Category: Trails and Influences: Electronic Ether

Trails and Influences: Electronic Ether. Case #12/52.

When I was first really discovering and connecting up the dots between much of the music which I’ve visited on the way to and through A Year In The Country, this compilation put together by The Owl Service and released as a download by record label Rif Mountain (home of Jason Steel, Straw Bear Band, Nancy Wallace and former home of The Owl Service) was something of a particular point of reference.

It does what it says in the title – it is an introduction to some of the headier concoctions of what has become known as acid or psychedelic folk.

Here’s a full tracklisting:

01 – Spiggly – Spirogyra
02 – Sea Song – Caedmon
03 – Dragonfly – The Strawbs
04 – Thruxton – Dando Shaft
05 – Kilmanoyadd Stomp – Dr Strangely Strange
06 – Carnival & Penitence – Heron
07 – Ten Maidens Fair – Caedmon
08 – Orfeo – Archie Fisher
09 – Missing the Head – Dulcimer
10 – Old Boot Wine – Spirogyra
11 – Nottamun Town – Oberon
12 – September Wine – Dando Shaft
13 – The Skater – Midwinter
14 – Psalm 42 (edit) – The Trees Community

Ah, listening to it again, that’s where I know Caedmon’s The Sea from and why listening to it on vinyl felt like rediscovering an old friend (see Day #93/365).

Well, if you should want a soundtrack for wandering through gently lysergic fields, this would be it… in many ways it feels like a companion piece to Bob Stanley’s acid/folk underground Early Morning Hush and Gather In The Mushroom compilations. In common with the first of those albums, this compilation takes in a fair number of songs from privately released albums (see Caedmon, Midwinter, Oberon).

Interesting as well how such, well, out there music sometimes came from very religious inclinations (both Caedmon and The Trees Community came from such a background)…

In fact, when you think about it, it’s both interesting and curious how acid/psychedelic folk grew from a mixture of sources, which incorporated at different times religious beliefs, traditional folk song (though thoroughly reinterpreted) and the late 60s counter-culture.

Subcultural/counter-cultural movements tend to be thought of as having sprung from the cracks beneath the cities walkways, whereas psych-folk seems to have been created by participants who were either physically located out in the cottages and meadows or who used a form of imaginative geographical travel to create a culture which, in contrast to urban influenced/inflected cultural movements, was hazily narcotically pastoral. Heady days.

The particular standout song on the Acid Tracks compilation for me is Archie Fisher’s Orfeo… possibly one of the recording artists on the compilation who at first glance would appear the least acid/psych like but Orfeo is a magnificent, epic song, cinematic in scope… and there are these monstrous horns/pipes/foghorns (?) which appear repeatedly throughout the song and arrive like depth charges.

The album, also called Orfeo, on which it originally appeared was first released in 1970 and though it had been re-released on both LP and CD since it’s still something of a rarity, so here’s good luck if you should go a-hunting.

Listen to Archie Fisher’s Orfeo song here.

Listen to the compilation… well, that may take a bit more ether trawling.

The Owl Service via Stone Tape Recordings here. Rif Mountain here. The Orfeo album here.

Early Morning Hush and Gather In The Mushrooms at A Year In The Country here and here.

Trails and Influences: Electronic Ether. Case #11/52.

Well, that should probably be Anthromorphic Leporids (the rabbit family), the occasional companion and a possible interloper…

There is something unnerving about bunny/rabbit masks on a human. I’m not quite sure why.

When I see rabbits/hares in the wild (or the occassional time I’ve seen them bounding around inside a home), there is a a surreal air to them, again I’m not quite sure why.

Maybe those Adventures of Alice in Wonderland that I read/watched back in childhood have set down deeper roots than I think… the waistcoated, time keeping rabbit (and associated rabbit holes) is such an iconic character and theme.

The Wickerman (yes, that again) probably hasn’t helped lessen such things… see image to the left, from the film…

…which coincidentally for quite a while was the only photograph of Sproatly Smith (see Days #85, #92, #101 of A Year In The Country) that I’d seen. Well, not that it was of them but that was the only photograph they had put forth into the world.

Hmmm.

Most of these images are gleaned from a collection in the ether by Becky Wells*. I’m not sure where they are originally from and whether some of them are her own work. The collection errs towards the more gothic/creepy side of folkloric and related imagery. Tread gently…

 

File under:
Trails and Influences: Electronic Ether. Case #10/52.

Well, recently a note arrived through my digital letterbox for an intriguing looking event: Delia Derbyshire Day.

If you should not know who this lady is (was), she was an electronic music pioneer who worked at the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop, was particularly renowned for her recording and arrangement of a piece of music which has topped and tailed all kinds of childhood dreams and nightmares over the years (the original Doctor Who Theme), which was one of the first ever electronic signature tunes used on television, created the first electronic music to accompany a fashion show… and well, I expect the world of music might well be quite a different place without her work and it’s not hard to draw a line back from some of the more electronic composers who appear amongst A Year In The Country.

I never knew the lady but I always feel quite moved and sad when I read about her life and her passing away at a relatively early age. I feel the world lost a great talent and there’s a sense that her work has never been correctly allowed to flourish, be heard or documented fully (indeed 267 reel-to-reel tapes were discovered after her death, which have been digitised but have not been released due to copyright complications, her released work seems to be patchily represented in official forms).

The Delia Derbyshire Days are a nod towards and a mark of respect for her and her work and hopefully will play a part in assigning the respect she and it deserve.

Of note and well worth a wander: well there could well be quite a few but Dreams, her work with Barry Bermage, where people described their nocturnal stories to an electronic accompaniment is well worth a visit, there’s Mathew Sweet’s radio documentary Sculptress of Sound (listen here), the Audiological Chronology Delia Derbyshire site here, Blue Veils and Golden Sands, a radio play based on her life which can be visited here and The Delian Mode, a documentary about her by Kara Blake can be perused here. Well, that’s a start at least… and that soundtrack, well, I expect you can easily visit that in your mind.

Visit Delia Derbyshire Day here (quick quick, it’s coming soon), which will be starting at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester, before wandering off to Hebden Bridge, The Horse Hospital in London, Norwich and Oxford.

Read her obituary by a friend and work companion here (a touching, evocative, moving piece).

Read more about Delia Derbyshire here.

Ms Derbyshire, I salute you. Rest in peace.

I shall leave the final words to her, quoted from the above obituary: very prescient and also humble:

“What we are doing now is not important for itself but one day someone might be interested enough to carry things forwards and create something wonderful on these foundations.”

 

File under:
Trails and Influences: Electronic Ether. Case #9/52.

Now, as I may have said before but the digital world is a home just full of stuff; the cupboards, pantry, drawers, cellar, under the stairs, in the garage, on that hard to reach shelf above the bed, under the bed, hung on the coat hooks – all are overflowing with creative work.

So, in such times the need for selection, filtration and curation can sometimes be all the more necessary.

Along such lines, this page is another small piece of curating the curators…

Although I know there is some debate about whether hauntology exists as a music genre (if memory serves correctly it’s Wikipedia page was deleted after such a debate) and musically/culturally the people/records that have been associated with it can be quite diverse, it can still be quite a hand loosely defined label for a certain aesthetic. Along such lines…

I’ve had a soft spot since I came across it for 14 Tracks’ “Hauntology: A peculiar sonic fiction”, as an idea as much as the music: essentially it’s a primer or introduction to the loose genre of music that has been deemed hauntological. Each track has a brief one sentence description and the selection is accompanied by a concise essay on all things sonically spectral, which I have reproduced in full below:

“The discourse developed around Jacques Derrida’s concept of ‘Hauntology’ and its application to music in the minds of writers like Simon Reynolds, K-Punk and David Toop is one of the most discussed philosophical and aesthetic musical ideas of recent years. Derrida’s original use of the phrase can be linked to a sense of ‘threading the present through the past’, or a ghostly re-imagining of the past defining our existence. But in its musical sense, Hauntology has been used to describe a gathering of disparate artists dealing in “haunted” sonics; music resonating with the emotions and feelings of past analog, and digital ghosts. While there are many interpretations of the concept, we’ve taken it to cover artists who have tried to to re-engage with intangible musical feelings and experiences that have affected their formative years or that have become forever ingrained on their sonic psyche, without merely rehashing them as pastiche. Looking specifically at the British musical landscape of the early 21st century, it’s been said that after the ‘death of rave’ we’re experiencing a sort of creative comedown, where the dubbed ectoplasmic traces of the musical past are caught in an ever-decreasing feedback loop of nostalgia seeping through music and other artistic forms, resonating echoes of intangible elements from days gone by. Our selection veers from The Caretaker’s apparitional sample morphology, through Ariel Pink’s exquisite MOR narco-pop, the Ghost Box label’s miniaturised vision of middle England, onto Burial’s mournful rave dreams, all leaving an abstract yet indelible mark on this very particular musical landscape we find ourselves in today.”

The selection includes tracks by The Advisory Circle, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffitti, Nite Jewel, Burial, Leyland Kirby (Sadly The Future Is Nolonger What It Was is probably one of the better record titles which has been put out into the world), Demdike Stare, Ghost Box overseers Belbury Poly, Roj, Mordant Music, Kreng, ISAN and Leylad Kirby in a different form via The Caretaker (or is that the other way around?)… plus I’m glad to see treasures from the past via Vernon Elliot (the gent responsible for the music for Ivor The Engine and The Clangers amongst others) and the Arthur Birkny Barbara Moore Singers by way of Trunk Records Fuzzy Felt Folk.

Now, you could easily spend many waking hours (and a fair few in your dreams) wandering through 14 tracks… here are a few other collections which have caught my eye and ear: A ferric attraction (digital recordings of tape recorded releases), Eldritch Electronics (avant-folk, industrial, ambient and hauntological sounds), Chamber Drift (“songs with an elemental, folksy awareness which share a rarefied, surreal atmosphere“), Quarrying Strange & Heavy Rocks (“Psyche-Folk, Noise, Avant Jazz and experimental Rock“), Midnight Nomads (“searching under rocks for desolate drone, introverted Americana and occult artefacts to while away baltic nights“), 14 tracks under the spell of Fonal Records (“Finland’s celebrated psych folk shamens“), Psychedelic Wanderlust (“the fringes of lo-fi, freeform folk, blues and experimental electronics“)…

Well, there’s a fair old bit of listening and trails to wander down.

Visit “Hauntology: A peculiar sonic fiction” here.

 

File under:
Trails and Influences: Electronic Ether. Case #8/52.

Now periodically I like to have a good old wander through the found objects of the blog Found 0bjects.

If your taste should run to the shape of the future’s past (nice to see that book on the blog just recently, it was something I had in my youth) via visions of post-war planning, lost recording mechanisms, more than a dash of hauntology, esoteric charity shop finds and the like then this is one particular pathway that’s well worth a visit.

I’m not sure who actually runs found0bjects, the posts seem to be by various people, though at Rob Young’s Electric Eden site he mentions that it’s one of his blogs… answers on a digital postcard…

One of my favourite recent posts was Neil Fellows’ photography and text record of a visit to a derelict BBC broadcast monitoring station… well, spectres of the past in the present indeed.
The site was built in order to monitor the quality of domestic transmissions but became involved  in wartime and cold war espionage and in the photographs there’s a real sense of this being a hidden site of subterfuge, it looks more bunker like than innocent monitoring centre.

Looking at the photographs reminded me of my childhood fascination with air raid shelters scattered on the edgelands of the town I grew up, which still remained several decades after conflict had ended.

We would dare one another to enter, half expecting there to be ghosts or hoping to maybe find some leftover military ordinance (but more likely finding hundreds of old beer bottles and cans or maybe slightly unsettlingly for us at that age with headfulls of imagination and malevolent spirits, the red splash from where a ketchup bottle had been smashed against the wall).

View the full post here.

 

 

File under:
Trails and Influences: Electronic Ether.
Case #7/52.

And while we’re talking about Mr Jim Jupp (see Day #64/365 of A Year In The Country)…

One of the cultural corner shops I have visited the most during and in the run up to A Year In The Country is the Belbury Parish Magazine.

Here, in amongst the jars of boiled sweets you can come across all kinds of fine nuggets of curiosity: it is in part primarily a newsletter or “semi-offical companion” for all things Ghost Box but also one of the reasons I’m drawn to it is because it often wanders slightly off the beaten track to incorporate items of parish news from interconnected practitioners…

So, it was where I found out about Robin The Fogs audio-historical exploration of fading institutional signal transmission centres Ghosts of Bush House (see image to the left), one of the first places I read about Charles Frégers Wilder Mann book/project, the aforementioned Ghost Box/Broadcast friendly issue of Shindig Magazine (see Day #59/365)…

…all in amongst more audio-mixes than you could comfortably listen to in, well, a month or two… just as a teaser and taster at the Belbury Parish Magazine you can find Toys and Techniques Mix For Trish (a tribute to Trish Keenan of Broadcast), an ongoing selection of Belbury Radio broadcasts, Jon Brooks of The Advisory Circle’s Public Information Film inspired mix and more, all of which are mentioned in the parish magazine, alongside a scattering of video signals from other eras and re-imagined lands…

It is also a fine resource for viewing and discovering Mr Julian House’s artwork for Ghost Box and others (such as his artwork on the left which was used for the aforementioned Toys and Techniques Mix For Trish) and his posters for Belbury Youth Club events.

In fact, I suspect that a reasonable number of the cultural touchstones  which have become an inherent part of the fabric of A Year In The Country, such as The Twilight Language Of Nigel Kneale book (see Day #15/365)  I may well have first stumbled upon via this particular set of parish circulars.

So, if you should have a moment or two or more, wandering off to have a read and peruse would be heartily recommended.

Pick up your latest copy of the Belbury Parish Magazine from the good reverend Mr Jupp here.

File under:
Trails and Influences: Electronic Ether.
Case #6/52.

Curating the curators…

Now, the electronic ether is full of stuff. I’m sure most of us know that.

And so, a touch of curating doesn’t go amiss.

One such place is this page which is described as “All things hauntological, atemporal and future past nostalgic in music, media and ideas”… and indeed such things are scooped and sieved there.

I tend to think of it as a newspaper of all such things… a sort of newsletter digest collected and curated from the world’s thinkings and cultural endeavours.

So, as a brief overview of something of these sievings and scoopings there’s the Quietus on English Heretic alongside their features on Julian House of Focus Group/Ghost Box Records and Eccentronic Research Council… the release of Mark Fisher’s Ghosts Of My Life, various Tales From The Black Meadow, a fair smattering of consideration of the ruins and decay of culture and physical buildings/locations, all accompanied by a refreshing snapshot view or precis of a more academic/intellectual take on all things hauntological.

So, all in all, a fine dash or two of index carding of such things.

These particular curated spectres are put together by Sean Albiez who can be visited here and the page itself is here.

As a postscript: on the above pages there is also a brief mention of Owl Seance, which is a set of hauntological hills that I have been known to go tumbl(r)ing down. Another form of curating, this time of the visual kind.

A selection of images from Owl Seance below:

 

 

File under:
Trails and Influences:
Electronic Ether. Case #5/52.

Sometimes when writing about folk music people will talk about the purity of a singers voice… listening to Lutine I think I know what they mean.

Quite frankly this is astonishing music. There is indeed a trembling, tremulous, purity to the singing… for some reason I am reminded of the sound of gently peeling bells in a land I know not quite where…

Their music is a haunting, minimal take on and reinterpretation of folk/tradtional folk and all I can say is my mind seems to wander off to another plain, place or indefinable time when I hear their songs, particularly on Died Of Love.

I know little about Lutine, all I know is that they kept catching my eye while I was wandering around the digital fields of the world. The small gleanings I have come across include..

They have an album coming out in 2014 on Front and Follow and have shared a stage at Joseph Stannard’s The Outer Church with Jane Weavers Bird Records/Finders Keepers/Folklore Tapes fellow travellers Paper Dollhouse (whose A Box Painted Black album is something of a recurring touchstone for A Year In The Country, more about which I expect may appear later around these parts)… and I suspect they may hail from one of England’s southern coastal towns…

But I shall let their music speak for itself:
Listen to Lutine here and here, visit them here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few other trails and pathways:
Front and Follow, The Outer Church, Paper Dollhouse,
Paper Dollhouse at Finders Keepers Records, THEƎ EVIL TWIИ

File under:
Trails and Influences:
Electronic Ether. Case #4/52.

I seem to be mentioning Rob Young’s Electric Eden book a fair old bit in A Year In The Country… I knew it had seeped into my consciousness but as I work through this year I’m realising just how much some of his concepts have taken root, informed and sent me off on new exploratory pathways.

Anyway, while wandering down those pathways, particular ideas and discoveries have stayed with me…

Folk music: although I hadn’t overtly studied it as a concept, I think I had been mildly bemused by the phrase folk music – I tended to think of folk meaning from the people, ie all the folk of a land and I had wandered how music that seemed to have often (today at least) a relatively limited appeal could therefore be called folk music. How could it be of the people if it wasn’t all that popular? And it definitely wasn’t “pop” music.

Mr Young’s book helped settle this via his comments on the roots of the words/concepts of folk and pop: rather than referring to a sense of all the people of the land, folk music is the music of the ‘volk’, derived from the Germanic/teutonic wald, the wild wood whereas the word pop (ie popular music) comes from the Latin populous, which refers more to the larger populations of cities etc.

He talks of how pop culture derives from centrally controlled, regimented urban communities (Roman urban populi) which were entertained/appeased/distracted by mass spectacles; gladiatorial entertainment and comedic dramas; “pop is the culture of imperial socialization, of institutionalized religion, consensus, and commerce.”

Folk, however, is much older than pop. Coming from “the wild wood”, it is from a culture where peasants, vagrants and villagers bore song from the wood, the forest, the barbaric heath; a society which was sometimes savage, often ad hoc, pre-Christian and where rituals endured and perplexed their heirs.

As cultural forms/phrases therefore one comes from the city (and later I suppose the concrete), one from elsewhere, out in the fields and forests.

Along which lines regarding the roots of folk and how as a culture it has come to encompass a sense of an “other” or Wyrd Britain, here’s a paragraph from Tiny Mix Tapes review of the book:

“For Young, the possibilities of folk are represented by the Wald, the wild woods of Northern Europe’s interior and their fairy tales. The Romans attempted to clear away these woods during their European campaigns, but they survive in the English place names ending “-wald,” “-wold,” or “-weald.” Other fragments and echoes tantalize: Why do English sword dancers lock their swords into mystical symbols such as the pentagram or the six-sided star? Why do denizens of Whittlesey march down the street behind a straw bear every January? Folk culture represents, for Young and many of the mystics, eccentrics, hippies, and socialists of his book, a store of secret knowledge, of hidden possibilities that the past offers up to the future. Folk attempts to restore what Young calls “an Other Britain,” but as Young convincingly proves in this book, this Other Britain never really existed, because every moment of the past was really itself a present, a simultaneous looking-back and looking-forward.”

In many ways it could be said that the story of folk music/culture/folklore is in part one of the differences/separateness of culture from the city vs the wald or the populi vs volk. Or more literally folk vs pop.

There are oodles of articles and writing about Electric Eden out in the world, here are three of the ones that I’ve referred to the most:

Tiny Mix Tapes Review / ‘Electric Eden’ A Musical Retelling of the Elusive Past at Popmatters / Into The Woods at The Journal Of Music

As an aside, the subtitle to this page could also have been “From the wald to The Wombles”. What would be the reason for that you may ask? Well, it refers to what happens when folk meets or tries to become pop… And what appears to happen in the 1970s is that you arrive at a point where you have a hit single by one of folks more popular purveyors, Steeleye Span, put together by the producer of that most pop of combos The Wombles. Which as an idea and culture clash (or should that be connection?) I quite like…

If you’re curious it’s their version of All Around My Hat… although I know by this point folk has probably wandered quite a way from it’s roots but I don’t really mind; the video to the song captures a certain point in time, nuances of British and my own history. Plus it just makes me smile and cheers me up, which is not a bad thing for music to do.

Also in the ether  is the episode of Jonny Mugwump’s Exotic Pylon radio show that Rob Young appeared on to talk about Electric Eden.

It’s a very enjoyable 1 hour, 38 minutes and 23 seconds, wherein he talks about his inspirations, how he wanted to try and work out how what has become known as folk music/culture all knotted together; from traditional and what is considered authentic folk music through to the latter day exoticism of contemporary folklore influenced work such as The Wickerman (to my mind and it seems to his also, all such strands could be seen as authentic; all work has to spring from somewhere and it’s the intention/effect rather age and historical traceability that implies whether it’s the “real” thing or not).

The program draws a coherent, eloquent picture of these connections and his studies, soundtracked by a selection of relevant songs  (including Talk Talk, Peter Bellamy, Steeleye Span, John Ireland, Dave Cousins, Archie Fisher, Mandy Morton & Spriguns, Robin Williamson and Alasdair Roberts).

If you don’t have the time to devote to reading all of Electric Eden’s 672 pages I would thoroughly recommend the broadcast as an overview or precis; if you have or plan to read the book then it’s a fine accompaniment.

You can listen to the Exotic Pylon / Jonny Mugwump / Rob Young show here.

As a final point… I’ve mentioned it before but Mr Young’s blog is also worth a peruse, particularly if you fancy a wander off into the digital garden via his selection of links, which is nicely split into The Isle Is Full Of Noises, Music From Neverland, Poly-Albion, Turning Leaves, The Magic Box, Paradise Enclosed and (more prosaically) Blogpile.

View his blog here.

File under:
Trails and Influences: Electronic Ether. Case #3/52.

And while we’re on the subject of folk horror (see Day #37/365 at A Year In The Country)…

This is a song by a good friend and sometimes creative compadre Ms She Rocola (and her compatriots in sound).

She sent me a link to it a while ago and it stuck in my mind like billy-o… it’s all glacial presentation, jade eyed jealousy and enchantment, slightly unsettling violins and a wandering off into the lost lives of the Pendle trials.

Listen to the song here.

It’s also accompanied by a rather fine photograph by Zoe Lloyd;  a stately repose amongst the rural landscape and corn rigs, a folkloric meandering through the textures of Sarah Moon and Deborah Turbeville (this particular entrancing of the soul was created using light catching techniques from previous eras – traditional wet plate to be more precise).

View more here.

Track credits:
Music by Andrea Fiorito, Words by She Rocola.
Violin: Andrea Fiorito, Vocals: She Rocola.
Recorded by Andrea Fiorito & Joe Whitney 2013

 

A hop and a skip to the future:

Burn The Witch has been released as on a limited edition CD by A Year In The Country as part of our Audiological Case Studies series. View that at Day #272/365.

 

File under:
Trails and Influences:
Electronic Ether. Case #2/52.

Now, I have to admit I’m actually a bit of a wuss where the horror genre is concerned: I’m too easily unsettled and gore leaves me repulsed/cold/I don’t really see the point of it.

However, I do make an exception for certain areas of what has become known as folk horror. Although it still can give me the heebie jeebies so I tread carefully and occasionally.

Folk horror? What’s that? Well, it’s generally applied to a film/tv/literary/cultural horror genre that often concerns itself with folklore and/or is set in and around rural areas/intrigues; drawing from the wald rather than the city.

To a degree, at least filmically, it could be said to largely start with a quite small set of films: there’s kind of an accepted canonic trio which takes in The Wicker Man at the top, followed by The Witchfinder General and Blood On Satans Claw (not necessarily always pleasant films, particularly the last two… though sometimes I forget that The Wicker Man isn’t a jolly folkloric singalong of a film but actually something much more, well, horrific).

Interestingly, this small group of films all sprung into existence in the early 1970s, a time when things folkloric/folk music/rustic experienced an upsurge of interest in the UK: possibly in reaction to and escape from the political, social and economic turmoil the country was experiencing at the time (industrial unrest, ineffectual government, high inflation, the final fading of empire dreams, internal insurrection and so on).

Anyway, a place I periodically return to in the electronic ether is Folk Horror Review, a site which concerns itself with goings on in the, well, folk horror genre. It’s not updated all that often, which I quite like as it gives it a more curated sense than some of the internet and it feels like a treat when there is a new post on it.

(There are loads of films which could be deemed folk horror which are often just quite nasty exploitation numbers – a group of tourists/outsiders move into/visit a rural setting, they don’t understand the old ways they come across and meet a grisly end via various supernatural/pagan forces seems to be the plot of most of them – but this blog doesn’t really overly concern itself with such things. It’s more interested in the odd and the otherly albion… hauntological, eldritch, intriguing and a touch cerebral rather than blood splattered I guess.)

So, at Folk Horror Review there are posts on The Wicker Man (of course) and it’s possible forebear Robin Redbreast, ghostly scribe Arthur Machen, the contemporary psychedelia (?) of A Field In England, Strange Attractor/Texte und Töne’s lovely The Twilight Language Of Nigel Kneale book, The Stone Tape, various BBC Ghost Stories For Christmas, Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising, Children Of The Stones, Psychomania (Nicky Henson in a 1970s UK zombie-motorbike-riding film… sign me up), Alistair Siddon’s In The Dark Half and interconnected items such as the compilation album that accompanies Rob Young’s Electric Eden, Hail Be You Sovereigns, Lief and Dear from Cold Springs dark folk britannica album series, the BFIs DVD release of film recordings of folk customs and ancient rural games Here’s A Health To The Barley Mow and A Fiend In The Furrows – an academic conference which explored folk horror in it’s various forms.

…well, I expect that will give you an idea of where the blog wanders and explores.

Basically, in part it’s not too dissimilar to some of the paths that A Year In The Country follows and as a site it creeps through the briars and undergrowth of a not always so idyllic rural landscape.

Wander through the glens here:  Folk Horror Review

A Fiend In The Furrows here.

Cold Springs John Barleycorn Reborn CD series here.

File under:
Trails and Influences: Electronic Ether.
Case #1/52.

The internet is full of all kinds of corners and niches… but this is one of my favourites.

What is it? Well, it’s a visual collection of a very specific stylish take on folk and folklore culture; if Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up had taken it’s starting point to be the wald rather than Swinging London, with art direction by Kenneth Anger if he had grown up in a secret garden corner of England rather than California and hung out with Judy Dyble rather than The Rolling Stones… and if the resulting film had been shot on location in a secluded green grove rather than the Kings Road…

…and if this imaginary celluloid dream had a soundtrack where the pastoral-playland-bubble living hipsters of The Touchables (an intriguing film which is also featured in Psychedelic Folkloristic), Miss Jean Shrimpton and her companions etc had been serenaded by late ’60s/early ’70s folk rock rather than Herbie Hancock and psychedelic pop minstrels Nirvana (no, not the well known Nirvana)…

Well, if most of those numerous ifs had happened then the vision and aesthetic that was presented to the world might well have been similar to the one found in Psychedelic Folkloristic.

The site explores what in many ways are familiar tropes of the other albion side of folk culture but how it is selected and put together creates a much more pleasing on the eye, suave, (fashionable?) take on such things… ’60s high fashion glamour having a cup of tea out in the fields amongst the old monuments indeed. Suprisingly refreshing to view as a take on a culture that is often thought of more in terms of anti-glamour and a rejection of style.

I suppose many of the photographs were drawn from a brief flicker of time when the beautiful people were interested in/adopted some of the aspects of folk culture and music… a time since which there have only been the occasional brief moments when the spotlight of more pop-culture/populist attention has shone on such things

(One of the only such times is probably in the mid-2000s when the largely American, loosely connected likes of Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsome, Coco Rosie etc were a flavour of the moment… or “the popular kids” as Jeanette Leech, author of Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Psychedelic Folk, wrote”).

Some of the inhabitants of Psychedelic Folkloristic? Well… Mellow Candle, Dando Shaft, Celia Birtwell, The Owl Service, Sandy Denny, Ossie Clark, Penelope Tree, The Stone Tape, Pattie Boyd, the aforementioned Jean Shrimpton and her sister Chrissie (Mick Jagger’s one time beau), Homer Sykes, Anita Pallenberg via Performance, alongside an intriguing set of semi-lost book covers. That small list of those who dwell in the gently lysergic meadows of Psychedelic Folkloristic and the photographs from the site on this A Year In The Country page will probably give you an idea of what I mean by ’60s high fashion glamour meeting folk culture.

Interestingly, it all fits together surprisingly well.

…I’m not sure if the world and aesthetic that Psychedelic Folkloristic presents existed in as coherent form as the site presents it but I don’t think that’s the point; as much as anything it is creating it’s own world from essentially found and collaged imagery and to be honest it’s a world that I could just lose myself in for hours.

Arianne Churchman who puts it together says on the site that she “suffers from slight decade displacement”, which leads me back round (again) to Rob Young’s idea of “imaginative time travel” and “experiments in consensual hallucination”… this site, if anywhere, is a good expression of such things.

Always a treat to visit and have a look-see at and wander through this particular electronic field, this is a lovely and lovingly curated set of images.

Visit it here: www.psychedelicfolkloristic.tumblr.com

Arianne Churchman’s site is here.

I Thought I Head A Sound event.

Not updated for a while but well worth a peruse and meander through: Rob Young’s Electric Eden