File under: A Year In The Country ocular explorations
Category: AYTIC-Year 4
The Stone Tape, Quatermass, The Road and The Twilight Language of Nigel Kneale – Unearthing Tales from Buried Ancient Pasts: Chapter 40 Book Images
“The Stone Tape is a 1972 television drama written by him which features a team of British scientists holed up in a country mansion while they attempt to create a new recording technique (and presciently to compete with the Japanese at such things).
They discover a form of historic, spectral recording which exists within the substance or literally the stone of the house itself and attempt to study, initiate and possibly capture it as part of their research and development process.
“The programme mixes and layers scientific techniques along with an interest in preternatural or supernatural occurrences and while it is set in a country mansion it is not overtly concerned with depicting a rural setting but has nonetheless come to be connected with an interest in folk horror.”
“This is commented on in reference to The Stone Tape by Andy Paciorek in his article “From the Forests, Fields and Furrows”, which acts as an introductory essay to the loose genre of folk horror at the Folk Horror Revival website:
‘Some consider that the setting should be rural for the film to be‘folk’, but I think a broader view may be considered.The tradition of the horror may indeed have rustic roots and pastoral locations may provide the setting for many of the stronger examples, but people carry their lore and fears with them on their travels and sometimes into a built-up environment. Also, below the foundations of every town is earth with a more ancient past.’”
“The Stone Tape television drama popularised the idea and the phrase and as with the recordings in the walls of the mansion featured in it, has continued to echo down the years.
This is particularly so in terms of its title that has been used as the name of record label Stone Tape Recordings, which was founded by Steven Collins who was also the founder member of folk rock band The Owl Service, as the title of an album of site specific spoken word recordings by Iain Sinclair called Stone Tape Shuffle released by Test Centre in 2012 and the name of hauntological otherly folkloric explorers duo The Stone Tapes.”
“In 2015 there was also a radio play version of The Stone Tape which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as part of their Halloween Fright Night season. This added extra layers of cultural intertwinings with hauntological related culture:
It was directed by Peter Strickland who wrote and directed the 2012 film Berberian Sound Studio, which in itself has a number of hauntological intertwinings, not least its depiction of an imagined folk horror-esque giallo film and sound recording studio and the inclusion of film and design work by Julian House of Ghost Box Records.”
“The radio play also featured music by James Cargill of Broadcast (who also created music for Berberian Sound Studio).
The soundscape was by Andrew Liles, who has worked with a number of musicians/performers that through the title of a 2003 book by David Keenan which explored such areas of at times culturally subterranean music, have become known as England’s Hidden Reverse, including Current 93 and Nurse With Wound.”
“Further connections to hauntological points of interest include that the script was by Matthew Graham who was also the writer and/or co-creator of mainstream hauntological-esque timeslip series Life on Mars (2006-2007) and Ashes to Ashes (2008-2010), alongside post-apocalyptic accidental cryogenic time travel science fiction series The Last Train (1999).”
“Andy Paciorek’s mention of an “ancient past” below the earth… In The Stone Tape this takes the form of the spectral recordings in the material of the house, while in the television series and film Quatermass and the Pit (1958-1959 and 1967 respectively) it is depicted via the discovery of an ancient alien spacecraft under London which is found to have a malign influence and be part of an alien experiment in genetic modification and manipulation of humans over hundreds or thousands of years, which has been responsible for much of the war and conflict in the world.”
“…returning to a sense of echoing down over the years, the main location in Quatermass and the Pit is used in the 2001 album title The Séance at Hobs Lane by Mount Vernon Arts Lab. This album was created by Drew Mulholland and is in itself an exploration of the echoes of society and culture, being a psychogeographic exploration of London’s hidden and underground spaces, eighteenth century secret societies and Quatermass itself. It is seen as a forebear of hauntological work and in what could be seen as an acknowledgement of the pathways it helped to pioneer was reissued by Ghost Box Records in 2007.”
“A sense of the buried “ancient past” can also be found in the final series of Quatermass from 1979, where in the near future large numbers of young people who call themselves “The Planet People” are being drawn to travel across the countryside to gather at ancient prehistoric sites such as stone circles, believing that they will be transported to a better life on another planet.
However the ancient sites are essentially markers put in place thousands or more years ago to enable the gathering and harvesting of humans by an extra terrestrial force, harvesting that may have already occurred at these sites at least once before.”
“During the extended period of development and production of the series, Britain underwent a period of considerable societal, political and economic conflict and the Quatermass book and series capture the spirit of and extrapolate from those troubles and presents an evocative depiction of Britain gone to seed and a crumbled, dysfunctional society… In these aspects it connects with 1979 television series Noah’s Castle, which also extrapolates from social strife and youth unrest of the time.”
“Nigel Kneale’s own work also has its own spectral, buried history as some of his work has been lost due to broadcasts being transmitted as live performances, recordings being wiped in order that the tapes could be reused or only black and white versions of the colour recordings remaining as is the case with The Year of the Sex Olympics.
One of his lost television plays is The Road from 1963. This was set in 1770 and involves a country squire and “natural philosopher” Sir Timothy Hassell investigating a haunted wood where men pass away screaming after hearing strange cries “as if all the dead people was risin’ out o’ Hell”.
This is a phenomenon that occurs just once a year, on Michaelmas Eve. Sir Timothy decides to investigate, thinking it is a past echo of a retreating Roman army but it is actually the cries of those suffering in a future apocalyptic attack.”
“There have been other fleeting glances of The Road: for a while there was a live amateur production of it available to watch online but that has since disappeared and transgressive horror research project The Miskatonic Institute presented a live reading of it at The Horse Hospital venue in London in 2015. That reading was to mark the launch of a book of essays about Nigel Kneale called We Are The Martians: The Legacy of Nigel Kneale edited by Neil Snowdon, the release of which was delayed until 2017, that features writing by and conversations with writers and critics including Mark Gatiss, Kim Newman and Tim Lucas, with cover art by David Chatton Barker of Folklore Tapes.”
“There have been a number of other books published which have focused on Nigel Kneale’s life and work, including: the biographical Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale by Andy Murray and published by Headpress (originally released in 2006 and revised and republished 2017), film critic and author Kim Newman’s Quatermass and the Pit published by the BFI in 2014 which focuses on the film and its origins and the beautifully produced, Risograph-printed collection of essays The Twilight Language of Nigel Kneale, which was edited by Sukhdev Sandhu, published by Strange Attractor and Texte und Töne and designed by Seen Studios.”
“The Twilight Language of Nigel Kneale was published to accompany a one day 2012 event in New York called A Cathode Ray Seance: The Haunted Worlds of Nigel Kneale which featured screenings and discussions of his work and in a further echoes of lost work manner also featured a reading and live soundtrack performance of The Road.
It contains a set of essays, conversations etc. produced in response to Nigel Kneale’s work and features work by Sophia Al-Maria, Bilge Ebiri, Mark Fisher, William Fowler, Ken Hollings, Paolo Javier, Roger Luckhurst, China Miéville, Drew Mulholland, David Pike, Mark Pilkington, Joanna Ruocco, Sukhdev Sandhu, Dave Tompkins, Michael Vazquez and Evan Calder Williams.
The book also came with a cassette tape called Restligests, featuring specially-composed work by The Asterism, Emma Hammond, Hong Kong In The 60s, Listening Center, The Real Tuesday Weld, Robin The Fog of Howlround and Mordant Music.
As a package and cultural event it positions Nigel Kneale firmly within the cultural setting of hauntology while also maintaining his own particular space and created worlds.”
Online images to accompany Chapter 40 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.
The Quietened Mechanisms – album released
The CDs are now sold out but the album is available to download at our Bandcamp page, Amazon, The Tidal Store, 7digital etc and can be streamed on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube etc.
Released today 2nd October 2018.
The album is an exploration of abandoned and derelict industry, infrastructure, technology and equipment that once upon a time helped to create, connect and sustain society.
It wanders amongst deserted factories, discarded machinery, closed mines, mills and kilns and their echoes and remains; taking a moment or two to reflect on these once busy, functioning centres of activity and the sometimes sheer scale or amount of effort and human endeavour that was required to create and operate such structures and machines, many of which are now just left to fade away.
Features music and accompanying text on the tracks by Howlround, Grey Frequency, Listening Center, Sproatly Smith, Embertides, Keith Seatman, Time Attendant, A Year In The Country, Dom Cooper, Field Lines Cartographer, Vic Mars, Depatterning, Pulselovers, Quaker’s Stang, The Heartwood Institute and Spaceship.
Available in two CD editions: Dawn Light edition £11.95. Nightfall edition £22.95.
CDs available via our Artifacts Shop, at Bandcamp and Norman Records.
Both editions are hand-finished and custom printed using archival giclée pigment ink by A Year In The Country.
Downloads will be available at Bandcamp, iTunes, Amazon etc.
Dawn Light Edition. Limited to 104 copies. £11.95.
Hand-finished white/black CD album in textured recycled fold out sleeve with fold-out insert and badge.
Further packaging details:
1) Custom printed using archival giclée pigment ink.
2) Includes 2.5 cm badge, secured with removable glue on string bound tag.
3) 1 x folded sheet of accompanying notes, hand numbered on back.
Nightfall Edition. Limited to 104 copies. £22.95
Hand-finished box-set contains: album on all black CD, 2 x sheets of accompanying notes, 1 print, 3 x stickers and 3 x badges.
Further packaging details:
1) Cover, notes and print custom printed using archival giclée pigment ink.
2) Contained in a matchbox style sliding two-part rigid matt card box with cover print.
3) Fully black CD (black on top, black on playable side).
4) 2 x folded sheets of accompanying notes, printed on textured laid paper – one sheet hand numbered on back.
5) 1 x print on textured fine art cotton rag paper.
5) 1 x 2.5 cm badge, 1 x 4.5 cm badge.
6) 1 x 5.6 cm sticker, 1 x 3.5 cm sticker, 2 x 12cm stickers.
Tracklisting:
1) Birkby and Allbright Mine: The Heartwood Institute
2) The Hoffman Kiln: Quaker’s Stang
3) Of Looms in the Housen: Depatterning
4) Ash, Oak & Sulphur: Embertides
5) Metallurgy: Dom Cooper
6) The Mill in the Forest: Field Lines Cartographer
7) Nottingham Canal: Grey Frequency
8) A Closed Circuit: Howlround
9) Rattler to the Tower: The Soulless Party
10) Rural Flight: Keith Seatman
11) Clarion of the Collapsed Complex: Listening Center
12) The Stones Speak of Short Lives: Spaceship
13) Canary Babies: Sproatly Smith
14) Fuggles: Pulselovers
15) Hidden Parameters: Time Attendant
16) Watchtower and Engine: Vic Mars
17) The Structure/Respite: A Year In The Country
Into the Forest and Post-Apocalyptic Safe Places: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 40/52
There have been a fair few films which have investigated how a small group of people cope with various post apocalyptic scenarios, which is the theme of Into the Forest a 2015 film, based on Jean Hegland’s 1996 novel, written and directed by Patricia Rozema.
This is a measured take on such apocalyptic scenarios, which in this sense and in being a form of pastorally set science fiction, it may well sit alongside The Wall/Die Wand (2012) and Z for Zachariah (2015), and has a slower more reflective pace than much of modern cinema.
Also, in these films the dramatic changes in society are not overtly dwelled on in say a more exploitation and spectacle oriented lumbering mutants and warriors roaming the wasteland manner (which I don’t write in a dismissive manner as there is space for all kinds of ways of telling similar stories within cinema).
There is a sense of space in the film which brings to mind John Carpenter’s comments on two of the main ways of making films – one which draws from German Expressionism and allows space for the viewer’s imagination and that which draws from Russian montage and is more concerned with a constant, possibly shallow, stimulation of the viewer which he has referred to as b-bop like.
Into the Forest presents a world that is suddenly without electricity and as with The Wall it does not explain why this change has come about in the world.
It focuses on one particularly family unit of a father and his two daughters who live in an all-mod-cons house in an isolated part of heavily forested land and is set slightly in the future, featuring the see-through computer screens which are often signifiers for that in film.
When the electricity supplies no longer function there is an initial bratty pique from the younger members of the family whose lives revolve around access to electrically powered technology.
As the film progresses it explores a sense of human resilience and foibles in the face of massive change and difficulties and also of the bond between family members (at one point one of the sisters leaves with a new lover for a rumoured place which has electricity, only to be drawn back to live with her sister).
It is difficult to know the truth of how humans would survive without access to modern electrical technology, although as is commented on in the film, humans have been present on the earth for many thousands of years before the advent of electrical power and have only had access to it for a relatively brief period.
In this sense it put me in mind of Neil Ansell’s biographical book Deep Country, in which he wrote about when he lived in a remote rural cottage without electricity, mains water etc for five years and was largely self-sufficient.
However, he did still have access to contemporary medical support when he needed it and was only “largely self-sufficient” rather than 100% so, as is likely to be the case in a scenario such as the one in Into the Forest.
Similarly in Into the Forest, for a while day-to-day life is manageable sheltered in the family home and with the remnants of resources, tools etc from before electricity disappeared from the world but as the months and even years pass these non-natural resources begin to run or wear out and the family home literally begins to fall apart; there is a sense that it is only a matter of time before a new way of more basic, primitive living will need to be found.
One explanation for the reason why horror films are popular is that they allow the viewer to experience and mentally practise responses to challenging and extreme scenarios, without experiencing real world threats and it is possible that the popularity of post-apocalyptic films is in part that they provide a not dissimilar fictional “safe” space and function.
Elsewhere:
Into the Forest’s trailer
Z for Zachariah’s trailer
The Wall/Die Wand’s trailer
Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
1) Day #13/365. The Wall / Die Wand… a vision from behind the walls of pastoral science fiction…
2) Week #51/52: Deep Country – Five Years In The Hills / Two Years At Sea And Becoming A Non-Rolling Stone
3) Audio Visual Transmission Guide #45/52a: Z For Zachariah
4) Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 24/52: John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness Part 3 – Quatermass-esque Non Bebop Filmmaking
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File under: A Year In The Country ocular explorations
An Old Soul Returns – The Worlds and Interweavings of Kate Bush: Chapter 39 Book Images
“Drawing a line back from A Year In The Country to early discoverings of more experimental or left-of-centre forms of pastoralism, then on the way to the likes of Bagpuss (1974) and other Smallfilms produced work, then doubtless a dot would be marked on the said line, and a pause made for a cup of tea, to consider the work and interweavings of Kate Bush.”
As mentioned in Chapter 37: “…Folk Revisiters, Revivalists and Reinterpreters”, Mike Scott of the band The Waterboys said that when Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” went straight to number one in the UK charts in 1978 that it “was like an old British soul got returned to us”.
That resonates in part because her work seems often to delve amongst and have roots in the myths and tales of the land, of its magic and mystery...
…this was pop music, if of an exploratory nature; in the earlier parts of her career Kate Bush worked within the realms of pop music, the charts and related work such as promotional videos. There were experimental elements to her work but such things were also generally intertwined with accessible and even catchy song structures and melodies.”
“Although working within the realms of pop music and generally commercially successful releases, her work often explored themes which you would not normally expect to bother the pop music charts but these most definitely did, featuring numerous Top 40 or even number one hit albums and singles over the years.
As a small snapshot of such things, some of those themes included:
1) “Breathing” was a five-minute single based around Cold War dread and the maternal passing on of radioactive fallout, which at one point wanders off into a public information broadcast about how to recognise the size of the weapon used in a nuclear attack.
2) The Ninth Wave, the concept album side of The Hounds of Love album is in parts breathtakingly beautiful and takes in dreams of sheep, bucolic bliss, traditional folk jigs and a sense of the sun rising over the earth, while it is actually about somebody in the water, close to drowning and there is a genuinely nightmarish folk horror quality to it at certain points.
3) The single and video “Experiment IV” (1986) tells of scientists being asked to create a militaristic sound weapon, which results in the creation or summoning of a malevolent spirit that sets about devastating and doing away with the staff of the research establishment which brought it forth.”
“The song Cloudbusting and its accompanying film tell a cinematic tale in miniature of a father’s attempt to create and operate a cloud-creating, steampunk-like machine, accompanied and aided by a son/daughter (although played by Kate Bush, the gender of the child is not completely clear in the video).
In the video, Kate Bush’s character pulls a copy of a paperback called A Book of Dreams from her fictional father’s pocket while they are on a hilltop and about to operate his cloudbusting machine.
This is essentially breaking the fourth wall in a metafictional manner as the book is a real world autobiography written by Peter Reich and published in 1973, which inspired the Cloudbusting song.”
“A Book of Dreams was the biographical story of Peter Reich growing up amongst the world and work of his father, the non-conventional and controversial scientist and psychologist Wilhelm Reich.
Wilhelm Reich amongst other activities did build actual cloudbusting-style devices and at points used them to attempt to break droughts in the US…
…it was reprinted in US in 1989 after Cloudbusting was released… in 2005 the book was republished with a new cover design but the appeal remains with the original, the one Kate Bush’s character pulled from her fictional father’s pocket and the associated sense of layering and stories within stories that it induced. And although now more easily available, there is a sense that it possibly should be left alone to continue to work its magic unimpeded.”
Online images to accompany Chapter 39 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.
Britannia – Further Glimpses of Albion in the Overgrowth and Layered Psych Collaging by Me & the Bootmaker: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 39/52
Britannia is a television drama series created and in part written by Jez and Tom Butterworth and James Richardson.
Alongside the likes of The Living and the Dead, Requiem, Detectorists and the turn of the millenium remake of Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) it could be placed in a loose gathering of “glimpses of Albion in the overgrowth” television – mainstream dramas etc which to various degrees explore, utilise and express a flipside or otherly pastoralism, with particular reference to the sometimes semi-hidden history, ancient folklore etc of Britain.
It tells the story of the second invasion of Britain by the Romans in AD 43, with the Roman troops finding an island where the ruling tribes are divided and at war with one another.
At heart the series is an epic historical fantasy drama, one in which there is also a strong sense of the mystical in the series, with a cult-like religion lead by druids appearing able to utilise and call upon magical forms.
(Jez Butterworth is also a renowned playwright and the tone of the episodes changes to a degree depending on who wrote them, with Jez Butterworth’s sometimes having a more intimate atmosphere which connects with his writing for stage, while his brother Tom Butterworth’s often have a more epic feel and seem to be more involved with advancing a wider, grander sense of the narrative and conflict.)
I can remember being taught a fair bit about Roman history at school, with the overall emphasis being along the lines of “Oh, weren’t they good as they were so organised, introduced sanitation etc”.
Their depiction in Britannia causes the viewer to stop and consider that while that may have been the case but they may also have been murderous, duplicitous, imperialist invaders who essentially were only really interested in and driven by the possibility of funnelling internationally collected taxes back to Rome.
The series put me in mind of Star Wars in the sense of it being an epic tale of a mystical force orientated group arrayed against a power which utilises both a mystical power and more advanced/greater technological power: in Star Wars it is the Jedis and Rebels vs the Emperor/Darth Vader and the Empire, in Britannia it is the tribes and those who believe in the powers of the druids vs the Roman Empire.
In part the first series of Britannia appears to be a telling of the shattering of the sway of one particular set of beliefs in mystical power, whereas if viewed as a whole Star Wars is more concerned with depicting the plucky resilience of a small group who still believe in the mystical “force”.
Britannia also differs in that, while it is a heavily fictionalised version of history, it is still grounded in that history and so the viewer knows that eventually the technocratic invaders will be victorious.
And as in Star Wars the powers that are associated with the mystical forces actually seem quite limited in terms of their practical application – some mild brain washing, the instilling of visions, limited telekinetics etc – particularly in contrast to the more technocratic power they are used against but they still hold a lot of sway within the minds of believers.
The Romans are also shown as often having strong religious and mystical beliefs, particularly amongst the rank and file of the troops and Britain is seen by many of the Romans as a fearful place, full of the supernatural:
“What does Britain have? Wood and nightmares.”
(Wood being a particularly necessary raw material at that time, as it was needed to build the fleets of ships which the Romans used to carry invasion forces and maintain their rule.)
However, while they may call upon their gods, the Roman’s faith and/or mystical beliefs seem to have less sway than amongst Britain’s tribes, where the rulers are shown as often seeing the druid’s edicts as having to be followed and obeyed (although not without debate and dissent, particularly amongst the younger future leaders).
The leader of the Roman invaders is shown as a driven, brutal man who is only really interested in mystical and religious beliefs as just another tool that can be utilised in the manipulation of his enemy in order to get the job done.
Also the Roman’s religious/mystical beliefs and rituals do not appear to have much overt real world practical presence and effect in contrast to say the way in which the druids are able to control minds and actions, visit the netherworld etc.
Of particular note in the series is the title sequence by Me & the Bootmaker, which has a collaged, psychedelic and almost occult like, folk horror-esque hand finished aesthetic and is accompanied by the 1968 song Hurdy Gurdy Man by Donovan.
Hurdy Gurdy Man is a pop-psychedelic song, which reached number 5 and number 4 respectively in the US and UK singles chart and Donovan has often been connected with a late 1960s pop music orientated interest in psychedelia.
Apparently the song had an additional verse written by George Harrison, which was not on the single and which read now as a semi-hidden history of the song seems to connect it more directly with the mystical, semi-hidden or fantastical histories which Britannia in part explores:
When the truth gets buried deep
Beneath the thousand years asleep
Time demands a turnaround
And once again the truth is found
The use of Hurdy Gurdy Man could also be connected to modern-day British folklore, as it was towards a utopian community founded by Donovan on the Isle of Skye that once-lost-lady-of-folk Vashti Bunyan and her partner undertook their now almost mythical horse-drawn journey, around a similar time as the singles release.
Elsewhere:
Britannia’s Trailer
The Britannia title sequence at Me & the Bootmaker
Vashti Bunyan
Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
1) Day #146/365: Glimpses of Albion in the overgrowth
2) Day #274/365: Borrowings from Albion in the overgrowth…
3) Day #275/365: Borrowings from Albion in the overgrowth (#2)… becometh a fumetti…
4) Day #316/365: The Detectorists; a gentle roaming in search of the troves left by men who can never sing again
5) Audio Visual Transmission Guide #16/52a: The Living And The Dead
6) Ether Signposts #16/52a: Vashti Bunyan: From Here To Before and Whispering Fairy Stories Until They Are Real
7) Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 25/52: Requiem Part 1 – Further Glimpses of Albion in the Overgrowth and Related Considerations
8) Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 32/52: Detectorists, Layered Timeslips, Albion in the Overgrowth, The Unthanks and Secrets Never Told
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File under: A Year In The Country ocular explorations
The Seasons, Jonny Trunk, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Howlround – A Yearning for Library Music, Experiments in Educational Music and Tape Loop Tributes: Chapter 38 Book Images
“One of the defining elements of hauntology is considered to be an interest in, and taking inspiration from, educational and library music from previous times, particularly the 1960s and 70s, alongside a similar interest in the work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Educational music is generally that which was created to be used as a classroom aid and/or music created by children in an educational setting under the guidance of adults.
In the 1960s and 1970s it produced some remarkable recordings that if placed in a different context may well have been considered experimental or avant-garde work.
Library music, sometimes otherwise known as production music, is music which is available ready and licensable off the shelf in a similar manner to stock photography and is music that has generally been created quite specifically for that purpose and made available for use in adverts, films, television, radio etc.”
“The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was established in 1958 to produce sound effects and new music for BBC radio and later television, and was closed in 1998.
During the late 1950s through to the 1970s in particular it was responsible for creating a body of renowned and technically innovative work, with this often being considered the “classic” period and the one that hauntological interest generally revolves around.
Often the sounds required for the atmosphere that programme makers wished to create were unavailable or non-existent through traditional sources.
This lead to some of those working at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to explore new techniques to produce effects and music for their pieces utilising tape manipulation, experimenting with electronic music equipment etc.
“Using such methods allowed them to create often unique soundscapes and music, notably the iconic theme tune to Doctor Who which was created electronically by Delia Derbyshire in 1963 utilising Ron Grainer’s score.”
“One of the reasons for the connection between educational music and that of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and hauntological areas of work is that it connects with a hauntological sense of a yearning for lost progressive futures associated with the 1960s and 70s.
Simon Reynolds describes this aspect of hauntology in the November 2006 issue of Wire magazine in his article “Haunted Audio”, which focuses on Ghost Box Records and other hauntological-related work, as being:
‘A wistful harking back to the optimistic, forward-looking, benignly bureaucratic Britain of new towns and garden cities, comprehensive schools and polytechnics.‘”
“John Cavanagh who runs the Glo Spot label, which has reissued library music originally released by the company KPM has commented:
‘There’s a striking originality to library records from that time because they were all about the search for new sounds. Back then, musicians weren’t told what to do. Big companies also weren’t so obsessed with focus groups and demographics, so musicians were allowed to have more open-ended adventures.’”
“Tim Lee, MD of Tummy Touch Records which has reissued a number of recordings also from the KPM music library, has commented about this and the sometimes-associated snobbery around such music, saying that:
‘Library music was never supposed to be expensive. By its nature, it was utilitarian and designed to be used as cheaply as possible. People forget that these records were made to be used and heard often, rather than being treated like fetishistic objects. So by distributing these sounds to more and more people, labels like ours treat the music in a similar way to its initial intentions.’”
“Jonny Trunk has for a number of years been championing, compiling and reissuing library music via his Trunk Records label, journalism and broadcasting.
He seems drawn to, and expresses an appreciation for, such music for a number of reasons including its at times musically innovative and intriguing qualities, alongside the significance that its scarcity lends it and the investigative work required to find such music, while also wishing to extend its reach into the world by reissuing it.”
“The Trunk Records library music-related releases have included compilations of the work by different performers originally released by a particular company such as The Super Sounds of Bosworth (1996) which brings together work from The Bosworth Music Archive and G-Spots (2009) which is subtitled “The spacey folk electro-horror sounds of the Studio G Library”.
They also take in related releases in an album such as Dawn of the Dead (2004), the soundtrack of which used library music in part from the Music De Wolfe label, alongside albums that focus on the work of one particular musician in this field such as Stand by for Adverts (2011), subtitled “Rare Jingles, Jazz and Advertising Electronics” and which features work by Barry Gray.”
“In a further appreciation, exploring and archiving of such work Jonny Trunk has also authored two editions of The Music Library, published by FUEL in 2005 and revised in 2016, a book which collects the cover art of library music.”
“Another strand of the Trunk Records reissues focuses on educational music. One such record is The Seasons, which features music by David Cain of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and poetry by Ronald Duncan. Originally released in 1969 by BBC Radio Enterprises, it was reissued by Trunk Records in 2012…
Listening to it is one of those “shake your head and be pleasantly slightly stunned” moments in culture.
The album was “designed to stimulate dramatic dance, movement, mime and speech” and was part of a series of radio broadcasts by BBC Radio For Schools called Drama Workshop, a creative drama programme for children in their first and second years of secondary school.
The album’s songs (that word is used fairly loosely in this instance) are divided into twelve months and four seasons and to a minimal Radiophonic-esque musical backing it features poetry along these lines:
‘Like severed hands, the wet leaves lie flat on the deserted avenue. Houses like skulls stare through uncurtained windows. A woman dressed like a furled umbrella, with a zip fastener on her mouth steps out of number 53 to post a letter. Her gloved hand hesitates at the box. Then, knowing there will be no reply, she tears it up and throws it in the gutter. And autumn with its pheasants tail consoles her with chrysanthemums.’
Which could be regarded as being a touch odd for a later 1960s psychedelic album or performance piece, let alone something aimed at schools.“…
When the album was reissued by Trunk Records, Ghost Box co-founder Jim Jupp said at his Belbury Parish magazine website:
‘It’s an album that’s very much part of the DNA of Ghost Box: the perfect example of the spooked educational media we reverence and reference so often.’”
“The Seasons is part of a mini-genre of educational music-related oddness which as mentioned earlier also includes work performed by children themselves under adult guidance, examples of which have been issued on two other Trunk Records releases: Carl Orff & Gunild Keetman’s Music for Children/Schulwerk and the compilation of work by different groups of schoolchildren Classroom Projects, both released in 2013.“
“One of the best-known of all such recordings and albums is The Langley Schools Music Project Innocence & Despair, containing recordings from 1976-77 by Canadian schoolchildren reinterpreting the likes of David Bowie, The Carpenters and The Beach Boys in a somewhat unique and inimitable style and which was first released commercially in 2001.
It was a project undertaken by Canadian music teacher Hans Ferger, who said about it:
‘I knew virtually nothing about conventional music education and didn’t know how to teach singing. Above all, I knew nothing of what children’s music was supposed to be. But the kids had a grasp of what they liked: emotion, drama, and making music as a group. Whether the results were good, bad, in tune or out was no big deal – they had élan. This was not the way music was traditionally taught. But then I never liked conventional ‘children’s music’, which is condescending and ignores the reality of children’s lives, which can be dark and scary. These children hated ‘cute.’ They cherished songs that evoked loneliness and sadness.’”
“The School Is Full of Noises, a documentary on the BBC’s Radio 4 first broadcast in 2015. In it, poet, journalist, playwright, and broadcaster Ian McMillan considered:
‘How did tape loops, recycled everyday sounds and countless other weapons of the avant-garde find their way into school music lessons during the 1960s?’
To quote one of the documentary’s participants, this was music education which:
“‘…wasn’t about privilege, it wasn’t about instrumental lessons outside school, it was about something that everybody could engage with, understanding music from the inside… knowing what it takes to make a piece of music, that it’s not something fully formed that exists in the world, it’s something that you make.’”
“…Jonny Trunk is also a broadcaster, in particular being known for his long-running The OST Show on Resonance FM.
It is one of the avenues by which he explores his appreciation of and penchant for the often-overlooked nuggets of gold and sometimes tarnished with neglect areas of music, with this programme concentrating on films and television soundtracks, library music and other related work.”
“Over the years these guests have included Jon Brooks of The Advisory Circle and sometimes Ghost Box Records, whose appearance was accompanied by a good deal of knitting and “doing” the actions to a mining safety song by once highly popular light entertainer and singer Max Bygraves.
They have also included the DJ and musician Andrew Weatherall, Monsterist illustrator Pete Fowler, Jim Jupp and Julian House of Ghost Box Records, Radiophonic Workshop explorer Paddy “The Changes” Kingsland, more Radiophonic exploring courtesy of David “The Seasons” Cain, Ian Hodgson of whimsical hauntological music and visual project Blank Workshop who releases records as Moon Wiring Club and some excellent delving and wandering through the undercurrents of music courtesy of Trish Keenan and James Cargill of Broadcast.”
“The OST Show has at times been hosted by the aforementioned Robin The Fog who releases records as one half of Howlround, working in collaboration with Chris Weaver.
Howlround came to prominence with their first album, 2012’s The Ghosts of Bush.
This is a recording which documents the last days of Bush House, the once home to broadcasting stalwart the BBC World Service. It takes as its initial source material indoors field recordings which were captured late at night in the empty rooms and corridors of the building towards the end of the BBC’s tenure of it and the resulting album is a culturally and musically fascinating and intriguing piece of work.
The album is a tribute to its subject from whence it sprang, one which is made up of many layers; whether literally in terms of the sounds it contains and how they were made, the history of where it was made or the Robin The Fog’s own connection to the work (at the time he was a studio manager at Bush House).
Part of that layering process and how the recording was made comes about by a literal layering of sound. The record was created using only tape loop manipulation which utilised some of the last remaining of such machines in Bush House…
When I listen to The Ghosts of Bush I often think of the distant howls of long-lost and departed creatures, huge as dinosaurs. Which in these days of almost ubiquitous free market culture, may well be somewhat appropriate as Bush House was responsible for transmissions from that possibly endangered philosophical idea, publicly owned broadcasting in the free market-orientated West.”
Online images to accompany Chapter 38 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.
Recording Our Own Ghosts – A Review of A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields at Folk Horror Revival (and Other Intertwinings)
There is a piece on the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book by Grey Malkin at the Folk Horror Revival site:
“A Year In The Country embrace a wide range of avenues to bring together not only a sense of how far reaching and varied the origins, mainstays and current players of genres such as folk horror or hauntology can be, but crucially also how they intertwine and cross pollinate.”
“Each chapter expertly charts its chosen subject’s impact upon the public consciousness as well as indicating that these artefacts are now part of a greater cultural cobweb that may well have threads and components that are radically different in genre or style but that equally have a strong commonality in their sense of unease and their haunted content; of similar ghosts in the machine (or spooks in the television and bookshelves).”
The article is a layered exploration of both the book and the cultural background it explores, taking in the likes of The Wicker Man, The Midwich Cuckoos, No Blade of Grass, 70’s acid folk, hauntology etc.
Alongside Grey Malkin’s own writing on the book, the piece also contains extracts from a conversation between him and the book’s author Stephen Prince:
“I think, to a certain degree, the way in which it isn’t easily definable how the different and loosely gathered areas of culture that are discussed in ‘Wandering Through Spectral Fields’ appear to connect, influence one another, have become part of a lineage etc is an aspect of what is appealing about them and that gathering; it is part of what creates a certain mystique around it. Possibly in an age where every area of culture, no matter how niche, can be investigated and explained by for example a brief online search, it is the sense of a hidden history and stories, of an at least partly unexplained aspect to such work that is one of the things which may draw people to it.”
Intertwinings:
Harvest Hymns II – Sweet Fruits, was published in 2018 by Folk Horror Revival and as with a number of their other book releases explores otherly folkloric and hauntological orientated work. It 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.
Grey Malkin is one of the instigators of/collaborators with The Hare And The Moon, Embertides and Widow’s Weeds.
Embertide’s Ash, Oak & Sulphur is included on the upcoming A Year In The Country released album The Quietened Mechanisms:
“An exploration of abandoned and derelict industry, infrastructure, technology and equipment that once upon a time helped to create, connect and sustain society… and their echoes and remains.”
The Hare And The Moon’s work has also been featured on a number of A Year In The Country released albums, including A Whisper In The Woods on The Forest / The Wald, which is a:
“…study and collection of work that reflects on fragments and echoes of tales from the woodland and its folklore; greenwood rituals performed in the modern day, fantastical childhood rhymes, sylvan siren calls that tremble through tangles of branches, electronics pressed into the summoning of otherworldly arboreal creations unearthed amidst the creeping thickets and elegies to woodland intrustions, solitudes and seasons.”
The Hare And The Moon “existed between 200 and early 2017 and are now as ghosts”. You can visit the spectral echoes of their explorations of the further furrows of folk/folklore at their Bandcamp page.
Also Widow’s Weeds’ track The Unquiet Grave was included on the A Year In The Country released album Audio Albion, which is a:
“…music and field recording map of Britain, which focuses on rural and edgeland areas… the history, myths and beliefs of the places, their atmospheres and undercurrents, personal and cultural connections – the layered stories that lie amongst, alongside and beneath the earth, plants and wildlife.”
Elsewhere:
- Recording our own ghosts; a review of ‘A Year In The Country – Wandering Through Spectral Fields, Journeys in Otherly Pastoralism, the Further Reaches of Folk and the Parallel Worlds of Hauntology’ at Folk Horor Revival
- The Hare And The Moon’s Bandcamp page
- Harvest Hymns II – Sweet Fruits
Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
- The A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book
- A Year In The Country – Spectral Fields – Wyrd Kalendar Mix 1; Chapters 1-13
- A Year In The Country – Spectral Fields – Wyrd Kalendar Mix 2; Chapters 14-26
- Afore Ye Go – A Final Visit to A Year In The Country at Late Junction, Accompanied by Explorations of Pastures New in Starburst and Revisiting a Highland Lament in Willow’s Songs
- The Quietened Mechanisms
- The Forest / The Wald
- Audio Albion
The Old Weird Albion and Eighth Climate – Spectres of Myths and Psychogeographic Explorations: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 38/52
In a recent post I wrote about a loosely interconnected continuum and contemporary interest in:
“…the uncanny, sometimes mystical or mythical flipsides and undercurrents of pastoral and folk orientated work, the old weird or “wyrd” ways and a related interest in the preter or supernatural.”
These are intertwined areas that Justin Hopper has explored through various avenues in his work and which he more recently wrote about in the book The Old Weird Albion, published by Penned In The Margins, accompanying text from which is below:
“The Old Weird Albion moves across the Sussex and Hampshire Downs, interrogating the high, haunted landscape of the English South.
Justin Hopper traces memories, myths and forgotten histories from Winchester to Beachy Head, joining New Age eccentrics and accidental visionaries on the hunt for crop circles, ancient chalk figures and eerie suburbs: the ruins of prehistoric pasts and utopian futures. Hopper casts himself as the outsider – an American initiate searching for an English heritage – and mixes doubt with desire in pursuit of mystical encounters in the Downs.”
His other projects have explored similar cultural landscapes and territories and have included the I Made Some Low Inquiries poetry sequence that was released as a CD with accompanying book by Eighth Climate, which is an imprint of English Heretic.
This release was, as with much of Justin Hopper’s work, part of an ongoing exploration of the flipside or undercurrents of the pastoral, alongside a form of interconnected rural, spectres of myths and folklore psychogeographic wandering.
I Made Some Low Inquires has in part a distinctive gothic Americana aspect to it: as I have mentioned at A Year In The Country previously, such related aesthetics and culture could be seen at times to have parallels with “wyrd” or weird Albion-esque culture, particularly in the way that they explore and express a sense of mythic, folkloric tales and cultural identities.
Alongside I Made Some Low inquiries Eighth Climate’s releases have also included The Making of Landscape, wherein Drew Mulholland made recordings at an ancient burial site in a manner which recorded, explored and utilised hidden frequencies of sound.
The recordings were of VLF sounds, which stands for very low-frequency – they are sounds below human perception and which can be caused by the massive discharges and their after-effects in lightning storms and by the solar wind buffeting the earth’s magnetic field.
Viewed as a whole there is a sense within Eighth Climate’s releases of unearthing and interconnecting different sometimes semi-hidden cultural and geographic points, which brings to mind a form of contemporary, almost mystical ley line-ing.
As an aside and connected to the above mentions of exploration of spectres, Drew Mulholland’s earlier work is seen as one of influences on and inspirations for what became known as hauntological work:
“The main location in Quatermass and the Pit is used in the 2001 album title The Séance at Hobs Lane by Mount Vernon Arts Lab. This album was created by Drew Mulholland and is in itself an exploration of the echoes of society and culture, being a psychogeographic exploration of London’s hidden and underground spaces, eighteenth century secret societies and Quatermass itself. It is seen as a forebear of hauntological work and in what could be seen as an acknowledgement of the path- ways it helped to pioneer was reissued by Ghost Box Records in 2007.”
(the above quote is a text extract from the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book.)
Elsewhere:
The Old Weird Albion at Penned In The Margins
Eighth Climate
Pastoral Noir at Justin Hopper’s site
Hauntological forebears: Mount Vernon Arts Lab’s The Séance at Hobs Lane
Drew Mulholland’s Audiological Archiving, Dusting Off and Unearthing
Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
1) Day #51/365: General Orders No. 9… wandering from the arborea of Albion to…
2) Day #198/365: Wandering from the arborea of Albion (#2) and fever dreams of the land…
3) Wanderings and Signposts 6/52: Bare Bones and Fellow Travellers in Rif Mountain’s Phase III
4) Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 37/52: Flipside Noir Part 2 – Folkloric Transgressions
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File under: A Year In The Country ocular explorations
The Owl Service, Anne Briggs, The Watersons, Lutine and Audrey Copard – Folk Revisiters, Revivalists and Re-interpreters: Chapter 37 Book Images
“On the Way Towards starting A Year In The Country the three albums I probably listened to the most were Jane Weaver Septième Soeur’s conceptual cosmic folkloric Fallen by Watch Bird (2010), the acid folk compilation Gather in the Mushrooms (2004) and The Owl Service’s The View from a Hill (2010).”
“The View from a Hill could be categorised as folk but it has its own take or edge to it.
Many of the songs on it are folk or traditional 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.
The reasons for that are hard to fully define but there are other layers and intelligence to the album, a pattern beneath the plough as it were; it feels subtly experimental but still maintains its listenability.”
“The songs wander from the Archie Fisher-esque widescreen but intimate take on “Polly on the Shore”, through to the “quite pretty but if you listen to the lyrics you realise that this is actually quite an odd story of attraction and paternalism” “Willie O’Winsbury” (and a reprise by way of 1973 film The Wicker Man’s “Procession” as if played by a New Orleans marching band), through to the spectral “The Lover’s Ghost” (featuring vocals by former 1970s acid/psych folk band Mellow Candle member Alison O’Donnell) and the album also draws on the talents of amongst others The Memory Band’s Nancy Wallace and The Straw Bear Band’s Dom Cooper.”
“The band were formed by Steven Collins in 2006 and were active until 2016, with the band name being drawn from Alan Garner’s The Owl Service novel from 1967 and its subsequent television adaptation from 1969.
According to an interview with him in Jeanette Leech’s Seasons They Change (her 2010 book on the story of acid and psychedelic folk that is discussed in Chapter 47: “…Lost Focal Points and Privately Pressed Folk”), originally The Owl Service did not physically exist as a band but was more created by him as an imagined idea for his ideal folk band, one which drew its influences from a certain section of 1960s and 1970s British film and television and the sound of the English folk revival.”
“I would not necessarily consider The Owl Service as overtly acid or psych folk: it is more a revisiting and reinterpreting of traditional folk and folk rock in a quietly left field or exploratory, respectful to but not hide bound by tradition manner.
In that sense of revisiting and reinterpreting, they could be seen to be carrying on another tradition that can be traced back to the likes of folk singer Anne Briggs in the 1960s and early 1970s.
As mentioned in Chapter 39: “…The Worlds and Interweavings of Kate Bush”, Mike Scott of The Waterboys said that when Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” went straight to number one in the 1978 singles chart that it “was like an old British soul got returned to us”.
Which puts me somewhat in mind of Anne Briggs and her music…
There is a beauty, purity and transcendence to her music and her voice that quite simply stops the listener in their tracks.”
“Aside from a handful of collaborative and compilation appearances there are only three recorded solo albums and two EPs that document her music, with the third of those albums Sing a Song for You being her final album, which she recorded in 1973 but that was not released until 1997 after which she seemed to wish to largely step back from public view and performance.”
“Travelling for a Living, a 1966 documentary by Derrick Knight that focuses on folk band The Watersons, in which Anne Briggs briefly appears…
The film follows The Watersons throughout their life on the road, playing their interpretations of traditional folk songs at folk clubs, recording in studios and at home in Hull as friends and other performers visit.”
“Although it was released in 1966, it seems to belong to an earlier much more kitchen sink, almost post-war period.
Often representations of British life and social history from that time focus on a swirling, colourful, pop-mod about-to-be-psych Swinging London metropolitan view of things.
Travelling for a Living presents a more gritty Northern contrast to that (although no less vital), an almost alternative history view of culture at that time which seems to have been semi-written out of popular cultural history.
However, quite possibly, the locations and music shown in Travelling for a Living were nearer to the day-to-day life of more of the nation than that of Swinging London; more backroom of a local pub than Kings Road high life club and boutique orientated.”
“This is a much more grassroots, kitchen sink, gritty culture and makes the viewer think more of the 1950s than the 1960s; all monochrome Northern living and black-wearing beat style.
In a way it is reminiscent of images of the 1980s Medway garage punk scene, such as photographs taken by Eugene Doyen; it shares a similar sense of a culture that is occurring separately to the mainstream stories and histories of the time and as with his photographs contains a similar kitchen sink, no frills and fripperies aesthetic.”
“This music doesn’t exist today as a living form but only in odd corners of memory; selected, hidden in the early recordings, notes and jottings treasured in the collections of Cecil Sharp House. From these still warm ashes The Watersons created music which is then seen to be very much alive.” (On The Watersons work, from the narration to the film).”
“Which brings us to Lutine, whose work is rooted in folk music but which also exists within its own landscape, creating work which draws from folk and other music but is not a recreation or homage…
Lutine’s 2014 debut album White Flowers, released by Front & Follow, is reminiscent of a peak point of the label 4AD in the 1980s until around the turn of the decade, a time when it was a home for fragile, textured beauty and explorations, with its releases often being packaged, enhanced and accompanied by the equally textured and intriguing visual work of Vaughan Oliver and Nigel Grierson working as 23 Envelope.
A particular point of reference in terms of Lutine and that period of 4AD is His Name Is Alive and the ethereal beauty of their 1990 album Livonia. If you take one of the literal definitions of ethereal as being “something which is extremely delicate and light, in a way not of this world” then you may be heading towards the atmosphere and work Lutine create…
Lutine’s is chamber music from a time neither then, today or tomorrow. Thoroughly modern and yet steeped in waters from previous eras, gently experimental but particularly accessible.”
“Which brings me to the just mentioned Audrey Copard and her 1956 folk revival album titled simply English Folk Songs.
There is a playful, sometimes cheerful, sometimes wistfully sad delivery to the songs on this album, with its 14 traditional folk songs being presented simply and in an unadorned manner, featuring just Audrey Copard’s voice and sometimes guitar accompaniment.
It features the first recorded and commercially released version of traditional song “Scarborough Fair” which used the melody that was later used on the commercially successful version of the song released by Simon & Garfunkel in 1965.
English Folk Songs enabled this author to hear some of these songs’ earlier incarnations and caused me to wonder how these versions may have somewhere along the line come to influence their future versions existences, revisitings and reinterpretations of folk music.”
Online images to accompany Chapter 37 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.
Flipside Noir Part 2 – Folkloric Transgressions: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 37/52
In Part 1 of this post I discussed the surreal, magic and druid imbued Welsh noir novel Aberystwyth Mon Amour by Malcom Pryce.
I ended Part 1 by saying:
“…as a cultural form isn’t necessarily something that could be obviously linked to much of the other culture and wanderings at A Year In The Country but with a little delving a connection or two could be made…”
Part 2 involves in part some such delving (and to a degree is also a revisiting of previous writing both online and in the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book).
In 2016 Justin Hopper, the author of The Old Weird Albion, curated an exhibition In Pittsburgh, USA called Pastoral Noir.
The work shown in the exhibition by the likes of Tessa Farmer, Jem Finer, Ghost Box Records, Tony Heywood & Alison Condie, Autumn Richardson and Richard Skelton explored the undercurrents, flipside and sometimes darker or eerie corners of pastoral culture and where they intertwine with the spectres of hauntology:
“The use of the phrase pastoral noir may be part of a seemingly wider, ongoing process of experimenting with and searching for names that could possibly serve to encompass and define such intertwined cultural explorations.”
(From the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book.)
Noir as a phrase tends to refer to fiction, film, culture and aesthetic which takes in both the knight-in-shining-armour like private detective of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and a sometimes intertwined almost nihilistic depictions of desperate acts by protagonists who may be flawed, morally questionable or just involved in desperate circumstances.
It is also often, although not exclusively, set in urban locations
Looking towards more pastoral and folk orientated culture, noir-ish elements can be found in the likes of the song Poor Murdered Woman and its desolate, dark and unsettling tale, which was recorded by Shirley Collins and featured on her and the Albion Band’s No Roses album, alongside the Bob Stanley curated compilation Early Morning Hush – Notes From The UK Folk Underground 1969-1976.
While there is also a noir-ish element to the song Cruel Mother, as also recorded by the likes of Shirley Collins, Steeleye Span and The Owl Service, the latter of whom included the song as the final track on their album The View from a Hill and featured the lyrics prominently within the packaging.
This tells a particularly brutal tale of the desperate actions of a mother deserted by her lover and subsequent damnation and it could in a different context and era well be the plot to a noir-ish film or novel (albeit with a supernatural element).
While in part the cultural behemoth of The Wicker Man can be seen as both a folk horror and a form of folk crime film: its tale of an incorruptible detective attempting to single-handedly investigate a multi-layered conspiracy is not all that far removed from similar elements in noir fiction and film.
Albeit here the detective is an officer of the law and somewhat priggish, in contrast to for example the stubborn but generally more warmly likeable private detective Philip Marlowe from Raymond Chandler’s novels and their film adaptations such as The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely and The Long Goodbye.
(As an aside, the main protragonist’s in The Wicker Man’s official position of authority and the film’s folkloric elements are the source of a double meaning in Vic Pratt’s article on the film Long Arm of the Lore, which was published in Sight & Sound magazine around the time of The Wicker Man’s fortieth anniversary and related reissues. It is well worth seeking out as it is a considered, reflective exploration of the film and the context within which it was made.)
It is not much of a step from say the variously crime, supernatural and mystical/faith elements of The Wicker Man, Poor Murdered Woman and Cruel Mother back round to the magic-in-the-modern-day aspects of the likes of Aberystwth Mon Amour nor some of the more uncanny elements of the work shown in Pastoral Noir: to a degree they are part of a loosely interconnected continuum of such things and a contemporary interest in the uncanny, sometimes mystical or mythical flipsides and undercurrents of pastoral and folk orientated work, the old weird or “wyrd” ways and a related interest in the preter or supernatural.
Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
1) Day #3/365: Gather In The Mushrooms: something of a starting point via an accidental stumbling into the British acid folk undeground
2) Day #30/365: The Owl Service – A View From A Hill
3) Week #20/52: Pastoral Noir, if onlys, a seeking of names / the ether giveth and the ether taketh away
4) Chapter 10 Book Images: The Wicker Man – Notes on a Cultural Behemoth
5) Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 36/52: Flipside Noir Part 1 – Aberystwyth Mon Amour and Gangsters in Mistletoe
Image AA/36
File under: A Year In The Country ocular explorations
Vashti Bunyan – From Here to Before – Whispering Fairy Stories until They are Real: Chapter 36 Book Images
“Vashti Bunyan: From Here to Before (is) the 2008 documentary about her fabled horse-drawn trip across the country at the end of the 1960s and turn of the decade and the album she made at the time.”
“Other films and documentaries made by its director Kieran Evans, including the Saint Etienne and Paul Kelly collaboration Finisterre (2003), edgelands exploration The Outer Edges (2013) which was made as part of a wider project with Karl Hyde and dramatic film Kelly + Victor (2012) have all had fairly widespread releases in the cinema and/or on DVD.
However, From Here to Before although covered in the press to a certain extent seemed to have a fairly limited cinematic release and then, apart from a few clips that can be viewed online, it seems to have more or less disappeared from view and has never had a commercial home release.”
“Born in 1945, in the mid 1960s Vashti Bunyan worked with Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, released two singles which did not sell in great numbers and recorded further songs for Oldham’s Immediate records which remained unreleased for many years.”
“After this she decided to travel with her boyfriend Robert Lewis by horse and cart to the Hebridean Islands to join a commune planned by a friend, fellow singer/songwriter Donovan. During the trip, she began writing the songs that eventually became her first album, Just Another Diamond Day which was released in 1970.”
“By 2000 Just Another Diamond Day had acquired a cult following and it was re-released, with her work and story becoming inspirational to a new generation of musicians, some of whom including Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom, who have been loosely connected under the label “freak folk”.”
“After this re-release and a gap of more than 30 years Vashti Bunyan began recording again, collaborated with contemporary musicians and appeared live.
She released the album Lookaftering in 2005 and in 2014 what she said was to be her final album Heartleap (both on Fatcat).”
“Vashti Bunyan: From Here to Before… serves as an entrancing exploration of a youthful journey of exploration and searching and also an associated self-created almost parallel sense of reality.
To quote author Rob Young from his 2011 book Electric Eden they seemed to be undertaking a form of “imaginative time travel”, a wish to get back to the land and simpler ways of life, which seems to have been fairly widespread at the time within certain often folk leaning areas of culture and music.
Just Another Diamond Day has become a totem and reflection of such yearnings.
This is due in part to the album’s gentle farside of folk delivery and vocals, alongside the almost dreamlike bucolic subject matter of its songs and the evocative nature of her horse and cart journey when she began work on what would become the songs on the album.
Adding to this are the equally almost dreamlike, fantasy rural atmosphere conjured by the cover image of Vashti Bunyan in period rural clothing and headscarf, where she is pictured outside her cottage accompanied by painted animals.”
“Alongside recording Vashti Bunyan’s thoughts and memories of her journey, life and work as she revisits places from her journey or prepares for a live appearance, contemporary interviews make up part of the film.
These include amongst others Andrew Loog Oldham, her 1960s producer Joe Boyd, Adem Ihan who is one of the musicians rehearsing with her for a live performance and artist John James who was a companion for parts of the journey.”
“The film also includes archival footage and photographs of Vashti and her partner in their folkloric, late 1960s-esque, gypsy like garb that they wore at the time.
This is clothing that at times is almost medieval and which accompanied by images of them travelling in their horse and cart shows the degree to which they lived out their dreams and attempted to remake their lives in the image of those dreams.”
“From Here to Before was made over four years around the mid to later 2000s, when interest in her work was flowering and she began to express herself again creatively in public via music and live performance and the film is a respectful observation of this period in her life and her earlier stories.
Vashti Bunyan’s music of the time and her journey have created an iconic story, set of images and songs; a modern-day fable or almost fairy-tale. The film is a reflection and exploration of this fable-like nature but it also captures the realities and hardships of their journey and subsequent home but without shattering the allure or spell of that dream.”
Online images to accompany Chapter 36 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.
Flipside Noir Part 1 – Aberystwyth Mon Amour and Druid Gangsters in Mistletoe: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 36/52
There is a subsection of crime and mystery fiction which utilises elements of its genre and adds variously surreal, absurd, comedic, period and farcical elements to create a form of genre fiction which can often by lightweightly playful (or to describe it in a less charitable way – a little “silly” or wacky).
When I first picked up a copy of Malcolm Pryce’s Aberystwyth Mon Amour novel, which has on its cover a noir-ish detective standing opposite a femme fatale in a red dress and a traditional Welsh dress hat, I though it might well belong to that playful/silly subsection of crime fiction.
On reading it I discovered that although it is thoroughly entertaining and has some parallels with such work, it is actually a more considered, layered piece of fiction.
It could be called a surreal Welsh noir, set in an alternate world where the old ways, magic and druids still abound (albeit within recognisably contemporary structures and society).
The book depicts a parallel version of the Welsh seaside town Aberystwyth, which is run by druids who are essentially to all intents and purposes actually “gangsters in mistletoe” and the society depicted within the book is a mixture of a brutal, pagan world and the “real” world.
In the town schoolboys keep disappearing and Louie Knight, the town’s private investigator, sets off to solve a multi-layered mystery and conspiracy.
The book has similarities with the British television series Peaky Blinders in the way it mythologises UK crime and organised crime in a not dissimilar manner to that which Hollywood does with its equivalent in America but which is rarely done with British genre work.
While the book borrows from many of the traditional tropes, themes and signifiers of noir detective fiction, including the central character being an “awkward” detective out to solve the mystery no matter what after he is visited by a femme fatale nightclub singer, it also contains an intriguing disjunctive aspect as amongst such things the traditional signifiers of a British seaside town are an inherent part of the story but without the book stepping into wacky territory; the barman who the detective goes to for solace here is the owner of an ice cream parlour, sticks of traditional Blackpool rock confectionery play a part in the mystery and the all night cafe/bar of noir fiction here is an all night whelk stall.
Connected to which while there is a fantastical aspect to the novel, it also shows a world rooted in real world practicalities:
“I’ll need some help to cover my bus fare.”
I put another 20p piece down on top of the 50p piece.
(An informant/helper talking to Louie Knight and the detective upping their fee or payoff.)
In this version of Aberystwyth magic and its application are an aspect of life.
Within the book there is not an explanation as to why or how magic is used and exists, it just is and in this sense and the way in which the book intertwines such aspects with noir detective/crime tropes it shares parallels with the films Cast a Deadly Spell (1991) directed by Martin Campbell and its sequel Witch Hunt (1994) directed by Paul Schrader, in which a hardboiled private detective named Harry Philip Lovecraft (named after the fantasy/horror writer H.P. Lovecraft) lives in a world where magic is real, monsters and mythical beasts stalk back alleys, zombies are used as cheap labour and everyone, excepting Lovecraft, uses magic on a day-to-day basis.
Elsewhere in cinema it also connects with Stephen Frears’ 1971 film Gumshoe, in which a bingo-caller and occasional club comedian in a Northern British city dreams of being a private eye of the kind he knows from films and pulp novels and who almost accidentally becomes involved in solving a mystery, which utilises some of the signifiers of noir detective film but relocates it to an unexpected geographic and cultural locale.
Also in its playing with noir genres tropes and relocating them to an unusual, disjunctive setting it also has parallels with Rian Johnson’s 2005 film Brick, which draws heavily from noir fiction but its depiction of a hardboiled detective story is peopled by high school students.
While in terms of depicting a British resort gone bad the book shares some territory with Edgar Wright’s 2007 film Hot Fuzz, in which the picture perfect surface of an English country village idyll actually masks a murderous conspiracy – although in Aberystwyth Mon Amour the sense of corruption is hardly masked at all.
(As an aside there is also a further connection between Gumshoe and Hot Fuzz, in that actress Billie Whitelaw appeared in both, with Hot Fuzz being I think her final screen performance.)
In some ways Aberystwyth Mon Amour is darker and bleaker than say noir progenitors such as Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe stories.
In those although there may be corruption and elements of the hierarchy, authorities and police which are corrupt, these “bad apples” are only a section of society. Whereas in Malcolm Pryce’s book the whole town appears to be either corrupt and/or under the thumb of the druids/the bad guys.
By its end the book becomes a curious parable about urban renewal: Louie Knight’s decisions, actions and non-actions unleash a Biblical like flood that both sweeps away all the old vice and corruption but also seemingly the old ways, beliefs, tastes and forms of consumption; the ice cream stall becomes a chain of espresso serving bistros, the 24 hour whelk stall becomes a 24 hour moules marinière stall and so on.
This leaves the reader with a curious sense of ambiguity, of being glad that the good guys have trounced the bad and ended the associated corruption and their plans for a Biblical apocalypse but also a slight sense that it has merely been replaced by a form of cultural cleansing and an associated cultural superiority/smugness and almost a sense of not quite being sure who won or if indeed they did.
As a finishing note, noir as a cultural form isn’t necessarily something that could be obviously linked to much of the other culture and wanderings at A Year In The Country but with a little delving a connection or two could be made…
To be continued in Part 2…
Elsewhere:
Aberystwyth Mon Amour
Malcolm Pryce
Peaky Blinders trailer
Cast a Deadly Spell trailer
Witch Hunt trailer
Brick trailer
Gumshoe trailer
Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 30/52: Welcome to the Village Green Non-Preservation Society – The Avengers and Further Visitings of Villages as Anything but Idyll
Image AA/35
File under: A Year In The Country ocular explorations
Magpahi, Paper Dollhouse and The Eccentronic Research Council – Finders Keepers/Bird Records Nestings and Considerations of Modern Day Magic: Chapter 35 Book Images
“Alison Cooper, who often records under the name Magpahi, creates work which feels as though it exists in and has tumbled from an indefinable fabled time and place of its own creation, work which at times seems to have been created by or also tumbled from arcane and lost music boxes.
Her recorded work includes the tremulously vocalled acid or psych-esque folk on the Magpahi EP compilation, released by Jane Weaver’s Bird Records in collaboration with Finders Keepers Records in 2008, which is a gathering of imagined poems and tales told in folk music refracted through a filter of woodland fantasia.
The creation and transporting of its listener to an unknown or unknowable place can also be found in her more folk-orientated work as Magpahi on the album Watchbird Alluminate from 2011 where songs from Jane Weaver’s Fallen by Watchbird album released in 2010 are reimagined or reinterpreted, on which Magpahi reinterprets “My Soul Was Lost, My Soul Was Lost and No-One Saved Me”, imparting an otherworldly fabled atmosphere to the song.”
“On Devon Folklore Tapes Vol. IV – Rituals and Practices, released by Folklore Tapes in 20122 Magpahi’s contribution includes leftfield glacial otherly and exploratory folk pop, instrumentals and wordless singing as though captured by far away dusty recording mechanisms; in spirit it may not be a million miles away from work that say Broadcast or Cat’s Eyes might have created for the insular dreamscapes of Peter Strickland’s films.”
“As Alison or A. Cooper and collaborating with fellow sometimes Folklore Tapes collaborator and co-founder of the Hood Faire record label Sam McLoughlin, she has released two volumes of folkloric soundscapes called Natural/Supernatural Lancashire and Supernatural Lancashire Volume Two, released in 2009 and 2013 respectively by Finders Keepers Records.
These are largely instrumental works (though just occasionally her voice will fleetingly appear) which create a soundtrack or an audiological tribute to the northern British Lancashire landscape and its stories…
However, neither part is a straightforward pastoral view and on the Natural Lancashire side you can be immersed in the wheezing almost carny previous era world of “Stream Power” one second and then transported to the meadows via “Edder” the next.”
“Alison Cooper has also released work in collaboration with Gwendolen Osmond as Crystal Mirrors on a joint Folklore Tapes/Hood Faire released cassette in 2014, alongside contributing tracks as Magpahi to the compilation Mistletoe & Cold Winter Skies released by Was Ist Das? in 2014 and several A Year In The Country released themed compilations including The Forest/The Wald in 2016 and All The Merry Year Round and The Quietened Cosmologists in 2017.”
“The Magpahi EP, Natural/Supernatural Lancashire, Supernatural Lancashire Part Two and Watchbird Alluminate were all released by Finders Keepers Records or its collaborative sister label Bird Records, which is run by musician Jane Weaver.
Both labels have proved to be a home for various often female-led or sung explorations of music that could very loosely be connected to folk but which wander amongst their own particular landscape of such things.
This has taken in both modern, newly created work and also the release of archival material such as “O Willow Waly” by George Auric taken from 1961 film The Innocents which was released on 7” by Finders Keepers in 2013.
Sung by Isla Cameron, it could be considered a precursor to the folk horror and soundtrack of the likes of The Wicker Man film from 1973 in the way that it draws from traditional music tropes to create beguilingly entrancing music which also summons a sense of the “other” out amongst rural climes.”
“Devon Folklore Tapes Vol. 4 – Rituals and Practices, as mentioned earlier was a split release by Magpahi and fellow Bird Records-released Paper Dollhouse, whose 2012 album A Box Painted Black is an experimental piece of music but as with much of Magpahi’s work it also contains an accessibility and/or a left field folk-pop sensibility.
This album was made by Astrud Steehouder working as solo artist; it has been described as “dark gothic minimal folk” and at the time she listed her influences as:
“…bewildering post nuclear landscapes, bleak fields, forests, thunderstorms and archaic industrial objects in the middle of nowhere…”
As with Magpahi’s work, the album seems to belong to a time, place and landscape of its own. It comes across as having been recorded in some semi-lost wooden cottage, in an indefinable place and time and the noises and creaks of its habitat have seeped in and become part of the very fabric of the music.”
“Paper Dollhouse in part take their name from the intriguing rurally-set 1988 film Paperhouse and its themes of childhood dreams and nightmares of drawings come to life, which was previously made as a television series in 1972 called Escape into the Night, with both being based on Catherine Storr’s 1958 novel Marianne Dreams.”
“Bird Records also released the 2012 album 1612 Underture by The Eccentronic Research Council. This was a collaborative work by Adrian Flanagan and Dean Horner, who had previously worked in the fringes and left-of-centre areas of electronica and electronic pop via the likes of Kings Have Long Arms, Add N To (X) and I Monster, alongside renowned actress Maxine Peake.”
“1612 Underture is a concept album which takes the form of a spoken word, soundtracked travelogue play, one that sometimes moves into more overtly song based moments; it is said to be “one part political commentary and feminist manifesto and two parts theatrical fakeloric sound poem”.
The album’s subject matter is the historical persecution of the Pendle Witches in the early 17th century and as suggested by the word “fakeloric” in the album’s description, throughout its observations on a contemporary voyage of discovery and pilgrimage it also interweaves historical events, folklore and imaginings and reimaginings of past events.
During the telling of its stories the album draws more than a few analogies with modern-day times: moral panics, folk devils and economic/ political goings on and shenanigans then and now. All of which are wrapped up in a warm, woozy, acoustic and synthesized analogue take on hauntological folk music, primarily voiced by Maxine Peake.”
“The album was accompanied by an extended accompanying video/ film by kluncklick (who also worked with Jane Weaver on her The Fallen by Watch Bird album from 20105).
This is rather slickly done on a (presumably) shoestring and handful of pennies budget.
Although using footage of actual people, it is not dissimilar in a way to a semi-animated children’s programme from years gone by, while also reminding us somewhat of Chris Marker’s film La Jetée (1962) in that it is built up largely from still images rather than traditional movement.
You could call it a fumée: the comic strips that are put together using actors or the book adaptations of films that were made up of stills that in previous decades were published fairly regularly.
While the album’s themes are quite serious and it is experimental in spirit, this is also a record which is deeply rooted in electronic pop and has been called non-populist pop.
“Another Witch Is Dead” is pop music, unabashedly so, including ear worm-like choruses, in particular the rhyming couplet “It’s a middle class vendetta, on women who are better”, which is a fine piece of class-related lyricism.
Today, often even within more leftfield music, it is relatively unusual to hear overt comment on class politics and relations and so in this sense 1612 Underture is somewhat refreshing. It also considers analogies with previous era’s magic and belief systems and that of today, describing mobile phones as being “modern-day magic on a monthly tariff ”.
Online images to accompany Chapter 35 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.
A Year In The Country – Spectral Fields – Wyrd Kalendar Mix 2; Chapters 14-26
The second of Chris Lambert’s Wyrd Kalendar mixes is now online – visit it here.
This mix is one of a set of four, in each of which he explores/plans on exploring 13 chapters of the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book.
They’re rather lovely and create an “otherly” soundscape world to travel with and drift off into.
This episode includes music by Broadcast, Cat’s Eyes, Virginia Astley, Brian Eno, Kate Bush, Jim Williams, David Colohan, Howlround, Keith Seatman, Loose Capacitor, The Twelve Hour Foundation, Shirley Collins, Stealing Sheep, Leyland Kirby, David Sylvian, Fairport Convention, Roy Redmond, Nirvana (no, the other one), Luke Haines, Tim Hart and Maddy Prior – alongside soundtracks, clips and a narration which is both humorously entertaining and subtly eerie.
Below are the chapters Mix 2 explores.
An I-Spy game for all the family; if you hop over the Ghost Box stile and wander off on this second part of the journey, see if you can match the above musicians/groups with their appropriate chapters.
Here’s a clue to start you off – David Colohan and Keith Seatman’s tracks from the Mix were included on the A Year In The Country released album The Quietened Bunker.
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
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. Katalin Varga, Berberian Sound Studio and The Duke of Burgundy : Arthouse Evolution and Crossing the Thresholds of the Hinterland Worlds of Peter Strickland
Chris Lambert is the author of Tales from the Black Meadow and co-author with Andy Paciorek of Wyrd Kalendar – details at the links below.
“When Professor R. Mullins of the University of York went missing in 1972 on the site of the area known as Black Meadow atop of the North Yorkshire Moors, he left behind him an extensive body of work that provided a great insight into the folklore of this mysterious place.
“Writer Chris Lambert has been rooting through Mullins’ files for over ten years and now presents the Tales from the Black Meadow collection of weird and macabre tales.”
Elsewhere:
- Tales From The Black Meadow – the book (or few), the CD (or few), the project
- The Wyrd Kalendar book by Chris Lambert and Andy Paciorek (published by Wyrd Harvest Press / Folk Horror)
- A Year In The Country – Spectral Fields – Wyrd Kalendar Mix 1; Chapters 1-13 at Mixcloud
- Mix 1 at the Wyrd Kalendar website
- A Year In The Country – Spectral Fields – Wyrd Kalendar Mix 2; Chapters 14-26 at Mixcloud
- Mix 2 at the Wyrd Kalendar website
- Tales from the Black Meadow – the book by Chris Lambert
- Chris Lambert’s own writing website
Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
- A Year In The Country – Spectral Fields – Wyrd Kalendar Mix 1; Chapters 1-13
- The Quietened Bunker
- The A Year In The Country Wandering Through Spectral Fields book
