14 th June 2018 – A Year In The Country

Published just recently are the books Folk Horror Revival: Harvest Hymns I – Twisted Roots and Folk Horror Revival: Harvest Hymns II – Sweet Fruits.

The books are collections of articles, interviews, album reviews etc by a number of different authors, with both taking as their focus the undercurrents and flipsides of folk music, alongside more spectral/hauntological music and related cultural pastures.

They are published by Folk Horror Revival which is described as:

“…a gathering place to share and discuss folk horror in film, TV, books, art, music, events and other media. We also explore psychogeography, hauntology, folklore, cultural rituals and costume, earth mysteries, archaic history, hauntings, Southern Gothic, ‘landscapism / visionary naturalism & geography’, backwoods, murder ballads, carnivalia, dark psychedelia, wyrd Forteana and other strange edges.”

In recent years those gathering places have included the main website, well-visited social media groups and a number of events including the Otherworldly: Folk Horror Revival at the British Museum day long event which featured talks, lectures, short films, poetry readings and museum tours.

Harvest Hymns I – Twisted Roots considers the roots of related music and includes chapters on The Wicker Man soundtrack by Jonny Trunk, A Brief History of Acid Folk by Grey Malkin (of The Hare And The Moon and Widow’s Weeds), David Cain and Ronald Duncan’s The Seasons by Bob Fischer, the music of British folk horror films by Adam Scovell (author of the book Folk Horror: Hours Strange and Things Dreadful) and the sounds of The Stone Tape where Jim Peters interviews Andrew Liles. Elsewhere you’ll find chapters by/that focus on Sharron Kraus, Comus, Alison O’Donnell, Maddy Prior, Coil, The Radiophonic Workshop alongside a fair few other wanderings and explorations.

Harvest Hymns II – Sweet Fruits explores the modern day descendants of such work, including an interview with Jim Jupp of Ghost Box records by Jim Peters and Darren Charles, a review of Keith Seatman’s A Rest Before the Walk by Chris Lambert (of Tales from the Black Meadow), an interview with Drew Mulholland by John Pilgrim and also Jim Peters and a chapter on Boards of Canada’s Geogaddi by Daniel Pietersen. Elsewhere you’ll find chapters that focus on Moon Wiring Club, Songs from the Black Meadow, Jon Brooks’ Shapwick, Flying Saucer Attack, The Stone Tapes’ Avebury, The Rowan Amber Mill’s Harvest the Ears and as with the previous book a fair few more flipside of folk/spectral hauntological wanderings.

The book also includes Cuckoos in the Same Nest, which is an alternate version of the Cuckoos in the Same Nest: Hauntological and Otherly Folk Confluences and Intertwinings chapter from the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book.

And if you look closely, you may also see a piece or few of A Year In The Country artwork in the books…

As just mentioned the focus of these two books are the music side of folk/hauntological and interconnected work; they can be seen as a companion piece to the previously published Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies, which focused on similar pastoral flipside and spectral areas but in the realms of film, television and literature.

That volume featured writing by amongst others Robin Hardy, Ronald Hutton, Alan Lee, Philip Pullman, Thomas Ligotti, Kim Newman, Adam Scovell, Grey Malkin, John Coulthart, Gary Lachman and Susan Cooper and includes chapters on Public Information Films, Nigel Kneale, David Rudkin, M. R. James and well, once again many more…

If you should fancy a wander amongst the patterns under the plough you may well find that these three books prove to be rather fine companions and bountiful points of reference and inspiration.

Elsewhere:

Elsewhere at A Year In The Country: