could be seen as a companion to the August 2010 Sight & Sound issue, which has as its cover strapline “The Films of Old, Weird Britain”, accompanied by a Wicker Man-like, landscape myths and folk horror-esque illustration and features “The Pattern Under the Plough” article by Rob Young as its main feature.

That article delves beneath the topsoil of British cinema to find a rich seam of films and television which take the landscape, rural ways, folklore (of the traditional and reimagined varieties) or ‘the matter of Britain’ as their starting point…”

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“(Rob Young’s The Pattern Under the Plough article) further contextualises The Wicker Man, placing it alongside other such folk horror films as Witchfinder General. It then goes on to consider an interrelated loose grouping of films and television which in part explore those flipside Albionic cracks in the landscape.

These include Winstanley (1975) and its dramatising of historical English Civil War era searching for an earthly paradise, the journey through a rural year of Akenfield (1974), the almost straight documentary that also seems to quietly explore the undercurrents of the land Sleep Furiously (2008)…

It also includes considerations of and connects the above with the art film experiments and psychogeography (a form of explorative wandering) of Derek Jarman’s Journey to Avesbury (1971), Patrick Keiller’s Robinson in Space (1997) and Chris Petit’s London Orbital (2002), the atavistic memories of Quatermass and the Pit (1967) and the layered spectral rural history tales of Penda’s Fen (1974).

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“The Wicker Man has also acted as a wider source of musical inspiration and influence, branching out into more mainstream and even chart music. The band Sneaker Pimps recorded a song called “How Do”, which is a version of “Willow’s Song” from The Wicker Man soundtrack and includes samples from the film…

It was a curious thing for a quite pop orientated band, even if a more left-of-centre one, back then to include a song from The Wicker Man soundtrack. At the time of How Do’s release The Wicker Man was a known film but its extended and ever growing cultdom had not really started to gather pace yet and Trunk Records’ release of the soundtrack was still a couple of years away, so information about the film was probably still relatively thin on the ground.”

 Kelli Ali-Rocking Horse and Butterfly

“In a possible further example of the ongoing influence of the film, in 2008 Kelli Ali, who was the singer with Sneaker Pimps at the time of Becoming X, released a pastoral folk inflected album called Rocking Horse on record label One Little Indian, which was produced by Max Richter…

(On her album) Butterfly there is also another version of Willow’s Song, which takes it back nearer to its purely imagined folkloric roots and although being her own interpretation it is closer to how the song was performed for The Wicker Man’s soundtrack than the Sneaker Pimps version and indeed would not seem all that out of place if heard amongst the other music in the film.”

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“In a further Wicker Man connection with one time chartbound bands, Pulp included a song called “Wickerman” on their 2001 album, We Love Life.

The song is a multi-layered piece of culture, one that interweaves samples from the original The Wicker Man film soundtrack recording and hence otherly folkloric concerns, alongside a sense of urban exploration, the true life history of the band, spoken word, a certain grandiosity in its production (possibly courtesy of producer Scott Walker), the social history of Sheffield and surrounding areas and a yearning, wistful love story…

…members of Pulp went on an expedition through tunnels beneath Sheffield that were used for sluicing industrial run off… that journey became increasingly dangerous feeling and… it inspired the Pulp song Wickerman…

…what the real life story of the band wandering through those tunnels also brings to mind is the underground tunnel sequence in Ben Wheatley’s 2011 film Kill List, and its related occult vision of folkloric machinations; lines from which could be connected backwards to The Wicker Man and its flipside views, expressions and interpretations of folklore and an unsettled take on pastoralism.”

 The Wicker Man-construction-production photograph The Wicker Man-1973-Production notes The Wickerman-lost scene in hairdressersWillow Umbrella-Christopher Lee-The Wicker Man-1973

“Along with the above books, articles and records which explore and/or draw inspiration from The Wicker Man there are an extensive number of websites and documentaries which focus on the film.

One of the most in depth of such websites is The Wicker Man (1973) Wikia site which on a recent visit had 138 different pages related to the film…

Of particular note are the images of the construction of The Wicker Man structure used in the film and also the numbered on-set and press photographs taken from contact sheets.

Even though they are on a public site these seem to offer a semi-hidden view or a glance behind the curtain of the film.

However, despite this they do not diminish the mystique or myths of the film, which can sometimes be the case with such photographs or “How We Made the Film” documentaries and DVD extras.

This is possibly because The Wicker Man has such a multi-layered set of myths around it, some of which are intrinsically connected and interwoven with the production of the film itself and related backstories, all of which have become part and parcel of its intriguing nature.”

 The Wicker Man BBC Scotland On Screen 2009 

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“Further behind the scenes views and discussion can be found in a now quite considerable number of The Wicker Man documentaries, including those on the various DVD/Blu-ray releases of the film and also in documentaries which were originally broadcast on television.

These include:

1) The Wicker Man/BBC Scotland on Screen (2009), in which actor Alan Cumming wanders around the film’s locations, with how they are today segueing into scenes from the film…

This features… the woman who runs the gallery where the sweet shop scene was filmed (who says something along the lines of some visiting tourists thinking that those who live in the area actually are pagans).

2) The Wicker Man episode of the BBC 4 series Cast and Crew (2005), which hosts a round table discussion of the film.

(Which includes) cast members Christopher Lee, Ingrid Pitt being her delightfully eccentric and expressive self (slightly embarrassing/ awkward for more reserved British sensibilities to know how to cope with this)…

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Sing Cuckoo- The Story and Influence of The Wicker Man Soundtrack-Gothic-The Dark Heart Of Film-BFIPlayer-BFI-Jonny Trunk

(Another Wicker Man related documentary is) Sing Cuckoo: The Story and Influence of The Wicker Man Sound track… 

(Which features) the musicians Stephen Cracknell of The Memory Band and Mike Lindsay of Tuung (who have both created and released The Wicker Man-related work) and Jonny Trunk who is variously an archival record researcher, collector, writer and was responsible for the release of the first commercial edition of The Wicker Man’s soundtrack via his label Trunk Records…

There is something very evocative and moving about this particular documentary and it has a certain classiness to it, a sense of a deep respect for the film both by those shown in it and from behind the camera.

Part of that is the way it is divided into titled chapters that connect with the themes of the film and its influence; Creation, Isolation, Resurrection, Inspiration and Resolution…”

 Sing Cuckoo- The Story and Influence of The Wicker Man Soundtrack-Gothic-The Dark Heart Of Film-BFIPlayer-BFI-Stephen Cracknell-Mike Lindsay 

“In terms of some of the reasons for the ongoing and expanding appeal of the film and its soundtrack, Stephen Cracknell makes an incisive point about how the songs have become like folk standards for young indie-folk musicians and says:

“I think it will go on influencing people by giving them this idea of ‘Wow, you can be playful and sexy and daring and scary, not just reverential with old music and make it new and vibrant’. It stands like a beacon for that really.”

 

Online images to accompany Chapter 10 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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The Creeping Garden – an exploration of a science / science fiction fantasia – Part 2: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 10/52

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In Part 1 of this post (which can be read here) I wrote about the film The Creeping Garden, a documentary on slime moulds – a form of life which seems to be neither animal nor vegetable and which appears to possibly possess a form of intelligent and collective problem solving.

As mentioned in Part 1, the film is presented in a way that harks back to previous decades’ science fiction films such as Phase IV, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob and The Andromeda Strain and takes a multi-layered approach to those who study and work with slime moulds – from institutional collections to amateur observers, via artists, musicians, scientists etc, with those different branches, strands and definitions being show as often overlapping.

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According to the film slime moulds have not been overly studied or of interest to mainstream science but are shown in The Creeping Garden to have been of considerable interest to what could be considered amateur and/or fringe science and/or where such things meet artistic expression and exploration; the film features a number of people who produce creative work which incorporates slime moulds, including composer Eduardo Reck Miranda who “jams” at the piano with musical sounds that are triggered by electrodes which register the emotional responses of slime moulds to stimuli.

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While the work of the Unconventional Computing Centre, a university research department in the UK, is shown as creating synthesized music/sounds using data produced by recording/analysing slime moulds responses to various scenarios and stimuli: the resulting audio appears to represents emotions – when food is plentiful they produce impulses which effectively generate “happy” state sounds, when humidity and food are gone they enter a panic mode and the impulses they then create while deciding whether to try and escape or become dormant produce a more manic soundscape, while if they then decide to sleep/become dormant then their responses seem to wind down and produce a calming set of sounds.

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Wandering further into areas where science meets creative expression in connection to slime moulds, in The Creeping Garden Klaus-Peter Zauner, a physical sciences and engineering researcher, uses/enables slime molds to operate a circuit board on wheels and researcher Ella Gale uses data generated by slime molds to assign facial expressions to a disembodied robotic head.

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And also further blurring the “are they living creatures or plants, do they act through intelligence or not?” aspects to the film, the slime moulds are also shown in work by artist/researcher Heather Barnett as being able to for example work out the best way through a maze to reach a food supply, while elsewhere in the film similarities are shown between their growth patterns and the development of highways that connect cities together.

“P polycephalum is a plasmodial, single-celled organism which grows outward from a single point, searching for food sources. Once these have been located, the many branches it has sent out die back, leaving only the most efficient route between food source nodes.” David Parr in The Guardian, writing on the use of slime moulds to explore and replicate transport networks.

As mentioned in the film, because of the above problem solving aspect of their behaviour the study of slime moulds has been used as way to plan crowd control and the most efficient way of enabling people to move from one area to another.

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The film returns a number of times to Mark Pragnell, who studies slime moulds in their natural forest setting. Described as an “amateur” he seems to have a genuine passion for his subject, one which reflects the origin of the word amateur from the Latin amo which means to love.

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It also features the work of cinematic nature documentary pioneer Percy Smith, who in the 1930s made the film Magic Myxies about slime moulds, utilising his innovative and pioneering use of  micro and time lapse photography, which he rather pleasingly and in an almost pre-hauntological manner called time magnification.

As with The Creeping Garden, Smith’s film on slime moulds seems to exist in an almost slipstream hinterland somewhere between scientific study and an imaginative fantasia, with it attributing emotional responses to them:

“Notice how it quivers with delight over a good meal.”

As I mentioned at the start of this post The Creeping Garden is an intriguing and curious film, one which lingers in the mind after viewing and seems to open up as many avenues of questioning as it answers about these curious organisms, not least why they have not been the subject of more extensive mainstream scientific investigation than appears to have so far been the case.

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Elsewhere:
The Creeping Garden’s website.
The Creeping Garden trailer.
The Creeping Garden book.
The Creeping Garden DVD/Blu-ray.
Spore Angela – Angela Mele’s website.
Percy Smith’s Magic Myxies.

Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
1) Audio Visual Transmission Guide #20/52a: Microscopic, Archival & Exploratory Nature Films: Minute Bodies, Secrets Of Nature & The Creeping Garden
2) Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 9/52: The Creeping Garden – an exploration of a science / science fiction fantasia – Part 1

 

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The A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields Book – Print Book Preorder – Ebook Available Now

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The A Year In The Country books are now sold out at our Shop and Bandcamp page but they are available at Amazon UKAmazon US,  Amazon Australia and their other worldwide sites and also from Lulu.

The books may also available to order from other bookshops etc, please direct any queries regarding that directly to them.

Journeys in Otherly Pastoralism, the Further Reaches of Folk and the Parallel Worlds of Hauntology

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Ebook released today 1st March 2018. Price: £6.95.

The print book will also be available via Amazon’s worldwide sites from 10th April 2018.

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338 pages. Author: Stephen Prince

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Download two sample chapters at this web page: Contents list and sample chapters

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A Year In The Country is a set of year-long journeys through spectral fields; cyclical explorations of an otherly pastoralism, the outer reaches of folk culture and the spectres of hauntology. It is a wandering amongst subculture that draws from the undergrowth of the land.

As a project, it has included a website featuring writing, artwork and music which stems from that otherly pastoral/spectral hauntological intertwining, alongside a growing catalogue of album releases.

In keeping with the number of weeks in a year, the book is split into 52 chapters which draw together revised writings from the project alongside new journeyings. Connecting layered and, at times, semi-hidden cultural pathways and signposts, it journeys from acid folk to edgelands via electronic music innovators, folkloric film and photography, dreams of lost futures and misremembered televisual tales and transmissions.

It includes considerations of the work of writers including Rob Young, John Wyndham, Richard Mabey and Mark Fisher, musicians and groups The Owl Service, Jane Weaver, Shirley Collins, Broadcast, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Virginia Astley and Kate Bush, the artists Edward Chell, Jeremy Deller and Barbara Jones and the record labels Trunk, Folk Police, Ghost Box and Finders Keepers.

The book also explores television and film including Quatermass, The Moon and the Sledgehammer, Phase IV, Beyond the Black Rainbow, The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water, Bagpuss, Travelling for a Living, The Duke of Burgundy, Sapphire & Steel, General Orders No. 9, Gone to Earth, The Changes, Children of the Stones, Sleep Furiously and The Wicker Man.

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The book has been designed/typeset by Ian Lowey of Bopcap Book Services and edited by Suzy Prince, who are the co-authors of The Graphic Art of The Underground – A Counter-Cultural History.

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An online “cut out and keep” set of visual accompaniments to the chapters of the book can be visited here and text extracts from the book can be visited here, both of which will build throughout 2018 to include all 52 chapters.

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Book Chapter List:

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

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

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

14. Christopher Priest’s A Dream of Wessex: Twentieth Century Slipstream Echoes

15. Sapphire & Steel and Ghosts in the Machine: Nowhere, Forever and Lost Spaces within Cultural Circuitry

16. Kill List, Puffball, In the Dark Half and Butter on the Latch: Folk Horror Descendants by Way of the Kitchen Sink

17. The Quietened Bunker, Waiting For The End of the World, Subterranea Britannica, Bunker Archaeology and The Delaware Road: Ghosts, Havens and Curious Repurposings Beneath Our Feet

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18. From The Unofficial Countryside to Soft Estate: Edgeland Documents, Memories and Explorations

19. The Ballad of Shirley Collins and Pastoral Noir: Tales and Intertwinings from Hidden Furrows

20. “Savage Party” and Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased): Glimpses of Albion in the Overgrowth

21. Uncommonly British Days Out and the Following of Ghosts: File under Psychogeographic/Hauntological Stocking Fillers

22. Gone to Earth: Earlier Traces of an Otherly Albion

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

24. Luke Haines: Our Most Non-Hauntological Hauntologist

25. Tim Hart, Maddy Prior and “The Dalesman’s Litany”: A Yearning for Imaginative Idylls and a Counterpart to Tales of Hellish Mills

26. Katalina Varga, Berberian Sound Studio and The Duke of Burgundy : Arthouse Evolution and Crossing the Thresholds of the Hinterland Worlds of Peter Strickland

27. General Orders No. 9 and By Our Selves: Cinematic Pastoral Experimentalism

28. No Blade of Grass and Z.P.G.: A Curious Dystopian Mini-Genre

29. The Midwich Cuckoos and The Day of the Triffids: John Wyndham, Dystopian Tales, Celluloid Cuckoos and the Village as Anything But Idyll

30. Folk Archive and Unsophisticated Arts: Documenting the Overlooked and Unregulated

31. Folkloric Photography: A Lineage of Wanderings, Documentings and Imaginings

32. Poles and Pylons and The Telegraph Appreciation Society: A Continuum of Accidental Art

33. Symptoms and Images: Hauntological Begetters, the Uneasy Landscape and Gothic Bucolia

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34. The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water: Public Information Films and Lost Municipal Paternalisms

35. Magpahi, Paper Dollhouse and The Eccentronic Research Council: Finders Keepers/Bird Records Nestings and Considerations of Modern Day Magic

36. Vashti Bunyan: From Here to Before: Whispering Fairy Stories until They are Real

37. The Owl Service, Anne Briggs, The Watersons, Lutine and Audrey Copard: Folk Revisiters, Revivalists and Reinterpreters

38. The Seasons, Jonny Trunk, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Howlround: A Yearning for Library Music, Experiments in Educational Music and Tape Loop Tributes

39. An Old Soul Returns: The Worlds and Interweavings of Kate Bush

40. The Stone Tape, Quatermass, The Road and The Twilight Language of Nigel Kneale: Unearthing Tales from Buried Ancient Pasts

41 Folklore Tapes and the Wyrd Britannia Festival: Journeying to Hidden Corners of the Land/the Ferrous Reels and Explorations of an Arcane Research Project

42. Skeletons: Pastoral Preternatural Fiction and a World, Time and Place of its Own Imagining

43. Field Trip-England: Jean Ritchie, George Pickow and Recordings from the End of an Era

44. Noah’s Castle: A Slightly Overlooked Artifact and Teatime Dystopias

45. Jane Weaver Septième Soeur and The Fallen by Watch Bird: Non-Populist Pop and Cosmic Aquatic Folklore

46. Detectorists, Bagpuss, The Wombles and The Good Life: Views from a Gentler Landscape

47. Weirdlore, Folk Police Recordings, Sproatly Smith and Seasons They Change: Notes From the Folk Underground, Legendary Lost Focal Points and Privately Pressed Folk

48. The Moon and The Sledgehammer and Sleep Furiously: Visions of Parallel and Fading Lives

49. From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, Wintersongs, Pilgrim Chants & Pastoral Trails: Lullabies for the Land and Gently Darkened Undercurrents

50. Strawberry Fields and Wreckers: The Countryside and Coastal Hinterland as Emotional Edgeland

51. Zardoz, Phase IV and Beyond the Black Rainbow: Seeking the Future in Secret Rooms from the Past and Psychedelic Cinematic Corners

52. Winstanley, A Field in England and The English Civil War Part II: Reflections on Turning Points and Moments When Anything Could Happen

 

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Tales from the Black Meadow, The Book of the Lost and The Equestrian Vortex – The Imagined Spaces of Imaginary Soundtracks: Chapter 9 Book Images

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“Over the years, the notion of soundtracks for imaginary films, or even visual work which creates imagery from imaginary films has often appealed. An example of such is the album Tales from the Black Meadow (2013).

This is part of a multi-faceted project which has taken the form of, amongst other things, books, album and video work, taking as its core story the imagined story of Professor R. Mullins who went missing in 1972 in an area known as the Black Meadow atop the North Yorkshire Moors.

The accompanying story tells of how he left behind an extensive body of work regarding his investigations of the folklore and oral history of the Black Meadow, in particular with regard to the phenomena of a local disappearing village…

Even though it is widely known that it is a created history, revisiting the project leaves some lingering doubt.

It plays with a hauntological sense of misremembered and faded cultural memories through the documentary backstory and the use of created archival material.”

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“A further example of such imagined soundtracks is The Book of the Lost (2014): a collaboration between Emily Jones and The Rowan Amber Mill. As a project it draws from the folk horror likes of The Wicker Man (1973), Witch Finder General (1968), Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Psychomania (1973) and creates a world and backstory for the resulting music.

Instead of an imagined documentary as is the case with Tales from the Black Meadow, The Book of the Lost creates the soundtrack to episodes from an imagined period television series, which are called to life via the project and accompanied by details of their casts, synopsis, crew, production companies etc…

The setting is reminiscent of early 1970s British portmanteau horror: the type that often featured Joan Collins. In particular, Tales from the Crypt (1972) or Tales That Witness Madness (1973), films which have a certain period charm, entertainment value and cultural interest but which also reflected a time when British cinema was tumbling and hurtling towards its own demise via its focus on cheap exploitation fare, sex comedies or schlock and horror.”

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“Along loosely similar lines is The Equestrian Vortex: a film-within-a-film that appears in Peter Strickland’s cinematically released 2012 film Berberian Sound Studio; this is set in and around 1970s Italian giallo film culture, creating the phantasmagorical closed world of a recording studio which is being used to produce the sound effects for that film.

As with The Book of the Lost, it draws from many of the classic tropes of folk horror and lists credits for an imagined cast, director, soundtrack and so forth.

Created by Julian House of Ghost Box Records/Intro design agency and soundtracked by Broadcast, The Equestrian Vortex appears purely as an introductory sequence created using found imagery and via sound effects in Berberian Sound Studio but without ever showing the actual film. It offers a brief window into the complete film; when watching it, there is a wish to see the full-length version, to seek out something that logically does not exist.

This is a reflection of the strength of such work as the above-imagined soundtracks and films; they present only glimpses and fragments of the imagined worlds, tales and histories that they are said to come from, drawing on shared and sometimes faded cultural memories, leaving the viewer/listener space to weave, create and imagine the fully finished programmes and films.”

Online images to accompany Chapter 9 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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The Creeping Garden – an exploration of a science / science fiction fantasia – Part 1: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 9/52

The Creeping Garden-film-documentary-1

The 2014 documentary The Creeping Garden, directed by Tim Grabham and Jasper Sharp, is an intriguing and curious film.

It takes as its subject slime moulds which are found in nature, organisms which were once classified as fungi but  actually seem to exist in some kind of hinterland between plant and animal and can exhibit a form of intelligence and problem solving. They may live freely as single cells, particularly when food is abundant but when it is in short supply then can congregate together and start moving and operating as effectively a single body in order to achieve their goals and to gain sustenance.

The Creeping Garden-2014 film documentary-8b

Although there are many different types of slime moulds, often in some ways to the naked eye they resemble fungi, although they differ when viewed under a microscope but because of the way they behave they actually seem to exist as some indefinable living organism; text which accompanies the film states they are “Not animal, not vegetable, not fungi – slime mould”.

Phase IV-Saul Bellow-A Year In The Country

Although a documentary, the presentation of the film seems nearer in a way to science fiction, with it’s cinematography, electronic music soundtrack, retro-futuristic typeface and the nature of the slime moulds bringing to mind older science fiction films that featured organic based invaders which possessed a degree of intelligence such as Phase IV, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Blob, possibly also the microscopic invader from outer space and scientific investigations of The Andromeda Strain.

The Creeping Garden-2014-1

Along which lines, the DVD/Blu-ray was released by Arrow Films, who often specialise in cult film rather than documentaries but because of the fact meets science-fiction-esque nature of The Creeping Garden, the film seems to fit in amongst their other titles.

While the book which accompanies the film is published by Alchimia Press, which is an offshoot of FAB Press, a publisher which generally produces and sells books that focus on the more transgressive, cult and midnight movie side of cinema and culture.

“Imagine if Stanley Kubrick and Douglas Trumbull were tasked with making a 1970’s educational science fiction film about the pods from Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers and you’re some way to understanding The Creeping Garden.” James Marsh, Twitchfilm

Providing a further connection to this science fiction-esque aspect, there is speculation in the film that slime moulds may have arrived from outer space, which is not out of the realms of possibility as when away from food they lie dormant for extended periods – one germinated in a lab after 60 years of being dormant – meaning that they could travel through space in a manner which reflects the arrival of the extra terrestrial species in both Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Andromeda Strain.

The Creeping Garden-film-documentary-Angela Mele illustration-1

While biological illustrator Angela Mele’s work which accompanies the closing credits have an otherworldly beauty but also a certain subtle unsettling character to them and bring to mind some of the cover illustrations for 1970s science fiction book covers, which at the time often seemed to explore and express some kind of fringe and quite out there atmospheres and themes.

To be continued in Part 2…

The Creeping Garden-film-documentary-Angela Mele illustration-3 copy

Elsewhere:
The Creeping Garden’s website.
The Creeping Garden trailer.
The Creeping Garden book.
The Creeping Garden DVD/Blu-ray.
Spore Angela – Angela Mele’s website.

Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
1) Audio Visual Transmission Guide #20/52a: Microscopic, Archival & Exploratory Nature Films: Minute Bodies, Secrets Of Nature & The Creeping Garden
2) Audio Visual Transmission Guide #9/52a: Beyond The Black Rainbow and Phase IV
3) Week #15/52: Phase IV / a revisiting / the arrival of artifacts lost and found and curious contrasts
4) Day #149/365: Phase IV – lost celluloid flickering (return to), through to Beyond The Black Rainbow and journeys Under The Skin

 

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Broadcast – Recalibration, Constellation and Exploratory Pop: Chapter 8 Book Images

Broadcast-Wire Magazine-Invisible Jukebox-2005-A Year In The Country

Broadcast-Tender Buttons-Warp-Julian House-Intro-A Year In The Country-72.tif

“Broadcast… are an odd, intriguing cuckoo in pop’s nest; they have been described as avant-pop, which is probably heading along the right lines. Their recordings feature a mixture of electronic and acoustic elements, melodic pop and more experimental audio techniques.

While their work as a whole connects with, signposts, layers, explores and takes inspiration from a wide variety of cultural reference points, including psychedelia and Czech New Wave film, although this is more in a reinterpreted rather than recreated manner.

The Children Of The Stones series-intro 2Sky-1975 British television-a year in the countryThe Owl Service TV program-A Year In The Country 3

(James) Cargill also discusses how British children’s television of the late 1960s and 1970s such as Children of the Stones (1976), Sky (1975) and The Owl Service (1969) and their odd, sometimes unsettling, “why were they like that when they were intended to be viewed by children?” atmospheres were also a reference point for the album…

He comments that he only half remembers the programmes, that they are just fragments of memory and that is part of the attraction of them, he does not want to know everything about them and how having watched them on breaking up television receptions or an old faded video recording added something to the aspects which made the memory of them interesting.

(He also) says that in order to watch these shows you need to recalibrate yourself, as these previous era’s broadcasts had a different, slower pace; the modern mind and viewer is not necessarily always geared towards their rhythms.”

Broadcast and the Focus Group investigate witchcults of the radio age-album cover-warp records-Ghost Box recordsbroadcast-mother-is-the-milky-way-a-year-in-the-country-1

“Trish Keenan of Broadcast has been quoted as saying that the avant-garde without the popular can be rubbish, the popular without the avant-garde can be rubbish, which could almost be seen as a manifesto for the group and their work: their exploration and blurring of the boundaries between the two.

(Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age) more overtly steps towards the avant-garde than pop or popular music but if you should want to hear a melding of those two sides then a visit to their Mother is the Milky Way release from 2009 may well be the thing to do…

Mother is the Milky Way could be seen as the summation of a particular set of peaks and aims of Broadcasts work: a collection that gathers both their more pop and avant-garde influences, mixing, matching and balancing both sides of such things in a way that somehow makes its mixture of quite off centre jump cuts, lo-fidelity nuances, a certain dreamy surreality, dissonance, scattering and gathering of pop melodies and the use of reversed and found sounds all seem very accessible.”

Broadcast-Haha Sound-album art cover-Julian House-Warp RecordsValerie And Her Week Of Wonders soundtrack-BMusic-Finders Keepers-Trish Keenan-Broadcast-A Year In The Country

“Czech New Wave film has been referenced and mentioned as a point of inspiration by Broadcast a number of times over the years, in particular the unsettling fairytale-like Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970). On their 2003 album Haha Sound the song “Valerie” was inspired by the film and its soundtrack album which was released in 2006 by Finders Keepers Records featured sleeve notes by Trish Keenan, in which she wrote:

“Not since The Wicker Man has a soundtrack occupied my mind like Valerie and her Week of Wonders. It was like a door had been opened in my subconscious and fragments of memories and dreams rejoiced right there in my living room.”

 Broadcast and The Focus Group-2-I See, So I See So-2

Broadcast and The Focus Group-Witchcults video-Julian House

“The visual elements of Broadcast’s work, including the packaging of their albums, videos and live projections have been an inherent part of their exploratory avant-pop nature.

Generally this aspect has been instigated and/or created by Julian House, at points to varying degrees in collaboration with the band and for Witch Cults they produced the #1: Witch Cults and #2: I See, So I See So videos, which feature two of the more conventional songs on the album.

…(the videos are) layered, occult (in the sense of hidden) collages of the land, bucolia as imagined through a lysergic glass darkly and pop filtered through the avant-garde…

Of the two #1: Witch Cults is the more overtly surreal, with the normal world and its colours very rarely making an appearance and the video containing imagery which seems to invoke a sense of an otherworldly rural summoning.

The video features (presumably) Trish Keenan’s silhouette flickering and strobing in the landscape in ritualistic stances, as the natural world melds and dissolves into an unsettling almost psychedelic set of images before the more conventional melody of the song also dissolves to become a gently unsettling set of tinkling noises accompanied by what may be roaring wind.

The final section of the video promises a return to the ease and calm of an almost natural world and sunset with the reappearance of the lone silhouetted figure in a windswept landscape but it is only the promise as once again the imagery melds and layers to become some kind of ritualistic summoning.”

Broadcast and The Focus Group-2-I See, So I See So-5Broadcast and The Focus Group-2-I See So I See So-1

Broadcast and The Focus Group-2-I See, So I See So-3Broadcast and The Focus Group-2-I See, So I See So-4

The Tomorrow People-4 intro credits stills-1970sThe Owl Service-TV series titles-Alan Garner-A Year In The CountryCamberwick Green-opening sequence

“#2: I See, So I See So is more obviously set in a recognisable real, realist or natural world, but it is still very much a view through the looking glass. Connecting back again to James Cargill’s comments about children’s television broadcasts from earlier eras and their unsettled atmospheres, the video and its layering of geometric shapes, objects and the natural world brings to mind the introduction sequences of the likes of The Tomorrow People (1973-1979) and possibly The Owl Service or maybe some flipside Camberwick Green-esque (1966) animation series and seems to shadow, layer and reflect such things but without being a replication…

Elsewhere in the video a box is filled with objects, shapes and a staring disembodied eye, which also seem to connect back to a previous era’s children’s television, although it is a view of such things through an avant-garde, experimental film co-op filter.”

broadcast-wire-magazine-a-year-in-the-country-4Shindig Magazine-Broadcast-James Cargill-Thomas Patterson-A Year In The CountryBroadcast-Trish Keenan-photograph

United States of America-band 2-A Year In The CountryUnited States of America-band 3-A Year In The CountryUnited-States-of-America-1200-2-band-3-A-Year-In-The-Country

“It is difficult to fully describe or categorise Broadcast’s work on the likes of Witch Cults and Mother is the Milky Way but in (an article in Wire magazine) Joseph Stannard describes it as “occult pop laden with pagan psychedelia”, which along with the earlier mentioned avant-pop description, is again probably heading in the right direction.

Psychedelia and 1960s influences are often mentioned in reference to Broadcast, in particular the influence of the group The United States of America, whose solo eponymous album released in 1968 melded elements of melodic pop music, psychedelia, the avant-garde and art rock in a manner not dissimilar at points to Broadcast…

The music (Broadcast) have released is both contemporary and also seems to belong to some separate time and place all of its own, with psychedelia incorporated in a manner nearer to an explorative portal then rosy-eyed nostalgia:

“I’m not interested in the bubble poster trip, ‘remember Woodstock’ idea of the sixties. What carries over for me is the idea of psychedelia as a door through to another way of thinking about sound and song. Not a world only reachable by hallucinogens but obtainable by questioning what we think is real and right, by challenging the conventions of form and temper.”

Mark Fisher-Ghosts Of My Life-Zero Books-hauntology-A Year In The Countrybroadcast-logo-a-year-in-the-country-2Broadcast-The Wire Magazine-A Year In The Country

“Mark Fisher in his 2014 book Ghost of my Life talks about how it is the culture that surrounds and constellates around music that has been as important as the music itself in conjuring seductively unfamiliar worlds, that during the 20th century these gatherings of culture acted as a probe for such explorations and alternatives to existing ways of living and thinking.

Broadcast are a fine, brightly shining example of such constellations and constellators and to this day continue to act as a guide to such explorations and alternative pathways of culture.”

 

Online images to accompany Chapter 8 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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In The Morning I’ll Be Gone, Orkney Twilight, GB84 and Edge of Darkness – Hinterland Tales Of Myths, Dark Forces and Hidden Histories Part 2: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 8/52

Adrian McKinty-In The Morning-Orkney Twilight-Clare Carson-GB84-David Peace-Edge of Darkness

In Part 1 of this post (which can be read here) I wrote about three novels – Adrian McKinty’s In The Morning I’ll Be Gone, Clare Carson’s Orkney Twilight and David Peace’s GB84 – all of which to varying degrees explore sometimes semi-hidden or semi-forgotten history from around 1983-1985, the time of the Miner’s Strike in Britain, the Cold War and the Troubles in Ireland, with a large portion of their stories taking part in rural and/or remote isolated rural areas.

Edge Of Darkness-1985-BBC A Year In The Country-4

At the end of Part 1 I said that they put me in mind of television drama Edge of Darkness (1985)…

This series was a mixture of crime drama and political thriller that revolved around the efforts of policeman Ronald Craven to unravel the truth behind the murder of his daughter Emma. Craven’s investigations soon lead him into a shadowed ambiguous world of trade union, government, and corporate cover-ups, fringe political activism, collusion and nuclear espionage, setting him against dark forces that threaten the future of life on Earth.

Edge Of Darkness-1985-BBC A Year In The Country-2

The series was a success both critically, winning a number of awards, with it gaining 4 million viewers when it was first broadcast on BBC 2, which traditionally gains fewer viewers than BBC 1 and 8 million viewers when it was rebroadcast on BBC 1 just a month and a half or so later – repeat showings so quickly were rare at the time, with this taking place in this instance because of the buzz and positive response that the show had received.

One of the (many) standout aspects of the series is that it is both very entertaining drama, while also being inherently a form of both investigative and exploratory culture (something which could be also said of GB84 and in a more investigative than exploratory manner also Orkney Twilight and In The Morning I’ll Be Gone).

It also shares further similarities with GB84 in that it could be seen as a form of occult or hidden history northern noir,  with both being set in considerable part in the Northern county of Yorkshire (the Miner’s Strike which GB84 focuses on began there) and to a degree utilise some of the tropes and aesthetics of crime/thriller fiction, albeit in a non-conventional manner.

(David Peace has used the phrase “occult history” to describe GB84, saying that he uses “the word ‘occult’ to mean hidden – but also as a play on the more grotesque aspects of the word”).

As Edge of Darkness was produced and broadcast during or just after those turbulent times it was not so much an exploration of hidden history but rather could be seen as an attempt to explore, reveal or counterbalance hidden events, the hidden state and the actions of those in power whose actions appeared to express that they felt outside the laws, regulations and norms of the nation.

Edge of Darkness-tv drama-1985-still

As with In The Morning I’ll Be Gone, Orkney Twilight and GB84, much of the series is set rurally, at times in subterranean systems and complexes literally hidden beneath the land.

And as in those novels, in this series those areas seem to be at a remove from accepted civilisation and democratic/accountable practices; unobserved or unobservable hinterlands that allow for the unhindered carrying out of the protagonists’ aims and schemes.

Writer Troy Kennedy Martin was influenced by the political climate of the time, which was dominated by the right/neo-liberal leaning Thatcher government, the aura of secrecy surrounding the nuclear industry and by the implications of the Gaia hypothesis of environmentalist James Lovelock – which proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating, complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet.

These elements were combined within a drama that mingled real world concerns with mythic and mystical elements and as with GB84 there is a sense of dark forces at play which if not supernatural may be preternatural and beyond the realms of the day-to-day world.

Edge of Darkness-1985-still

Intriguingly originally these elements were to be expressed in the series’ ending in an overtly fantastical manner, with Ronald Craven turning into a tree, although apparently this was vetoed by the cast and crew.

Although that ending was not filmed, when I rewatched the series, towards the end it still does seem to descend into some kind of madness and maelstrom. Partly that could be seen as a reflection of Detective Craven’s own personal mental fraying and obsession in his quest and the subterfuge, chaos and corruption of the activities he has been investigating but it may also be a slight reflection or glimmer of the more surreal unreality of the original ending and possibly a sense of the disintegration of the “normal” world as those just mentioned dark, preternatural forces take hold.

Adrian McKinty-In The Morning-Orkney Twilight-Clare Carson-GB84-David Peace-Edge of Darkness-2

Elsewhere:
Adrian McKinty/In The Morning I’ll Be Gone
David Peace/GB84
Clare Carson/Orkney Twilight
Edge of Darkness
Edge of Darkness hidden away online

Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
Week #37/52: Edge Of Darkness, stepping into the vortex, reshuffling and sweeping the board…
Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 7/52: In The Morning I’ll Be Gone, Orkney Twilight, GB84 and Edge of Darkness – Hinterland Tales Of Myths, Dark Forces and Hidden Histories – Part 1

 

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1973 – A Time of Schism and a Dybbuk’s Dozen of Fractures: Chapter 7 Book Images

Fractures-Night and Dawn Editions-A Year In The Country

Fractures 21 of 52-Sproatly Smith-A Year In The Country-1200

A Year In The Country has often meandered over to the year 1973 and the culture that was produced around that time, and this has been reflected and explored, both in posts at the main website and a related album release.

When perusing culture later than this particular year it is often the case that something in its spirit or atmosphere represents a move towards a sea change in society and the associated political, social and economic realignment…

In 2016 as part of A Year In The Country, the themed conceptual compilation album Fractures was released, which took as its inspiration 1973 as a particular cultural and historical juncture and explored related themes.

In the album sleeve notes, some notable events and cultural productions were then listed, which are gathered below, together with other appropriate points of interest from 1973 which were originally included in a related post on the A Year In The Country website.

Together they form a dybbuk’s or devil’s dozen (ie. 13) of those junctures and signifiers and provide a glimpse into part of the character of that point in time which was undoubtedly an era of schism.”

Delia Derbyshire in Room 12, along with her full panoply of equipment.

“1) Electronic music innovator and pioneer Delia Derbyshire left The BBC and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop: she deliberated later that around then “the world went out of time with itself ”.

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“2) Electricity blackouts in the UK: these were due to industrial conflicts and the resulting restrictions on power production, with a state of emergency and the three day working week being declared by the then-government in order to attempt to conserve energy supplies.”

 The Wicker Man and Dont Look Now-double bill adverts

“3) The Wicker Man film was released: quite possibly the touchstone for all things interconnected to A Year In The Country, explorations of an otherly Albion and the flipside or undercurrents of folkloric culture.”

The Changes-1975-BBC-A Year In The Country 2

“4) The Changes children’s television series was recorded but remained unreleased: its plot concerns a world that has undergone a form of induced psychosis, resulting in the rejecting and destroying of all modern technology…”

Richard Mabey-The Unofficial Countryside-Little Toller Books-A Year In The Country Richard Mabey-The Unofficial Countryside-The World About Us-documentary-Little Toller Books 2

“5) Richard Mabey’s The Unofficial Countryside book was published: an early and influential study of transitional/liminal edgeland spaces and where the city meets nature.”

 Dark and Lonely Water-2-A Year In The Country

“6) The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water was released: probably the definitive hauntological public information film – all scattered debris, a ghostly black-clad figure and the distinctively chilling voice of Donald Pleasance in a film intended to warn children of the dangers of careless or foolhardy behaviour near water but which had the effect of traumatising considerable swathes of its viewers.”

 Psychomania 1971-screenshot-A Year In The Country

“7) Psychomania film was released: Nicky Henson stars as the leader of a gang of returned from the grave zombie motorcyclers who terrorise the locals in rural and small town 1970s Britain.

This is a curiously British, low key and understated take on biker and other myths that seems far removed from say the often glamorous cinematic presentations of American biker culture…”

 Judy Dyble-Delia Derbyshire-Vashti Bunyan-Shelagh McDonald-lost women of folk-elelectronic music

“8) Sometime Fairport Convention and Trader Horne member Judy Dyble stepped back from making music; her departure from music could well be filed alongside that of Delia Derbyshire’s and for a number of years she would become one of the lost voices of British exploratory folk music from the later 1960s and earlier 1970s, alongside the likes of Vashti Bunyan and Shelagh Macdonald.”

World On A Wire-1973-A Year In The Country

“9) The Michael Fassbinder-directed German television series World on a Wire was released; this was a rather prescient representation of virtual reality and also in the world it created went curiously against the grain of more gritty, murky atmospheres which were often prevalent in films and television of the time.”

 Soylent Green-film poster

“10) The film Soylent Green was released: this was part of a film mini-genre of ecology and resources having gone to heck in a hand-basket which was prevalent in the 1970s.”

 The Final Programme-1973-still-pinball-pop art

The Final Programme-1973-film still

“11) The Final Programme film was released: it is mentioned previously about films released prior to 1973 often seeming as though they still contained elements of 1960s psych/mod sharpness: however, this is something of a cuckoo in the nest…

..the film shows decadence having tipped over into darkness as was often the way with culture from around 1973…

…it also seems to connect more directly with 1960s culture, particularly in terms of its dandified, frilly shirted, counter-cultural anti-hero and pop-art-esque giant-sized pinball table set.”

 Blue Blood-1973-Oliver Reed

“12) Blue Blood film was released: the plot involves a debauched young aristocrat who entrusts the running of his estate to his butler, played by a glowering Oliver Reed, who begins to control and dominate his master and appears to possibly have demonic intent.

The film shares some similar territory to the corrupt, insular decadence of the 1970 film Performance (and maybe a touch of 1963’s The Servant in the way that power balances blur and tip between master and servant).

Who knows if this particular celluloid story would be made today? “Unsettling” and “troubling” are words that come to mind.”

Quatermass-1979-The Conclusion-Nigel Kneale-A Year In The Country 2

“13) The initial deadline for Nigel Kneale to deliver the script for the final Quatermass series: looking back, this series and its depiction of a society which was in a state of collapse seems in part to be a reflection of a continuum of real world societal strife throughout the 1970s.”

 

Online images to accompany Chapter 7 of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book, alongside some text extracts from the chapter:

Details of the 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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In The Morning I’ll Be Gone, Orkney Twilight, GB84 and Edge of Darkness – Hinterland Tales Of Myths, Dark Forces and Hidden Histories – Part 1: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 7/52

Adrian McKinty-In The Morning-Orkney Twilight-Clare Carson-GB84-David Peace-Edge of Darkness

Adrian McKinty’s novel In The Morning I’ll Be Gone (2014) is nominally a crime fiction novel which utilises some of the classic tropes of noir detectives – an awkward, independently minded protagonist who does things his own way, antagonises his superiors/those who belong to the law enforcement infrastructure, a “good” man with a sense of moral standards but who through necessity in getting the job done and taking that moral stance often finds himself walking in shadowed territory and utilising questionable methods.

Set in 1983-1984 in the middle of the Troubles Sergeant Sean Duffy is drummed out of the Royal Ulster Constabulary on trumped up charges

Adrian McKinty-In The Morning I'll Be Gone-cover

(The Troubles or the Northern Ireland conflict was an extended period of conflict during the late 20th century in Ireland/Northern Ireland and to a lesser degree the British mainland, between those such as loyalists who wished Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom and those such as republicans who wished it to join a united Ireland. It had sectarian/ethnic aspects and has been described as “low-level war”. The main participants included republican paramilitaries, loyalist paramilitaries, British state security forces and to a degree British intelligence agencies, political activists and politicians but also in part the wider population, with the conflict including numerous riots, mass protests and acts of civil disobedience).

In the novel Dermot McCann, an ex-schoolmate of Sean Duffy’s and a master republican paramilitary explosives expert, escapes from the Maze prison, which was used to house paramilitary prisoners and becomes a prime target of British Intelligence, who drag Duffy out of his drunken enforced retirement in order to track him down.

The novel is interwoven with a locked room mystery which Duffy attempts to solve in order to obtain information about McCann’s whereabouts and it finally leads to the historical event of the assassination attempt on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Brighton.

It is difficult to concisely sum up the novel and its background in just a few paragraphs, something which highlights what the novel in part portrays; the often multi-layered, interconnected, at times morally ambiguous, colluding and shadowy worlds and actions of those involved on all sides and at the conflicts’ fringes.

In The Morning I'll Be Gone-McKinty-GB84-David Peace-Clare Carson-Orkney Twilight-book covers

It could be considered part of a genre where noir-esque fiction is used as a way of exploring hidden or semi-forgotten/unearthed history, in a similar manner to say David Peace’s GB84 (2004) and Clare Carson’s Orkney Twilight (2015), which are set amongst the turbulence within British politics around approximately 1984 and to varying degrees the 1984-1985 Miner’s Strike.

Although not exclusively set within rural areas, the above three novels often focus on actions that are away from large scale cities and capitals, with there being an at times underlying sense that these are areas which are a step or two away from the norms of civilisation; they are shown as being unobserved frontiers or edgelands where the rule of law is suspended, where conflicts can be settled in a more brutal, basic manner and crimes or what are considered transgressions against the powers that be’s intentions are dealt with and punished in an almost medieval way.

GB84-David Peace-UK book cover variations

GB84 is a fictional portrait of the just mentioned Miner’s Strike. It is not crime fiction in a conventional manner, although it does utilise some of its stylisations and atmosphere, rather David Peace describes it as an “occult history”, saying that he uses “the word ‘occult’ to mean hidden – but also as a play on the more grotesque aspects of the word”.

As a book it is more overtly and stylistically left of centre or even possibly borderline experimental than In The Morning I’ll Be Gone and Orkney Twilight, although it explores similar territory – a time of change and upheaval within British society, turning points when there were conflicts between different belief systems/power structures, battles between the old ways and the new and as mentioned in regards to In The Morning I’ll Be Gone, the at times murky, ambiguous actions, participants and organisations of those involved.

David Peace-GB84-Rivages Noir-French edition

Within GB84 there is a sense of almost mythological or supernatural dark forces being at play, while Orkney Twilight is interwoven with Norse mythology but within that book it is more a background texture or history, an interest of its protagonists – there is talk of dark forces but it is more a reference to the actions of humans rather than the possibly super or preternatural.

Orkney Twlight-Clare Carson-book cover

Orkney Twilight tells of a young woman who becomes drawn into the subterfuges surrounding her father’s work as an undercover policeman who worked within the British political fringe and much of the novel is set amongst the remote, harsh beauty of the Scottish islands of Orkney.

The novel has a literal personal connection to hidden history: it was inspired by Clare Carson’s own childhood – her father was an undercover policeman who infiltrated political organisations on the grounds of public security. She has said that although when she was a child she knew that her father was doing something secret, she did not learn the truth of his work until after his death when he was named in a documentary.

Due to when they were published these three novels take a retrospective view of history; the passing of time and the revealing of some facts since then enabling them to explore, view and review the sometimes hidden actions and events at the time and to reveal or connect the dots between such history and events.

They put me in mind of 1985 television series Edge of Darkness… more of which in part 2 of this post… coming soon, as they say…

Adrian McKinty-In The Morning-Orkney Twilight-Clare Carson-GB84-David Peace-Edge of Darkness-2

Elsewhere:
Adrian McKinty/In The Morning I’ll Be Gone
David Peace/GB84
Clare Carson/Orkney Twilight
Edge of Darkness

Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
Week #37/52: Edge Of Darkness, stepping into the vortex, reshuffling and sweeping the board…