Category: AYITC-Ether Signposts

The June 2017 issue of Fortean times is well worth a visit.

It contains an 8-page cover article called The Haunted Generation by Bob Fischer that essentially acts as a primer for all things hauntological and to a degree where such things meet and intertwine with the flipside and sometimes unsettled aspects of bucolia:

“From children’s TV to public information films, the 1970s were suffused with melancholy and disquiet. Bob Fischer discovers how Penda’s Fen and the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water inspired a generation to creativity, and ponders the future of popular hauntology.”

The article takes as its initial and core theme haunted/spectral television largely from the 1970s (rather than say overtly concentrating on the more lost progressive futures aspects of hauntology) and wanders elsewhere from its starting point as Bob Fischer talks to Jim Jupp of Ghost Box Records, Frances Castle of Clay Pipe Records, Jonny Trunk of Trunk Records and Richard Littler the creator of Scarfolk about their influences, inspirations and where they see such work travelling to next.

Also in the issue and just following The Haunted Generation article is a feature on the imaginary forgotten English village Hookland, where Fiona Maher talks to its imaginer (summoner?) David Southwell, who says this on some of his reasons for Hookland coming to be:

“I wanted to do something that dealt with the ghost soil of Britain – all the folklore, all the high strangeness that grew and bloomed in the gloriously strange TV, film and books I grew up with as a child in the 1970s. I wanted to put the weirdness back. I strongly believe that re-enchantment is resistance and even back in 2012 you could see how the fight for the national narrative was going and how the ghost soil voice needed to be heard more strongly within it.”

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
The Fortean Times
The digital version of the June 2017 issue (which I assume is legitimate as the same website is advertised in the magazine).
The lost county of Hookland

Local Places Of Interest:
Day #65/365: Mr Jim Jupp’s parish circular
Day #162/365: Hauntology, places where society goes to dream, the deletion of spectres and the making of an ungenre
Day #169/365: On your marks… the return and reprise of the corporeality of vibrations in the air… and a bakers dozen of Clay Pipe Music
Week #20/52: Pastoral Noir, if onlys, a seeking of names / the ether giveth and the ether taketh away

 

Although a magazine/periodical rather than a book, I think with its focusing on 1960s and 1970s British folk, underground and acid/psych folk, issue 2 of It’s Psychedelic Baby! magazine could well be added to the small but growing library of Albionic undercurrents that I have mentioned around here before and which includes the books Seasons They Change, Electric Edden, Witches Hats & Painted Chariots, Field Studies and Folk Horror.

This is a description of the magazine from the Psychedelic Baby site:

“Dedicated to British psychedelic folk. New issue of printed version projected from the well-known, leading psych on-line site It’s Psychedelic Baby. After the previous issue covering exclusively the US psychedelic folk scene, this new issue covers the 1960s and 1970s British folk scene, with exclusive interviews of members from acts such as Fresh Maggots, Comus, Mellow Candle, Dr Strangely Strange, Spirogyra, C.O.B., Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Pererin, Courtyard Music Group, Magic Carpet, Sunforest, Oberon, etc.”

The magazine is published by Guerssen Records who specialise in psychedelic, folk and progressive reissues and has cover art by Justin Jackley.

That cover art is effectively a painted collage which at first glance seems to mix and meld British bucolia with a 1960s American psych atmosphere, with the lead image being an interpretation of an image from Trees 1971 album On The Shore…

…but then after a moment or two other things start to register – the disturbing creature from Comus’ First Utterance album lurks in one corner and in the background are standing stones, druids around a Stone Henge like monument and what appears to be a relative of The Wicker Man, while in amongst the flowers stand a mushroom or two that I expect may well have particular properties…

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions And Destinations:
Psychedelic Baby Issue 2

Local Places Of Interest:
Ether Signposts #11/52a: A Small But Dedicated Growing Library Of Albionic Undercurrents & Folk Horror

 

Well, time to wander towards some gently escapist imaginary worlds…

In amongst the various images in Jonny Trunks The Art Of Smallfilms book, there are some that have a particularly natural/bucolic/set in the landscape aspect to them and which have stuck in my mind somewhat…

Which set me of on something of a voyage of discovery…

First off I discovered that in 2016 there was an exhibition I missed called The Clangers, Bagpuss and Co. at the V&A Museum of Childhood … which was a real “Darned it” moment when I discovered it.

On further wandering amongst Smallfilms related landscape set imagery I came across photographs from some Pogles books which were published in the late 1960s which are quite lovely…

…and before long I was stumbling upon home-crafted Ivor The Engines and indeed make-your-own-Ivor-The Engines…

So, in homage to Smallfilms, Oliver Postgate, Peter Firmin, Emily, a saggy old cloth cat, Welsh railways and volcanos powered by a gas meter, I though I would collect a few related images together…

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
Pogles bucolia (and a touch of a quietly unsettled atmosphere here and there)
Various reflections on The Clangers, Bagpuss and Co here, here, here and here
The Art Of Smallfilms at The Creative Review
The Art Of Smallfilms at Eye Magazine
Ivor The Engine projects / Make Your Own Ivor
Darned it, missed Sandra Kerr, co-creator of the Bagpuss soundtrack playing music from the series for but £4.00

Local Places Of Interest:
Day #164/365: A saggy old cloth cat and curious cultural connections…
Wanderings #38/52a: The Moomins And The Seams That Keep Giving…

 

A fair old while ago, back in the first year of A Year In The Country one of the posts included a consideration of various DVD etc editions of The Wicker Man.

In a similar spirit, I thought I would bring together a gathering of some of the various Wicker Man related books that have been published…

…there have now been enough to warrant their own section within a library.

There are other related books and editions out in the world as well as the ones below but that library section could well include:

First off there is The Quest For The Wicker Man: History, Folklore And Pagan Perspectives by Benjamin Franks, Stephen Harper, Jonathan Murray and Lesley Stevenson, which is a more academic take on the film. There is a somewhat rarer book that accompanies this called Constructing The Wickerman, which includes work by some of the same authors and which was published to coincide with the first academic conference on the film in Glasgow in 2003.

Then there is Studying The Wicker Man from 2017, which is a shorter academic book by Andy Murray and Lorraine Rolston…

How Not To Make A Cult Classic – Inside The Wicker Man by Allan Brown, which if memory serves correctly is a good factual and also behind the scenes intrigues view of the film. It was originally published in 2000 (the first book on The Wicker Man?) and reissued in 2010 as a newer revised edition post the US remake.

Ritual by David Pinner, which is seen as a forebear and possible influence on The Wicker Man. Originally published in 1967 as a hardback, in paperback in 1968 by Arrow Books with a more overtly possibly exploitation cover image and text and it was republished in 2011 by Finders Keepers Records. First editions of the 1967 version now fetch upwards of £400 (blimey etc)… and I like the background info at Finders Keepers site on their new edition and before they republished it how Andy Votel was about to pay a fair few pounds for an original copy and then he thought “I’ll just check the local library catalogue”… and there it was. Ah, the good old library system. The Finders Keepers edition also features an interesting introduction by Bob Stanley which in an earlier post at A Year In The Country I said this: “The introduction opens with a sense of how nature can come to almost dwarf you, how our sense of urban/modern security can easily be dismissed by the ways and whiles of nature.” (As an aside, although it was released in conjunction with David Pinner and reproduced from his copy, I like the way the Finders Keepers edition is listed by them as being “Finders Keepers Forgery Number One”.)

For the 40th anniversary of the film in 2013, alongside the various Bluray/DVD and soundtrack reissues, there was also The Wicker Man – The Complete Piano Songbook published by Summer Isle Songs, with arrangements by Christopher Hussey. Alongside the sheet music, it also includes an introduction by film’s Associate Musical Directory Gary Carpenter and various stills from the film.

The Wicker Man novel, which curiously was originally published in 1978, five years after the release of the film (and also slightly curiously was released in the US first). The novel was written by Robin Hardy, the director of The Wicker Man but is credited as being co-authored by Anthony Shaffer, the writer of the film’s screenplay, as it re-uses much of the screenplay’s dialogue. It was republished in 2000, the same year as Allan Brown’s Inside The Wicker Man, with this new edition also  featuring a foreword by him.

Although only available as an eBook, The Wicker Man: Conversations with Robin Hardy, Anthony Shaffer & Edward Woodward, published in 2012 collects 46 pages of interviews by Stephen Applebaum… I’m hoping that at some point it will appear as a physically printed book.

Also of note…

Your Face Here: British Cult Movies Since the Sixties by Ali Caterall and Simon Wells from 2001, which is a fine and very readable collection that focuses on various cult films, with one chapter being specifically about The Wicker Man. I’ve written about this book before at A Year In The Country and said: “…there is a rigour to the research… the text reflects a genuine love for and appreciation of these films… This isn’t something that is written by rote or which just trots out well visited stories in a cut and paste manner. The authors have put the footwork in, visiting locations, interviewing all kinds of associated folk and bringing forth something of a wealth of new information and connections.”

…and finally there is Nuada, which was a journal/zine about The Wicker Man which had three editions published in 1999-2000 (a busy period for such things it seems).

…so, all in all, there have been a fair few Summer Isle related books and bindings (and as mentioned earlier, the above is not a complete list of books and editions)… something of a measure of just how it’s influence and inspiration has grown over the years…

…and somewhat impressive for a film that took $58,341 in US box office receipts on it’s first release.

Adjusting that for inflation, it would today mean it had taken $321,575.85 or using the exchange rates back in 1973, £137,185.79.

So, no small potatoes (or other appropriate harvest crops).

However as a point of reference, the Top 10 US ranking films back then (The Sting, The Exorcist, American Graffiti, Papilion, The Way We Were, Magnum Force, Last Tango In Paris, Live and Let Die, Robin Hood and Paper Moon) took between $156,000,000 and $30,933,473.

Which, again, adjusted for inflation today would be $859,872,702.70 to $170,505,442.52.

Or £366,825,785.39 to £72,738,432.87 in modern day Blighty pounds, shillings and pence.

Blimey.

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
The Quest For The Wicker Man
Studying The Wicker Man
Inside The Wicker Man
Ritual at Finders Keepers
The Wicker Man Song Book
The Wicker Man novel
The Wicker Man: Conversations with Robin Hardy, Anthony Shaffer & Edward Woodward
Your Face Here
Nuada journal

Local Places Of Interest:
Day #237/365: Your Face Here; peering down into the landfill – a now historical perspective on the stories of The Wicker Man
Day #90/365: The Wickerman – the future lost vessels and artifacts of modern folklore
Day #101/365: Gently Johnny, Sproatly Smith, The Woodbine & Ivy band and lilting intentions…
Week #25/52: Fractures Signals #4; A Behemoth Comes Once More A Knocking…
Ether Signposts #24/52a: The Wicker Man / Don’t Look Now Double Bill And Media Disseminations From What Now Seem A Long Long Time Ago
Ether Signposts #25/52a: 138 Layers And Gatherings Of The Wicker Man

 

In terms of accidental folk-art, I think these British Rail leaflets from 1970 should be filed alongside the Cornflakes packet that is featured in the Own Label: Sainsburys Design Studio: 1962 – 1977 book by Jonny Trunk.

(Although strictly speaking I might say to file the British Rail leaflets nearby to the Sainsbury’s Corn Flakes, say under Accidental Folk-Art/Hauntological Precedents.)

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
Jonny Trunk on Own Label
Peruse a few more images from the book
Own Label at Fuel

Local Places Of Interest:
Day #213/365: Artifacts of a curious mini-genre (and misc.)

 

Earlier this year at A Year In The Country I talked about the similarities between the yetis/abominable snowmen from vintage Doctor Who and the folkloric costumes in Charles Fréger’s Wilder Mann book.

At the time I said:

“…many of the costumes in Wilder Mann could well be escapees (prototypes?) for the 1970s British BBC costume and creature effect department.”

And then I came across the photographs of folkloric costume in Estelle Hanania’s Glacial Jubilé book, which seems to take those similarities and… well, it looks the escapees have arrived…

After advancing across the land, as was often the way with those vintage Doctor Who invaders, these creatures are wandering down the high street and through the city centres…

And alongside the photographs of of the folkloric costumes in Estelle Hanania’s Glacial Jubilé, there are intriguing location photographs of caves and strangely shingled and shuttered houses, that make me think of battening down the hatches against the creatures…

For myself there seem to be two quite separate but interlinked strands of folkloric costume and rituals books:

The more documentary like ones that focus on British folklore that can be found in books such as Once A Year by Homer Sykes, Sarah Hannant’s Mummers, Maypoles and Milkmaids, Henry Bourne’s Arcadia Britannica: A Modern British Folklore Portrait, Merry Brownfield’s Merry England and the archival collection of Benjamin Stone’s work, A Record Of England.

Alongside these are the photography books/projects which focus more on European folklore such as the just mentioned Charles Fréger’s Wilder Mann and Yokainoshima – Island Of Monsters, Axel Hoedt’s Once A Year and Dusk and Estelle Hanania’s Glacial Jubilé.

Although I suppose that both sets of books are essentially photographic portraits of folkloric costume but just in different locations, however the exoticness that is leant to the European focused ones by me not being as familiar with their costumes, rituals and aesthetics seems to separate them for me.

Also, the European focused books seem in part to be more a reflection of fine art like take on photography, to be partly an expression of the photographer’s own creative intent and stories as well as being documentary in nature

That seems to be particularly so with Axel Hoedt’s and Estelle Hanania’s work.

Along which lines, at the Shelter Press website, who published Glacial Jubilé, Estelle Hanania’s work is described as being:

“Unlike the anthropologist or pure documentarist, she doesn’t try neither to understand nor to decode the mystery of those rites, letting them pass trough her camera… A procession of giants in a field, a magician in a parking lot, a wild cave… The shadows of a singular identity are standing in a non-exotic setting yet revealing themselves as an hallucination.”

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
Estelle Hanania’s Glacial Jubilé at Shelter Press
Estelle Hanania’s website

Local Places Of Interest:
Day #19/365: Once a Year – Homer Sykes
Day #66/365: Sarah Hannants wander through the English ritual year
Day #69/365: Charles Frégers Wilder Mann and rituals away from the shores of albion
Day #272/365: Axel Hoedt’s folkloric club kid rogues gallery and symbolic expulsions…
Wanderings #2/52a: Merry Brownfield’s Merry England / The Eccentricity Of English Attire
Ether Signposts #5/52a: Homer Sykes Once A Year And A Lineage Of Folk Custom Wanderings
Ether Signposts #32/52a: Charles Frégers Yokainoshima – Island Of Monsters
Ether Signposts #43/52a: Axel Hoedt’s Dusk And Final Celebrations

 

In the first year of A Year In The Country I posted about Axel Hoedt’s Once A Year book, which featured folkloric costumes from the Fasnacht carnival in southwestern Germany.

Back then I said of his photographs:

“There’s a sense of being in amongst the denizens of a land far from the twee fields of folklore with this particular slice of carnivalesque dressing up… The creatures his photographs capture… seem like the darker urban cousins of Charles Frégers Wilder Mann, which in themselves are not all cuddly and light… but Axel Hoedt’s once a year capturees are voyagers from further flung outlands and less well-lit crevices of imagination.”

In his next book Dusk he seems to wander amongst further more shadowed corners of folkloric rituals, again from southwestern Germany but also venturing to Austria and Switzerland.

The images in Dusk seem to blend documentary portraits of those in folkloric costume, fine art and contemporary fashion explorations and related imagery.

They conjure a particularly unsettling atmosphere, not one of carnivalesque revelries but rather one which seems to possibly unearth the far reaching, less civilised tales and times from which these carnivals and folkloric rituals may have once sprung.

Along which lines, the information on the book at his publishers Steidl Books states the following:

“Hoedt reminds us of what carnival once used to be: a final celebration before the dawning of hard times.”

Brrr.

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
Dusk at Steidl Books

Local Places Of Interest:
Day #272/365: Axel Hoedt’s folkloric club kid rogues gallery and symbolic expulsions…
Day #69/365: Charles Frégers Wilder Mann and rituals away from the shores of albion
Ether Signposts #32/52a: Charles Frégers Yokainoshima – Island Of Monsters

 

I recently(ish) came across Matthew Lyons illustrations…

They put me in mind of if Boards Of Canada existed in a mid-century modern populuxe parallel world, of intriguing widescreen science fiction epics from a future past that never was and seem to seamlessly blend a sense of being contemporary and retro futurism.

While the above image makes me think of a still from a parallel world mid-century modern version of the film Phase IV.

Lovely stuff…

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
Matthew Lyons website

Local Places Of Interest:
Day #209/365: Signal and signposts from and via Mr Julian House (#2); the worlds created by an otherly geometry
Wanderings #13/52a: Boards Of Canada – Tomorrows Harvest; Stuck At The Starting Post / Tumbled From A Future Phase IV?

 

A while ago I came across the collection of Benjamin Stone’s work at Birmingham Library, where apparently they have over 17,000 photographs by him:

“Sir Benjamin Stone travelled around the country in search of unusual festivals and customs. This gallery includes May Day festivals, the Sherborne Pageant, Corby Pole Fair and the Northumberland Baal Fires.”

I think I came across the collection following explorations around his photograph of a Kern Baby which is:

“…from a festival called ‘The Harvest Home’ in Northumberland in 1901. This festival was all about celebrating that fact that the farmers had harvested the corn and this would mean that the community had enough to eat for another year. The last corn that was gathered would be made into a human shape, dressed in fine clothes and crowned with flowers and called the ‘Kern Baby’ or ‘Harvest Queen.’ There would be feasting and music to celebrate the harvest.”

I had written about the photograph in the first year of A Year In The Country and previous to reading the above I think the photograph existed in my head largely unnamed and unexplained, an example of intriguing folkloric costume from the flipside and undercurrents of folklore.

One of the things I like about the Birmingham Library’s collection is that the photographs are reproduced with their border of Benjamin Stone’s handwritten notes and dates, it adds a certain something and seems to root them in a particular time and place…

To see more than a brief snapshot of the Benjamin Stone archive’s you’ll need to personally visit Birmingham Library but there are a selection of images available online.

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
The Kern Baby at Birmingham Library
Benjamin Stone archive of customs and festivals at Birmingham Library

Local Places Of Interest:
Day #131/365: John Benjamin Stone; records of folkloric rituals, traditions and light catching from other eras…
Ether Signposts #5/52a: Homer Sykes Once A Year And A Lineage Of Folk Custom Wanderings

 

At A Year In The Country there has been a recent series of posts about various dioramas and collectors figures of electronic music innovators.

In one of the recent posts about those electronic innovator dioramas etc, I mentioned how there is a curious confluence, connection and intertwining between the flipside of or otherly pastoralism and a romantic nostalgia for electronic music techniques and areas of innovation from previous eras such as the work of The Radiophonic Workshop.

In amongst that intertwining you could well include a romantic nostalgia for brutalist architecture.

Part of what all such things seem to represent, whether the electronic music innovations of The Radiophonic Workshop, otherly pastoralism or brutalist architecture, is a sense of them containing some form of loss, of lost progressive futures or arcadic rural dreams and ways of life, of being spectrally imprinted with such loss and a layering of related tales.

So I thought to that growing family of homages to electronic music innovators I would add in Zupagrafika’s Brutal London – Construct Your Own Concrete Capital and Build Your Own Brutalist Eastern Bloc.

Cut out and keep etc…

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
Zupagrafika’s Brutalist explorations and homages

Local Places Of Interest:
(We would recommend sturdy walking shoes and bringing a substantial, nutritious packed lunch, as this is something of an intensive tour.)
Week #39/52: An elegy to elegies for the IBM 1401 / notes on a curious intertwining
Ether Signposts #4/52a: Brutal London – Construct Your Own Concrete Capital
Ether Signposts #8/52a: Build Your Own Brutalist Eastern Bloc
Ether Signposts #2/52a: Delia Derbyshire Handmade Diorama
Ether Signposts #36/52a: Bob Moog Press Pop Figures And Synthesizer Discoveries
Ether Signposts #37/52a: The Raymond Scott Figure, Something Of A Growing Family Of Electronic Music Innovators And A Dream Center Where The Excitement Of Tomorrow Is Made Available Today
Ether Signposts #38/52a: Raymond Scott Diorama And Further Additions To The Electronic Innovators Family
Ether Signposts #39/52a: Daphne Oram Diorama, A Further Addition To A Family Of Electronic Innovators And Pastoral Confluences

 

As part of an ongoing series… a further example of 3D homages to iconic figures and innovators within electronic music…

HeyKidsRocknRoll’s diorama of electronic music pioneer and one time Radiophonic Workshop member Daphne Oram, which is a fine addition to a growing family of such things.

Writing about this growing collection  has made me consider again how such things interconnect with the more pastoral flipside of A Year In The Country. To quote myself (and somebody else) when talking about a romantic nostalgia for certain elements of older technology and innovations in relation to music:

“Curiously, somehow or other the use, appreciation and romance of such older technologies segues and intertwines with the more bucolic surrounds, wanderings and landscapes of A Year In The Country,  a part of the cultural landscape “…planted permanently somewhere between the history of the first transistor, the paranormal, and nature-driven worlds of the folkloric…” (to quote Kristen Gallerneaux)”.

Or to quote from the A Year In The Country About page:

“A Year In The Country is a set of year long explorations of an otherly pastoralism, the undercurrents and flipside of bucolic dreams, the further reaches of folk music and culture, work that takes inspiration from the hidden and underlying tales of the land and where such things meet and intertwine with the lost futures, spectral histories and parallel worlds of what has come to be known as hauntology.”

Here’s the family of electronic music innovators so far…

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
Extensive Daphne Oram information
The HeyKidsRocknRoll Daphne Oram Diorama

Local Places Of Interest:
Week #39/52: An elegy to elegies for the IBM 1401 / notes on a curious intertwining
Ether Signposts #2/52a: Delia Derbyshire Handmade Diorama
Ether Signposts #36/52a: Bob Moog Press Pop Figures And Synthesizer Discoveries
Ether Signposts #37/52a: The Raymond Scott Figure, Something Of A Growing Family Of Electronic Music Innovators And A Dream Center Where The Excitement Of Tomorrow Is Made Available Today
Ether Signposts #38/52a: Raymond Scott Diorama And Further Additions To The Electronic Innovators Family

 

As part of an ongoing series… a further example of 3D homages to iconic figures and innovators within electronic music…

And in an ongoing, well, who wouldn’t want one of these manner…?

HeyKidsRocknRoll’s diorama of musician, inventor, composer and electronic pioneer Raymond Scott.

I particularly like just the standalone Clavivox (as invented by Raymond Scott)…

So, the family of such things so far…

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
Extensive Raymond Scott information
The HeyKidsRocknRoll Raymond Scott Diorama

Local Places Of Interest:
Ether Signposts #2/52a: Delia Derbyshire Handmade Diorama
Ether Signposts #36/52a: Bob Moog Press Pop Figures And Synthesizer Discoveries
Ether Signposts #37/52a: The Raymond Scott Figure, Something Of A Growing Family Of Electronic Music Innovators And A Dream Center Where The Excitement Of Tomorrow Is Made Available Today

 

Well, in a further example of 3D homages to iconic figures and innovators within electronic music…

Press Pop’s figure of Raymond Scott.

This could well be filed alongside Press Pop’s figure of Bob Moog and HeyKidsRocknRoll’s Delia Derbyshire diorama.

Raymond Scott was something of an electronic music innovator, with him producing a three volume set of ambient electronic albums in 1964 called and intended as Soothing Sounds for Baby, creating a keyboard theremin called the Electronium that is considered to be the first self-composing synthesiser and an electromechanical device which he also considered to be the first polyphonic sequencer.

(As an aside he also composed music that would be adapted for Looney Tunes cartoons.)

The modern world may well sound somewhat different without this gent as he brought electronically produced sounds into homes and elsewhere in America via his patented electronic telephone ringers, alarms, chimes and sirens, alongside vending machines and ashtrays which featured accompanying electronic music scores.

He created much of such things via his Manhattan Research project/company, which in a way that I rather like he described as:

“More than a think factory – a dream center where the excitement of tomorrow is made available today.”

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
Extensive Raymond Scott information
The Press Pop Raymond Scott Figure
Loving To Skate With Raymond Scott and Jenny Jen (which rather made me smile and chuckle)

Local Places Of Interest:
Ether Signposts #2/52a: Delia Derbyshire Handmade Diorama
Ether Signposts #36/52a: Bob Moog Press Pop Figures And Synthesizer Discoveries

 

Well, I guess these figures of Bob Moog by Press Pop could be filed alongside HeyKidsRocknRoll’s Delia Derbyshire diorama in terms of three dimensional homages to iconic and innovative people within the realms of electronic music.

Sadly they are sold out but a trawl online may still find one (probably at a somewhat inflated price I expect).

For further Bog Moog related explorations I would recommend the issue of Electronic Sound magazine which featured him on the cover (the print issue is also sold out but it’s still available as a PDF) and also Hans Fjellestad’s Moog documentary, where Bob Moog intriguingly discusses how he felt as much that he was discovering something as much as inventing something when he created the synthesizers.

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
The Bog Moog Figurine at Press Pop
The Moog documentary and trailer
The Moog documentary at Moog’s site
Bob Moog at Electronic Sound

Local Places Of Interest: Ether Signposts #2/52a: Delia Derbyshire Handmade Diorama

 

Laura Thompson’s Senseless series of photographs seem to create an intriguing wordless narrative and to offer a glimpse into real world science fiction parable…

They feature modern day handmade yeti like creatures/outfits, which recall folkloric costumes but are made from disposable manmade objects.

The project in part is a reflection on how modern technology and ways of living can cause a literal deadening of the senses, as we tend not to develop particular senses due to nolonger needing them, taking as one of its starting points this quote by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss:

“There was a particular tribe which was able to see Venus in full daylight, something which to me would be utterly impossible and incredible… Later on I looked into old treatises on navigation belonging to our own civilisation and it seems that sailors of old were perfectly able to see the planet in full daylight. Probably we could still do so if we had a trained eye.”

There is a quiet, subtle sense of melancholia, loss or being lost to the photographs, a sense of the creatures searching for something, some kind of sense of home, meaning or connection in the world (or should that be on planet Earth?).

They put me in mind of both some odd contemporary art house science fiction film (possibly filtered through a parallel world take on Doctor Who creatures from back when or creatures created for an alternate take on Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin) and also Charles Fréger’s photographs of folkloric costume and the way they show man being transformed into creatures.

Along which lines, Laura Thompson says this of her project:

“I began to look into various mythologies from around the world and the costumes associated with them and observed most involved the covering of the face and many times the entire body to transform the person into a mythical being. At the same time I was looking at urban legends and hoaxes such as Bigfoot and people’s obsessive fascination of these elusive beasts. What interested me most was that many seemed to be based on existing mythologies and the fact that many of these creatures, seemed to be trapped between two worlds. Bigfoot being the prime example is not quite human or animal so wanders on the fringe of both, not really belonging to either…

“…From these findings I began to create modern day mythological narratives in which I explore themes associated with the dislocation of our senses. It is centred on constructed “yeti-like” creatures made up of either disposable manmade plastic forks, earplugs, vinyl gloves, car air fresheners or compact mirrors, each representing one of the senses…

“These creatures have been consumed by these modern, materialistic items and as such can no longer sense anything at all. Neither human nor animal, they wander between worlds fitting in nowhere, yearning to be part of a world they no longer belong to, and becoming a creature of myth.”

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations: Senseless at Laura Thompson’s website

Local Places Of Interest:
Day #69/365: Charles Frégers Wilder Mann and rituals away from the shores of albion
Wanderings #18/52a: Further Not-Quite-So-Mainstream Pastoralism And 1970s British Science Fiction Costume And Effects Prototyping…

 

Although often at A Year In The Country I tend to wander through the underlying, sometimes unsettled flipside of bucolic and pastoral culture, I also like to take in the landscape as a place of beauty and escape, of rural pastures as places of calm and reflection.

Lucy Reid’s textile art is a fine example of the more restful and reflective side of such things.

Ruins, country pathways under arches of trees, snow filled landscapes and harvests in the field are all captured via textiles and stitching, in a way that makes me think of a folk art take on 8-bit pixel representations – a relatively few stitches convey and capture a sense of spirit and place.

Lovely work indeed.

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations: Lucy Reid’s website.

 

There is a strand of gently left-of-centre pastoral culture that has even less of a well defined name or genre than what is sometimes known as say wyrd folk culture…

I would include the likes of Toller Books and Caught By The River in amongst such things; work and projects which can at times carry with them an almost gentle, off the more well beaten paths pastoralism and bucolic explorations that avoids the sometimes more twee aspects of rurally based culture.

One of my favourite finds via Little Toller and Caught By The River, which seems to fit perfectly amongst their own particular furrows and quietly hazy banks, is the book Visible mending – Everyday repairs in the South West by Steven Bond, Caitlin DeSilvey and James R. Ryan.

The book is described as follows:

“In September 2010 a team of three researchers—two cultural geographers and a photographer—set out to find and visit workplaces in the South West where people repair broken things. Notebooks and cameras were the project tools, and these tools produced an extensive archive of texts and images, a selection of which are printed in this book, the culmination of eighteen months of fieldwork.”

The resulting work almost seems to be a form of time travel without leaving the present day, a study of an reflection on craft and expertise that seems far removed from contemporary practises and ways and there is a calmness to the photographs in the book, something that feels nourishing to the mind and soul.

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
Visible Mending at Uniform Books
Visible Mending at Little Toller
Visible Mending at Caught By The River