Category: AYITC-Year 3 Wanderings / Ether Signposts

Now, in my head 1970s/early 1980s British television is awash with faceless creatures and automatons, come to carry out their wickedness and fill dreams full of night terrors.

But funnily enough when I recently(ish) looked up such things, there weren’t all that many I could find.

Actually it came down to a creature/character in Sapphire & Steel and the “still terrifying all these years later” shop dummies come to life in Doctor Who (which strictly speaking aren’t faceless but in my head they are).

I suppose that as an effect it was cheap and relatively easy to do but there is still something particularly unnerving about such featureless faces.

They crop up from time-to-time around these parts and I though I would gather a few of them together.

So, we have the aforementioned bowler hat wearing character from Sapphire & Steel…

And something of a classic and possibly one of my all time favourite book covers: the paperback cover to the virtual reality prescient pastoral-esque science fiction of Christopher Priest’s A Dream Of Wessex…

The faceless corn husk folk art-like figures from around these parts…

Which set me a-wandering…

There seem to have been a fair few books along such lines published, often from back when. And maybe it’s just me or a layering/other connections that have happened and gathered over time  but they can seem to have an air of quiet unsettledness or not-quite-so-mainstream pastoralness to them…

 

(File under: Trails and Influences / Year 3 Wanderings)

Intertwined wanderings around these parts:
Day #26/365. Christopher Priest – A Dream of Wessex and dreams of the twentieth century

Day #87/365: Faded foundlings and Tender Vessels…

Day #284/365: Sapphire and Steel; a haunting by the haunting and a denial of tales of stopping the waves of history…

Elsewhere in the ether:
Contemporary not-quite-so mainstream pastoralness: Tender Vessels #1. Tender Vessels #2.

 

Although I still tend to have a look-see at Kate Bush’s ongoing work, I think for me my main interest is caught in the amber of her first five albums and the surround visual work/imagery.

From The Kick Inside to The Hounds Of Love, they seem to stand unparalleled and on their own and even after all these years I often find myself thinking when I listen to them “Blimey…” (or should that be “wow”) “…this is impressive stuff.”

As I’ve said around these parts before, she seemed to tap into something ancient, some form of underlying archetypes of the British soul, tales, history and land… and it’s hard to quite get your head around those albums having been created by somebody who was relatively so young, they seem like the world of a… well, not much older but maybe timeless soul.

It’s curious as well when you look back at the early more traditional pop style promotion of those albums and their singles: when she was say performing in the prosaic surrounds of a lunch time light entertainment program in the later 1970s she was part of it all but also a space unto herself.

And talking of prosaic settings…

When she recently(ish) appeared on the cover of Mojo magazine, the interview and article was carried out by Jim Irvin, who apparently had also done her first ever radio interview back in 1978.

That interview was for the United Biscuits Network – basically radio broadcasting for the workers in, well, biscuit factories.

The very idea of which seems to conjure up a very far away, distant history.

 

(File under: Trails and Influences / Year 3 Wanderings)

Intertwined wanderings around these parts:

Day #71/365: Kate Bush, Under The Ivy and secret gardens…

Trails of bread (biscuit?) crumbs: Day #108/365: Let me grab your soul away – Kate Bush and darkly cinematic flickerings through the meadows, moors and mazes…

Week #3/52: I Still Dream Of Orgonon; A Book Of Dreams, the rarity of argent chains and moments of discovery…

Considerations of ancient souls: Week #36/52: Gone To Earth – “What A Queen Of Fools You Be”, Something Of A Return Wandering And A Landscape Set Free

Elsewhere in the ether:
Biscuits and airwaves.

 

I’m quite taken by some of the photographs in Ian Harrison’s Britain From Above book, which accompanied the BBC television series of the same name.

These views of natural and often intertwined created shapes, of the marks upon the land, can be particularly entrancing, to have a beauty all of their own.

At the same time, although it is a very mainstream project / publication (and nothing wrong with that), in parts some of the photographs seem to have a certain resonance that captures / hints at hidden histories and the layered stories of the land and the lives that are lived there.

Or to quote myself “…the pattern beneath the plough, the pylons and amongst the edgelands”.

So, here can be found a few that I was particularly drawn to…

(File under: Trails and Influences / Year 3 Wanderings)

Elsewhere In The The Ether:
Peruse the book here.

 

Well, there I was in a bricks and mortar book shop in the middle of nowhere (well, not strictly the middle of nowhere but definitely on its own in the middle of the countryside, a good ten or so miles I’d say from the nearest conurbation of notable size or any nearby dwellings at all)…

…anyways, I was having a good old browse of said bookshop, which is essentially what is sometimes called a bargain book shop (new books but everything is for sale at a reduced cover price)…

And I’m rather pleasantly surprised and impressed as the shelves aren’t filled with just the pile ’em high, ship ’em cheap mainstream titles that is sometimes the case, there’s a sense of selection and curation to this particular selection…

…and then, all of a sudden I came across Ghost Box Records.

Well, not strictly speaking the label/project itself but rather a book by Adrian Shaugnessy called Cover Art By: (subtitled New Music Graphics).

And there on the cover, is a prime slice of Ghost Box / Julian House design.

Needless to say, this was in my “shopping basket” as I headed towards the till (read as overfilled arms / staggering with quite a pile of books while I tried to decide which to get).

Anyways, the book is a collection/exploration of the creative/explorative side of music cover art and related record labels, accompanied by interviews with those involved.

(In this sense, it seems like a companion book to sampler2 – art, pop and contemporary graphics, also by Adrian Shaughnessy that I have considered around these parts back when.)

Inside can be found an interview with Misters House and Jupp of Ghost Box Records, which provides a good snapshot of a point in time which from reading I think was when they were beginning to move from their early hand finished/CDr days into becoming more of a conventional released label.

This section made me smile:

Jim Jupp: “We used to studiously deny the nostalgia element of Ghost Box. But lately we’ve been saying, f* it, what’s so bad about nostalgia? So long as it’s done with a bit of style…”

The book itself was published in 2008 by Laurence King Publishing (and is a good snapshot of a particular point in musical and cultural time and accompanying packaging and sleeve design. It’s currently out of print but can be perused here.

 

(File under: Trails and Influences / Year 3 Wanderings)

Intertwined wanderings around these parts:

Day #59/365: Signals and signposts from and via Mr Julian House

Day #64/365: Belbury Poly’s Geography Of Peace

Day #178/365: The cuckoo in the nest: sitting down with a cup of cha, a slice of toast, Broadcast, Emerald Web, Ghost Box Records and other fellow Shindig travellers…

Day #205/365: The interfaces between the old ways/cathode rays; twelve spinnings from an (Electric Edenic) Invisible Ghost (Juke)Box

Day #251/365: Broadcast; constellators and artifacts

Elsewhere in the ether:
Cover Art By:. The aforementioned spectral containment systems home in the ether.

 

I was quite nervous about watching Peter Strickland’s Katalina Varga film – I’ve been rather impressed by The Duke Of Burgundy and Berberian Sound Studio, the worlds they create and the surrounding culture/music/design that accompanied them.

I was nervous in case I didn’t like it or it was a let down…

So, Katalina Varga…

The film involves a Vashti Bunyan-esque horse and cart journey/mission through the land (although with a rather darker intent than to join a musician lead communal way of life) and could almost be a period film – in part it seems to be set in a generally pastoral world that may not have changed all that much since medieval times.

In fact it is physically jarring when you see a more built up area and modern buildings, when I heard a mobile phone ring tone I would find myself thinking “What’s that doing there?”, while a yellow plastic plate that appears at one point seems almost offensive in this setting.

The modern world often seems to only appear in relatively small details – the contemporary rubber car tyres on the cart, hay making carried out by hand while in the background will be a building with a satellite dish.

Although it is more stylistically experimental, I think Josephine Decker’s Butter On The Latch might well be an appropriate reference point for Katalina Varga – pastorally set work that wanders off the beaten paths of conventional cinema or indeed a slasher in the woods / the land without the slashing (thankfully).

Thinking back to Katalina Varga, it conjures its own world just as completely as Peter Strickland’s other films, though in a different manner; this is a film that appears to more have been shot in the “real” world rather than the honey toned fantasy land of The Duke Of Burgundy or the cloistered, contained interiors of Berberian Sound Studio and it doesn’t have the more polished sheen that those films and their worlds have.

It may in part be a side effect of that lack of sheen but it seemed as though it could be some semi-lost European almost accidentally transgressive film from an unspecified point in time, possibly the 1970s; something that would have appeared at London’s Scala cinema around the early 1980s to the early 1990s, which was something of a home for such things.

In fact, when I watch Peter Strickland’s films, they make me think of those kind of arthouse, sometimes transgressive films that have gone on to find a cult following (think much of what would have appeared in the pages of Films And Filming magazine) but which rather than being sometimes culturally interesting / intriguing, possibly with a great poster but not all that easy to sit through, his films are an evolution of that area of cinema but which also work as entrancing entertainment (albeit that can also be more than a little unsettling).

(File under: Trails and Influences / Year 3 Wanderings)

Intertwined wanderings around these parts:
Day #153/365: Stepping through into… Berberian Sound Studio

Week #1/52: The Duke Of Burgundy and Mesmerisation…

Week #41/52: The Dark Pastoral Of Butter On The Latch

Elsewhere In The The Ether:
An introductory flickering for Katalina Varga. Encasments and envoying.

 

Now, I’m rather fond of Sapphire & Steel: I think it stands up well in being both thoroughly entertaining and also having various otherly, spectral, hauntological resonances and points of interest.

Often when I’m quite taken by a film or television I’ll find myself browsing related memorabilia, posters, lobby cards etc…

Which I have done with Sapphire & Steel, although there isn’t all that much available, possibly in part because it was made in a time before the thorough saturation of such things for the likes of cult, science fiction and fantasy television.

I actually think with Sapphire & Steel it exists perfectly well on its own without endless merchandise but longstanding habits can reappear as if by magic and a reasonable number of related things seemed to have “accidentally” arrived through my letterbox…

Here are a few of those and also a few I’ve resisted so far…

The Sapphire & Steel annual and novel tie-in…

The artwork in the annual is not dissimilar to that in the Look-Ins of the time, which was a television orientated weekly comic/magazine for younger folk which featured stories based on broadcast series and characters (Sapphire & Steel being one of those featured).

It is quite odd; there’s a sort of deliberate almost brutish / primitive / slightly off-kilter feel to it that puts me in mind of illustrations in the Doctor Who annuals from a similar time.

…and then on to later cult fan publications from 1989 and 2005…

I’m rather fond of this publicity still from the final (and very final) episode. It puts me in mind of an earlier era in the way it reflects 1960s kitchen sink post-war austerity and lack of showiness, filtered gently through a later period’s lens.

There have been a fair few British and elsewhere DVD releases of Sapphire & Steel… and (note to self), no it is not necessary to own them all just to peruse the packaging and the sometimes minute differences in how the episodes are presented.

And now… well, the grail of all things Sapphire & Steel:

The 1979 TV Times magazine which featured our heroes (is that the right word?) on the cover.

This was a weekly television listings magazine and I guess because of it only being needed for one week, very few have survived.

Over time, the very mainstream content of such magazines seems to have gained extra layers of resonance; possibly partly because of their nowadays scarcity and maybe also because they can capture or present a brief window into what seems like a very other time and place.

I have found a copy of the TV Times in question but I’m not quite sure yet if I can bring myself to tip a… well, not king’s ransom but maybe a small local lord’s ransom in its direction so that it can also “accidentally” arrive through my letterbox.

This magazine clipping/spread is heading in that general direction but well, it’s not that actual brief one-week-window-to-elsewhere of the TV Times.

Sapphire & Steel was intended / marketed / broadcast as mainstream entertainment but viewed now it is very much all of its own and maybe  what I’m looking for when I peruse related memorabilia is something which captures and represents the otherlyness of the series away from it’s mainstream presentation…

…but that otherly spirit is an elusive thing and possibly it being so phantasm like in nature, while being mixed in inseparably with that mainstream presentation is part of what makes the series so intriguing.

And so maybe (note so self) even that fairly elusive TV Times issue won’t put any kind of butterfly net around that particular spirit.

Hmmm.

(File under: Trails and Influences / Year 3 Wanderings)

Intertwined wanderings around these parts:
Day #284/365: Sapphire and Steel; a haunting by the haunting and a denial of tales of stopping the waves of history…

Week #27/52: Sapphire & Steel, various ghosts in the machine and a revisiting of broken circuits…

Week #45/52: Quatermass finds and ephemera from back when

 

I have something of a soft spot for Rif Mountain, which is a label / endeavour that has been a home for the likes of The Owl Service, Jason Steel, Robert Sunday, The A-Lords and sometimes A Year In The Country fellow travellers The Straw Bear Band.

For a while now it had been relatively quiet around those parts but recently there was something of a flurry of activity and these three fine beauties wandered through my letter box.

One of the things I appreciate with Rif Mountain releases is that they seem to contain a mixture of subtley left-of-centre-ness while also being particularly accessible.

Along which lines, back during the first spin-around-the-sun of A Year In The Country I said of The Owl Service’s Rif Mountain released The View From A Hill:

“The music? Well, I guess it could be categorised as folk but it has it’s own take or edge to it… many of these songs are folk music mainstays and both musically and visually it uses what could be considered standard tropes of folk music, folklore and culture…

…but this is anything but a mainstream folk album. Why? Well, I can’t quite put my finger on it but there are other layers and intelligence to it all, a pattern beneath the plough as it were. As an album it feels subtley experimental but still maintains it’s listenability.”

(In the case of these more recent releases, alongside the more overtly folk work of The Straw Bear Band, can be found the intimate, lone singers and tellers of tales Jason Steel and Robert Sunday.)

Part of what draws me to Rif Mountain is the packaging and design, which is often (generally?) done by Straw Bear Band-er and sometimes Owl Service-r Dom Cooper.

His work blends traditional folk tropes with a particularly classy and nicely done modern take on such things or to again quote myself, he may well use…

“…quite simple, modern and minimal design work in conjunction with matt card/printing to conjure up and reinterpret the imagery and spirit of folklore’s past.”

With his work the imagery is complimented by the physicality of the releases themselves, which combine to give them a very precious, tactile feeling that always makes me want to handle them carefully and gently.

 

(File under: Trails and Influences / Year 3 Wanderings)

Intertwined wanderings around these parts:
Day #30/365: The Owl Service – A View From A Hill

Day #170/365: Who’s afear’d: Dom Cooper & reinterpreting signs, signals and traditions…

Elswhere in the ether:
On this brace of releases you will find the earlier mentioned Jason Steel, The Straw Bear Band and Robert Sunday. They can be perused and purchased at Rif Mountain’s main home in the ether…

…and as is the modern way, they have a number of “outhouses” and the like: modern-day social gathering place, their visual library, gramophone room, other gramophone room, music filing / archiving, recordings from spinning the zeros and ones wheels of steel and picture box.

And something of a personal favourite at one of those gramophone rooms: the Vexed Soul EP, wherein traditional folk songs are revisited and reinterpreted, alongside more, shall we say “factory folk” music.

(If you should appreciate such revisitings and reinterpretings, I would also recommend a visit to 16 Horsepower’s channelling of related work here.)

Dom Cooper’s home in the ether can be found here.

 

It’s a curious thing with field recording and the way in which what could well have its roots in utilitarian, scientific recording of sound has gained in parts a sort of extra layer of creative resonance and wandered somewhere else.

Along which lines, the An Antidote To Indifference – Field Recording Special #2 publication.

This was released by Caught By The River and edited by Cheryl Tipp, who works in the Wildlife And Environmental Sounds archive of the British Library.

It is a beautifully put together… hmmm, I wouldn’t call it a magazine or fanzine, though it has elements of both – maybe I should just stick with publication as that seems suitable.

The design in part uses elements of what previously I have called “otherly geometry”, in a manner similar to say Folklore Tapes David Chatton-Barker or Ghost Box Records Julian House (in fact I was surprised to see that neither of them had worked on at least the cover) and the whole thing is clearly a labour of love.

I have described such work as often seeming “…to make use of geometric shapes and patterns to invoke a particular kind of otherlyness, to allow a momentary stepping elsewhere…”; in this particular instance that somewhere else may well be a sense of the spirit of that earlier mentioned extra layer resonance within some field recording work.

The contents take in literal out-in-the-fields field recording, the points at which field recordings meet imagined parallel versions of themselves, Howlround gent Robin The Fog rhapsodising about particular “sound arranged delightfully” creative techniques, Cheryl Tipp’s own Sound and Song in the Natural World piece, Recording the Sounds of the World’s First Computers…

I suppose a prime expample of the way in which field recording has moved from its more scientific routes to being nearer to a form of artistic expression could be found in the almost… no, actually singularly, fetishistic quality of the very precise listing of the details and recording equipment used for the moth sounds in the credits of Peter Strickland’s The Duke Of Burgundy film.

(And I suppose looking at the roots of the word fetish as charm, sorcery and made by art may be apt in this context).

In an interlinked manner, reading those credits, Cheryl Tipp may well have helped gather those sounds and details together as she is listed as having helped on that aspect of the film.

If you should be interested in wandering further than some possible pathways may well be the film Silence, which has been described as navigating the path between fiction and documentary, the field recording maestro work of former Cabaret Voltaire gent Chris Watson, who is also featured in the Field Recording publication (does he never get tired or stop and rest I often wander when I hear his work) and Cathy Lane & Angus Argyle’s In The Field: The Art Of Field Recording book.

 

(File under: Trails and Influences / Year 3 Wanderings)

Intertwined wanderings around these parts:
Day #142/365: Fog Signals/Ghost signals from lost transmission centres

Day #209/365: Signal and signposts from and via Mr Julian House (#2); the worlds created by an otherly geometry

Elswhere in the ether:
Peruse the Field Recording Special #2 at Caught By The River. Cheryl Tipps’s curating at the British Library here and a smattering of I think her own recordings here.