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Day #286/365: Nancy Wallace; old stories from the hearth and heart

Nancy Wallace-Old Stories-Dom Cooper-A Year In The CountryFile under: Trails and Influences: Touchstones. Case #35/52.

One of the songs that has stayed with me the most leading up to and throughout this year in the country is Nancy Wallace’s version of I Live Not Where I Love.

It’s a uplifting and yet also sadly moving traditional song, taken gently into other fields and next to hearths and hearts by Ms Wallace.

Fine stuff.

It appears on her Old Stories album, which was released by Midwich Records. I knew little or nothing about the music this record contained but had a curious urge to own it… and upon discovering this song I think I was given my reason why that was so.

The cover is by Dom Cooper, sometimes of The Owl Service and sometimes of The Straw Bear Band and features a country cottage that is billowing smoke… it could be heading towards twee Rocket Cottage-isms (see Day #252/365) but it sidesteps such things. There is just a hint of something unsettling to the image, a slight hint of the eerie to the trees that surround it but it is also curiously comforting as an image; an idyll without the sometimes twee associations and connotations of such things.

The song itself I’ve always tended to think of as a cover version of some relatively recent song, I’m not sure why, despite its traditional origins. I suppose the nearest to it being of more modern provenance is Tim Hart and Maddy Prior’s version on Summer Solstice (or later Steeleye Span’s performing of it)…

Whenever I hear Nancy Wallace’s version I always expect at some point an almost choral joining in by other voices, possibly in the style of The Owl Service’s also rather fine version of Willy O’Winsbury on View From A Hill (see Day #30/365) but the song wends its way with quiet restraint.

Listen to I Live Not Where I Love via the half-of-half-half-of a tuppence paying curiously legal often bootlegisms of a corporation here (ah, the respectability that money, convenience, lawyers and aquiescence can purchase).

Who’s afeard: visit the work of Dom Cooper around these parts at Day #170/365 and in the ether here.

Nancy Wallace’s work is also well worth a wander amongst… you will find her working independently and also alongside other reinterpreters and reimaginers of folk tradition such as The Memory Band, Sharron Kraus and The Owl Service.

Consider Ms Sharron Kraus’ lullabies for the land at Day #58/365.

Visit Ms Wallace in the ether here. Visit the cuckoos of Midwich Records here.

 

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

Sapphire-and-Steel-1200 collage 2-final-scene-ending-A-Year-in-The-Country
File under: Trails and Influences: Recent Explorations. Case #39/52.

Slowly, slowly I’m making my way through Sapphire and Steel.

Sapphire and Steel-A Year In The Country-4-higher contrastI think I watched some of it back when it was originally broadcast but I can’t be sure. In my mind it is associated with being only able to watch every other week as in the days prior to the widespread availability of home video recorders there was an “imposed from the top” attempt at democratically alternating week by week which clashing television programs were watched… a solution which I expect left neither part particularly satisfied.

It may not have been that series, that may have been the stories of a band of Federation fighters from a similar time…

(Please skip the section below if you have not yet seen the series but intend to at some point… or in more brief language, below lurks spoilers)…

Mark Fisher-Ghosts Of My Life-Zero Books-hauntology-A Year In The CountryI already know how Sapphire and Steel’s story ends because Mark Fisher’s Ghosts Of My Life book opens with it; the couple are left stranded in a roadside cafe that is suspended in space. Mark Fisher says in his Ghosts Of My Life book that it seems like a sequence that is designed to haunt the adolescent mind (see Day #163/365)… and now the putting down on paper of that haunting has haunted my (not so) adolescent mind.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that ending but my mind thinks I have. I can visualise it even; the two main characters staring out of curtained window set in a building in the void… ah, looking back over A Year In The Country I’ve wandered across it before…

That sounds too precise to not be the actual thing but I’m not sure when/how I would’ve seen it.

Sapphire and Steel-A Year In The Country-3China Miéville talks about Sapphire and Steel in The Twilight Language of Nigel Kneale (a fine book, well worth seeking out, visit it at Day #15/365), in particular the first episode, commenting how “nothing happens”… I don’t think that is the case, a lot happens, there just isn’t excessively kinetic movement from one location and big-bang moment to another… compared to much of modern day transmitted stories it feels curiously almost soothing for not having that constant fast paced action. At the same time it doesn’t feel like you need to recalibrate yourself to appreciate it (once again, see Day #33/365), in contrast to say some of 1970s television, you can just sit back and let it wash over you.

Slowly, slowly making my way through its stories seems appropriate in a way.

Possibly I’ve finally wandered more directly to Sapphire and Steel because I’m currently reading John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which I maybe came to because the next chapter but two in Ghosts Of My Life concerns itself with and which is also referenced in the section on Sapphire and Steel…

…although my mind had forgotten that (and curiously the book is thus far much less 1970s grit than I thought, more almost effete Oxbridge parlour games… although ones which can result in a shot in the back as much as a snubbing by your fellow educationallife-long priveligists… perhaps that grit and anomie is reserved for the 1970s television adaptation).

Sapphire and Steel-A Year In The Country-2

Talking of 1970s grit… there’s something about the colours and special effects of Sapphire and Steel that seems like the apothesis of such things. Even with the glamour of Ms Lumley and the (slight) dash of David McCallum…

Sapphire and Steel-A Year In The Country-6-smallerSapphire and Steel was such a curious choice for prime time broadcasting; science fiction as seen through a pop-cultural avant garde lens. At the time that was the case but held up against much of today’s often fan pleasing rollercoaster ride of non-stop action it seems even more so… if you should watch it then I suspect you will wander and marvel over quite how it ended up on the front of the TV Times (massively mainstream in nature and circulation; one of only two television listings magazines in the UK back in the 1970s).

In the chapter “The Slow Cancellation Of The Future”, Sapphire and Steel’s casting out and possible betrayal “by their own side” is a kind of analogy or introduction to some of the themes of hauntology; its sense of futures lost and of time/cultural time leeching forwards and backwards.

Sapphire and Steel-A Year In The Country-5

In this final episode which I have possibly never seen but which I think I have, fellow cafe inhabitants tell Sapphire and Steel:

“This is the trap. This is nowhere, and it’s forever.”

Hauntology and late-stage capitalism’s myth of its own endless omnipotence? A curious denial of history and non-learning from the thoughts of King Canute.

“This is the trap. This is nowhere, and it’s forever.”

I think on that note I shall leave this page.

 

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Day #283/365: Noah’s Castle; a slightly overlooked artifact…

Noahs Castle-1979 TV series-John Rowe Townsend-A Year In The Country-4File under: Trails and Influences. Other Pathways. Case #46/52.

There’s an almost cannon of late 1960s/1970s television series/broadcasts that have come to be seen as hauntological touchstones, cathode ray flickers that have resonated through the years and come to represent an otherly spectral folklore.

In that particular more widely accepted cannon you could probably start with The Owl Service and Children Of The Stones and wander off towards The Changes, Sky, The Stone Tape… all good stuff and to varying degrees and for different reasons somewhat explored and/or appreciated around these parts…

But one series which often seems to be slightly overlooked amongst such things is 1979’s Noahs Castle.

Many of the above series were intended as children’s/younger persons entertainment; their oddness and possible inappropriateness for their target audience is now part of their appeal…

…but I suspect that the ideas and plot of Noah’s Castle quite possibly trump them all in such terms; it is a series that has at its core hyperinflation, food shortages, societal collapse and a patriarch’s attempt to hole up and bunker away with his family… cue troops on the streets and food riots/looting…

Noahs Castle-1979 TV series-John Rowe Townsend-A Year In The Country-7

Noahs Castle-1979 TV series-John Rowe Townsend-A Year In The CountryAlthough, I suppose that not too dissimilar ideas of the downtrodden poor and divided dystopias still appear today as fiction for not quite yet adults in the likes of The Hunger Games…

(As I type, Noah’s Castle also reminds me of the comic book version of V For Vendetta in a way; a tale of a Britain returned to the deprivations of a more austere earlier age – V For Vendetta seems set in some alternative or returned to version of the 1970s.)

Curious themes for stories intended for a particular transitional age, although enduringly popular it would seem that  they may well serve some purpose during that liminal time, possibly in some way helping with a coming to terms with adult responsibilities and the removal of the protections of “grown-ups”

In terms of being a particular view of societal collapse, Noah’s Castle could be seen as the lower budget, more youth orientated flipside to the final series of Quatermass… although the final tale of Dr Quatermass is probably easier viewing material for a modern sensibility. Noah’s Castle requires more of a recalibration towards the rhythms and pacing of earlier times (see Day #33/365)…

Noahs Castle-1979 TV series-John Rowe Townsend-A Year In The Country-6

…although in terms of subcultures, Quatermasses restless youth are more new age/traveller-ish (in the TV series at least), whereas those in Noah’s Castle are nearer to a kind of street-level punk…

And Noah’s Castle could also be linked to a mini-genre of 1970s largely cinematic science fiction that dealt with societal/ecological/resource collapse that I’ve tended to wander amongst around these parts, ie Soylent Green, Zardoz, Phase IV, Silent Running and No Blade Of Grass… although in No Blade Of Grass the particular youth subculture that is running amok are those oft-picked upon lawless bikers…

I think also I was drawn to (slightly) re-watch Noah’s Castle as on first broadcast I had only seen literally a minute or two of it but I had gleaned the general theme of food shortages which had intrigued me and my mind had wandered off with that small slice of material to create and consider a whole world and story around it…

Noahs Castle-1979 TV series-John Rowe Townsend-A Year In The Country-2

…and so, as mentioned earlier in this particular year in the country (see Day #183/365), when I revisited it, I wasn’t necessarily rewatching the series that I remembered, the images on the screen seemed in some ways quite removed and separate from the stories in my mind, a sense that was added to by the aforementioned different calibrations in terms of stories.

…and I tend to think of it as being called Noah’s Ark rather than Noah’s Castle, the Ark title seeming more fitting in a way…

And returning to a slight overlooking… Possibly as well Noah’s Castle feels slightly separate from the earlier mentioned canon as it seems to be one of the few of such things where its wandering back out into the world hasn’t been stamped with a seal of official cultural approval by a venerated cultural institution (ie the BFI) or by the endless trawling of the nation’s cathode archives by a particular more commercial body (ie Network).

Noahs Castle-1979 TV series-A Year In The Country

Anyways view a small slice of the series here (with a curiously punk rawk soundtrack rather than the intriguing voice over of the nation’s woes that was the original end title music). View the silver disc resending here.

Noahs Castle-1979 TV series-John Rowe Townsend-A Year In The Country-3

Noahs Castle-John Rowe Townsendtv tie in tv adaptation book-A Year In The CountryView the aforementioned curious mini-genre and lawless bikers at Day #88/365 and also a slither or so at Day #83/365.

 

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Day #282/365: Further appreciations of accidental art; Poles and Pylons

Telegraph-Poles-and-Electric-Pylons-A-Year-In-The-Country-3b
Trails and Influences: Electronic Ether. Case #35/52.

Telegraph Poles and Electric Pylons-A Year In The Country-6Well, while I can appreciate the work of The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society (see Day #278/365), in some ways it is only half the story.

The other half would be contained within the pages of Poles and Pylons (or to give it its full name Telegraph Poles and Electricity Pylons).

Wherein alongside communication poles and their gossamer threads can be found fellow land striding brethren and their humming power carrying cables.

(This is possibly a more otherly/psychogeographical inspired study and collation than The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society but both places in the ether compliment one another somewhat; the flipside of one another’s coins. Both places remind me in a way of Jonny Trunks book collection of library music covers, having similarities of an appreciation for work which was created for utilitarian reasons but which has – at least in the eye of some beholders- become accidental art.)

Telegraph Poles and Electric Pylons-A Year In The Country-5Alongside Threads cold war and further consideration of how such lines bind society together and dreams of tales of aviaristic listening posts and escape (see Day #282/365), these electricity pylons also belong to another ongoing touchstone in regards to this year in the country; the image of the juxtaposition of the old ways and the new on the cover of Rob Young’s Electric Eden…

Telegraph Poles and Electric Pylons-A Year In The Country-3

…or indeed the cautionary tales of Public Information films and childhood years playing under the aforementioned humming lines in amongst the debris of what have come to be known as edgelands.

Telegraph Poles and Electric Pylons-A Year In The Country-1

Visit those cautionary tales of Dark And Lonely Water at Day #270/365 and a visual tribute at
Day #81/365. Visit documents of edgelands at Day #160/365.

Telegraph Poles and Electric Pylons-A Year In The Country-2

Telegraph Poles and Electric Pylons-A Year In The Country-4
Visit Poles And Pylons in the ether here.

 

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Day #280/365: Artifact #40/52; She Rocola Burn The Witch / Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town; The Arising Edition – archival print and 3″ CD released

The CDs and prints are now sold out but the single is available to download at our Bandcamp page.

She Rocola Burn The Witch / Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town. The Arising Edition.
Archival print and 3″ CD. £28.00. Limited edition of 52.

She Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-The Arising Edition-print and front of CD-A Year In The Country

Audiological Research and Pathways; Case #5.
Audiological contents: Burn The Witch (2.20) / Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town (2.41).

Printed and hand-finished by A Year In The Country.
Available via our: Artifacts ShopDiscogs Audiological Archive and our Bandcamp Ether Victrola.

Free UK shipping. Normally ships in 7-14 days.

She Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-The Arising Edition-scroll and CD-A Year In The Country

She Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-The Arising Edition-print-A Year In The Country

She Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-The Arising Edition-print and CD-A Year In The Country

She Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-The Arising Edition-back of CD insert-A Year In The Country

She Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-The Arising Edition-print numbering-A Year In The Country She Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-The Arising Edition-signature-A Year In The Country
The print features an extended version of the Burn The Witch / Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town cover artwork.

Print size: A3; 42 x 29.7cm / 16.5 x 11.7 inches (includes 1.5cm / 0.6 inch border).

Printed on textured fine art cotton rag paper using true black archival Giclée pigment inks (museum/gallery quality inks – resistant to fading for 75+ years).

Hand numbered and signed by the AYITC Ocular Signals Department.

Shipped string bound.

 

3″/8cm 2-track white-topped mini CDr, includes the songs Burn The Witch and Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town.

CD insert is hand numbered and signed by She Rocola.

Insert is printed on textured fine art cotton rag paper using true black archival Giclée pigment inks.

 

Credits:

Burn The Witch (2014)
Words: She Rocola.
Music: Andrea Fiorito.
Vocals: She Rocola.
Violin: Andrea Fiorito.
Recorded and produced by Joe Whitney and Andrea Fiorito.

Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town (2014)
Words: She Rocola.
Music: She Rocola/Joe Whitney.
Vocals & Guitar: She Rocola.
Bass & Toy Piano: Joe Whitney.
Recorded and produced by Joe Whitney.

www.soundcloud.com/sherocola

www.flytowhitneysmoon.com

Artwork and packaging design by AYITC Ocular Signals Department.

 

She Rocola-Ellen Terry beetlewing dress-Zoe Lloyd-Mrs Nettleship-A Year In The CountryVictorian wet-plate photograph of She Rocola by Zoe LLoyd.

Ms She Rocola’s dress is inspired by a beetle wing dress made for Ellen Terry in the 19th century. The dress was originally designed and made by Mrs Nettleship…

The intention was to make the original dress “…look as much like soft chain armour as I could and yet have something that would give the appearance of the scales of a serpent… (it is) sewn all over with real green beetle wings, and a narrow border in Celtic designs, worked out in rubies and diamonds“.

More details via the Victoria and Albert Museum here and via electronic printed matter here.

www.zoelloyd.co.uk

 

The song Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town draws from Ms She Rocola’s own personal folklore and that of her home town; childhood experiences of chasing her playmates around Molly Leigh’s grave and the rhymes which accompanied such games. It is an audiological conjuring of hazy, sleepy small-hours memories and dreams from those times.

Burn The Witch’s story is interconnected with those childhood memories and is in part inspired by formative viewings of late-night folk-horror films from in front of and behind the sofa.

Here at A Year In The Country, we are proud to be able to send these stories out into the world.

The story and mythology of Molly Leigh can be investigated further here.

 

Available via our: Artifacts ShopDiscogs Audiological Archive and our Bandcamp Ether Victrola.

Price include free UK shipping. Normally ships within 7-14 days.

 

Preview Burn The Witch / Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town below:

 

She Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-Night Edition-box set-A Year In The CountryShe Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-Day Edition-front of booklet-A Year In The Country

Also available as a limited box set Night Edition and string bound booklet Day Edition (see above).
Visit those at Day #272/365.

 

Previous wandering amongst the corn rigs and Victorian light catching with Ms She Rocola at
Day #39/365 of A Year In The Country.

 

The full current library of the A Year In The Country Audiological Research and Pathways series:

Case Study #1: Grey Frequency: Immersion
Case Study #2: Hand of Stabs: Black-Veined White
Case Study #3: Michael Tanner: Nine of Swords
Case Study #5: She Rocola: Burn The Witch / Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town

Grey Frequency-Immersion-Night Edition-A Year In The Country-2Hand of Stabs-Black-Veined White-Night Edition-boxset-A Year In The CountryMichael Tanner-Nine Of Swords-Night Edition-box set-A Year In The Country

 

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Day #279/365: The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society

The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society-A Year In The Country-2Trails and Influences: Electronic Ether. Case #34/52.

The ether has given space, nooks and crannies to all kinds and manner of niche interests…

…although I expect the Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society is one of the more niche, even amongst the further flung of such crannies…

As somebody who can be endlessly fascinated by these interconnected parts of our societies’ infrastructure, I can appreciate the sentiment of such a site (although part of me hankers after days when such a thing would have been a hard to find samizdat stapled zine)…

And such infrastructure underpins some of the core themes touchstones of A Year In The Country; the film Threads, its cold war and beyond dread takes its name from such lines and well, threads, which bind a society together, allowing it to function and communicate and how easily disrupted such gossamer strands can be.

The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society declares that its aim is to celebrate “the glorious everyday mundanitude of these simple silent sentinels the world over”, which has a rather fine poetic lyricism and intent.

The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society-A Year In The CountryAmongst its pages you will find Pole Of The Month and Pole Appreciation Day alongside reporting on an appreciation of poles from around the world… and it’s a sense of appreciation that is woven tightly throughout this collection and body of work; though sometimes cast in jovial language, there is a genuine love for these utilitarian objects, an appreciation of their (possibly) accidental art.

The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society-A Year In The Country-3

For some reason it reminds me of the fun, farce and foibles that are particularly peculiar to this particular island… it seems like but a hop, skip and step or two away from the trial and tribulations of Reggie Perrin-isms.

The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society-A Year In The Country-4

Visit The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society in the ether here.

Visit the creation of aviaristic refuges via listening post perching at Day #46/365.

 

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Day #278/365: Dybukk’s Dozen of 1973; A Gathering, Conflagration and Surveying…

File under: Trails and Influences: Touchstones. Case #35/52.

Well, around these parts I seem to often refer to and be drawn to cultural artifacts from one year in particular, 1973…

If I see that something was made in 1973 I tend to be more interested in it and there’s not a lot of leighway. It’s not an overtly conscious thing but when perusing anything past that year I tend to feel that it represents a move and tumble towards a sea change in society…

…earlier, particularly around 1970 and there still tends to be a 1960s psych/mod sharpness to it, cultural work from that time hasn’t yet become a reflection of the end of a dream and a society that wasn’t yet fully struggling with the changes and aftermath from that awakening…

And so, I was curious to cast my eye and mind back to that particular year and over the days, weeks and months of A Year In The Country and a few interconnected pathways to see what I turned up from that particular year…

So…

Dark and Lonely Water-2-A Year In The Country-Public Information Film
1) Day #273/365: Dark and Lonely Water… a recent visiting, which in part prompted this particular wandering, surveying and gathering; probably the hauntological Public Information Film. All scattered debris and that voice…

2) Day #90/365: The Wickerman… well, need I say more. Quite possibly the touchstone for all things interconnected to A Year In The Country and particular cultural explorations of an otherly Albion… a reflection of 60s counter cultural urges and explorations gone wayward/bad?…

Psychomania 1971-screenshot-A Year In The Country
3) Day #37/365: Psychomania; Nicky Henson and zombie motorcyclers bothering shoppers in 1970s Britain? Well, count me in for that I think…

4) Day #266/365: Judy Dyble stepped back from making music; well, the removal of such a voice from the landscape in itself could well be seen to harken a wandering into darker times.

5) Day #195/365: World On A Wire; a rather prescient virtual reality… also curiously against the grain of 1970s grit…

Quatermass-1979-The Conclusion-Nigel Kneale-A Year In The Country
6) Day #1973/365: Preliminary filming began on the final Quatermass series; ah, I only recently discovered this. It makes the series make more sense in a way as it seems like such a reflection of a society that was in dire strife/potentially collapsing, as was the way in 1973… such things were still going on by the time of its broadcast but by then the stamping heels of a certain iron lady were already marking the soul of the land.

7) Day #213/365: Soylent Green… part of the mini-genre of ecology/resources having gone to heck in a handbasket. Spoiler alert: “Soylent Green Is People”… make room, make room.

Tender Vessels-Home Rites-Cathy Ward and Eric Wright-A Year In The Country 2
8) Day #87/365; The Asphyx… of all the Hammer films, this one seems to have stuck with my imagination from all the years back, more concept than shock’n’horror driven perhaps? ‘Tis many years since I have seen it but I was reminded and returned to it via the work of Cathy and Eric Ward…

9) The Final Programme; talking of earlier 1970s films often seeming like they belonged more to a particular kind of sharp psychedelia… something of a cuckoo in the nest. It escaped into the world in 1973 and while it showed a side of decadence gone dark it also seems to stroll equally from a dandified 1960s counter-culture.

Blue Blood-1973-Oliver Reed-A Year In The Country10) Blue Blood; I once heard myself describe this as being like The Wicker Man without a plot. On a rewatching it’s not necessarily but a line could be drawn from that film to this… Mr Oliver Read and companies questionable allegiances in a country estate; probably nearer to the bubble occurring decadences of Performance (and maybe a touch of The Servant) but with a background of truth, a lord of the land with multiple wifelets, a Page 3 girl and redecorating of the stately home with DIY rather physically amative murals… not sure if this particular celluloid story would be made today. Unsettling/troubling are words that come to mind.

11) Day #10/365: England Made Me; the film but when I think of it tends to send me back to Black Box Recorder’s album of the same name… a very particular non-hauntological slice of hauntology and to semi-quote Rob Young, appears to have sprung from a mythological England of the past that has its own particular brutalities but ones which are all English stiff upper lip and quietly furious repression.

The Changes-1975-BBC-A Year In The Country-812) Day #46/365: The Changes (filmed in 1973, released in 1975); ah, the bad wires – a tale of a world that has rejected and destroyed all modern technology to return to an almost medieval/feudal way of life and in which the sound of the combustion engine has become the mark of the devil… I suspect it was considered a little too close to home to be broadcast in the year of its making to a nation huddled around candles and suffering from the effects of an oil crisis.

13) Carry On Girls; ah, Carry on films. These feel like they have become part of our modern-day folklore, the soul of England in a way. This particular part of the series seems to fairly directly reflect a Britain in crisis and a tipping point where the aforementioned 60s utopian dream curdled, as did British cinema, to descend into smutty farce and tattered screens.

 

As I’ve mentioned around these parts before, 1973 in Britain was a particular unsettled time politically and socially; there was an almighty battle between organised labour and the elected (but essentially oligarchically self-appointed) managers of the land, an oil shortage and power crisis, a 3 day working week and so forth…

…and one thing that has stuck in my head along the way towards and through this A Year In The Country is Rob Young’s comment that possibly people were drawn to folk/folkloric/pastoral culture and its projection of undisturbed imagined idylls as an escape from that… hence Steeleye Span in the charts and one of folk/folk rock’s high water marks in popularity and amongst the wider society.

Hmmm.

 

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Day #275/365: Borrowings from Albion in the overgrowth (#2)… becometh a fumetti…

030-Randall & Hopkirk-Charlie Higson-Vic Reeves-Bob Mortimer-Emilia Fox-Tom Baker-A Year In The CountryFile under: Trails and Influences.
Other Pathways. Case #45/52.

And while I’m talking about borrowings from Albion in the overgrowth and slightly guilty pleasures (see Day #273/365)…

When I was a considerably younger personage than I am now I had a small number of book adaptations of films that used multiple photographs from their cinematic parents in order to tell their story in a live action comic strip/annotated stills manner.

You would see similar kinds of things in romance comics, where the tales of loves won, lost and fretted over were represented by posed actors…

Very occasionally since I’ll come across such a book from back when that I haven’t seen before and they always seem like quite a find, an odd little corner of culture and merchandising.

Or indeed Punk magazine’s couple of issues done in that vein that featured New York’s downtown/blank generation cognoscenti such as Debbie Harry, Richard Hell, Chris Stein, Joey Ramone, David Johansen and the like. Good stuff if you should ever find such a thing.

They’re known as fumetti apparently, somewhat popular on the continent.

The only other time I have come across such things was in the pages of the revival of Eagle comic in the early 1980s…

…and talking of revivals and revivifications… a day or so ago I had a wander through the folkloric, folk-horror, science fiction and fantasy borrowings of the remake of Randall & Hopkirk (deceased)…

…and talking of that and fumettis, I thought a bit of a mix and match of the two may well be appropriate.

009-Randall & Hopkirk-Charlie Higson-Vic Reeves-Bob Mortimer-Emilia Fox-Tom Baker-A Year In The CountryThis is a particular episode called Fair Isle and this particular fumetti could well be called spot the borrowing and reference point…

…which is largely a rather sizeable amount of The Wickerman (which is… spoiler alert… postmodernly referred in the episode itself)…

…and along the way a somewhat familiar approach to a particular island state, a dash of Doctor Who-esque 1970s costume clad monsters…

…a 1970s Doctor himself, a police officer who has the physiognomy of Sergeant Howie’s brackish beliefs, a visit to the eccentric Lord of the manner…

…folkloric costumes as decoration in the lordly manor which remind me somewhat of the (car crash) of The Wicker Tree…

…the kung fu butler from The Pink Panther… hi-jinks with the locals in the very local hostelry… the hiding of the covenant in Raiders Of The Lost Ark… some more chasing by those costume clad folkloric monsters… “I would’ve got away with it if it wasn’t for you pesky kids” Scooby Doo-esque unveliing… the transformations of Altered States courtesy of Ken Rusell…

Anyways… complete the captions below…

035-Randall & Hopkirk-Charlie Higson-Vic Reeves-Bob Mortimer-Emilia Fox-Tom Baker-A Year In The Country
Ah, straw bears and a Summerisle similarity I see…

034-Randall & Hopkirk-Charlie Higson-Vic Reeves-Bob Mortimer-Emilia Fox-Tom Baker-A Year In The Country
Our intrepid hero is corned by 1970s Doctor Who-esque folkloric costume creatures…

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The approach to the island state with its own laws and ways of doing things…

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The Doctor himself…

027-Randall & Hopkirk-Charlie Higson-Vic Reeves-Bob Mortimer-Emilia Fox-Tom Baker-A Year In The CountrySergeant Howie’s belief system makes an appearance in physical form…

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A visit to the eccentric Lord ruler of this island state… perhaps to discuss the growing of fruit and food resources?

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Just a touch of the faceless villain creatures that seemed so prevalent in 1970s science fiction and fantasy…

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Hi-jinks with the locals in the local hostelry…

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…and now to hide the relics…

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Those costume clad folkloric monsters don’t give up easily…

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The Scooby Doo-esque “I would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you pesky kids” unmasking…

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…and you could add to that list, although not directly represented in the fumetti above but in the episode itself…

…an island state that produces its own unique foodstuff under the direction of one particular lord and master… the ecological worries and disasters of Doomwatch (another part of the mini-genre of ecology and resources gone to heck in a handbasket that was somewhat prevalent in the 1970s).

Oh and although without an ability to take references from cultural work that hasn’t yet happened, this is unlikely to have been a reference point… but there is more than a dash of the workmanlike-took-me-a-few-goes-to-get-through-but-I-don’t-seem-to-hate-it-as-much-as-I-thought-I-would-and-its-still-better-than-The-Wicker-Tree remake of The Wicker Man in the playing with gender expectations and roles in this Fair Isle story.

A visit to that particular mini-genre in the company of No Blade Of Grass, Z.P.G., Soylent Green, Phase IV, The Omega Man, Logan’s Run at Day #88/365… artifacts from that curious mini-genre at Day #213/365… and a visual tip of the hat to both that particular mini-genre and a particular lionheart(ess) at Day #83/365.

 

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Day #274/365: Borrowings from Albion in the overgrowth…

Randall & Hopkirk-collage-A Year In The CountryFile under: Trails and Influences. Other Pathways. Case #44/52.

I have a mild soft-spot for the turn of the millennium remake of Randall and Hopkirk (deceased), chaired by Charlie Higson, starring Vic Reeves, Bob Mortimer, Emilia Fox and a gloriously white-haired Tom Baker.

It is a series which concerns itself with a still living private investigator who is visited/helped/hindered by the white-suited ghost of his former partner (the deceased of the title) and isn’t a million miles away from the likes of say Doctor Who in its mixing of fantasy and science fiction in a mainstream setting.

And yes, it’s cheesy. Yes, it has that curiously dated appearance that cultural work from the 90s and around then currently has… not yet old enough to have gained a patina of retro fetishistic kitsch, not quite modern enough to fit with current tastes… yes, Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer’s acting isn’t necessarily going to be having Sir turning in his grave but…

…it’s good knockabout fun. Nothing too challenging but it often shows a great love for a whole slew of fantasy, crime horror and science fiction films, television literature etc from years gone by.

The episode Man Of Substance in particular, which seems to predate Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg’s Hot Fuzz in a number of its themes, borrowings and the story of a sleepy country idyll gone bad by a year or few…

It begins somewhat noirishly with a red silk clad femme fatale giving a private eye the glad eye and purr in his office…

…before it wanders off to a classic chocolate box English idyll of a village… all tea rooms, commemorative tea towels, an avuncular British bobby on the beat (who appears to be the living incarnation of a laughing policeman you might have chuckle for 20p at the seaside); a neat, quiet and tidy piece of heritage real estate.

But… well, not so surprisingly things aren’t quite what they seem (spoiler alert about now)…

The village has a dark secret or two and quite quickly turns more than a little Belbury/Hot Fuzz like; something is not quite right in this particular chocolate box.

Randall & Hopkirk-collage-A Year In The CountryEssentially its population have been trapped inbetween life and death, unable to leave the village since the days that a pestilence had cleared a considerable percentage of the English population a number of centuries previously.

I guess we should have known something wasn’t quite right when we passed that monument earlier on the way into the village that looked as though it should have been on the cover of one of the John Barleycorn Reborn Dark Britannica albums (see Day #248/365).

Along the way towards the almost taking over the world shennanigans that the villagers get up to, the episodes wanders into the territory of/borrows from;

The Wickerman… petal scattering woodland nymphs dance through the churchyard… 1970-ish British horror portmanteau films such as The Monster Club and its “you’re never going to escape from the village” theme… medievalistic fetishistic pleasures by way of Curse Of The Crimson Altar… a touch of Hansel and Gretel and the fattening up of the chose calfs… the somewhat unpleasant punishments of the incarcerated via The Witchfinder General (or it’s less well-known brethren The Bloody Judge)… maybe even a touch of Penda’s Fen and its sense of the mythic/mystical in the landscape and returning kings… and back to The Wickerman, as the fool becomes the king for the day (and eternity) during a local festival  in service of the communities ends and a pyre is made for a sacrifical burning…

…and just having Tom Baker, possibly still the archetypal Doctor Who, in amongst it all makes it fundamentally interconnected in the minds of watchers of a certain vintage with certain culture and tropes. Oh and that’s before we get to Gareth Thomas, one Federation fighting Blake’s 7 leader as a real ale pushing pub landlord who later turns out in his festival garb only to be revealed as a centuries old medieval lord of the manor…

Randall & Hopkirk-collage-A Year In The CountryAt the time of its transmission the revivification of all things Wicker Man and folk-horror-ish had not yet fully gained pace and yet here are many of its themes and interests looked to for peak viewing entertainment.

(Just prior to Randall & Hopkirk’s broadcast the The Wickerman soundtrack had been first sent out into the world in 1998 on its own via the efforts and investigating of Jonny Trunk and Trunk Records, which has been thought to have been one of the sparks that reignited that particular conflagration of interest but the number of different references to fantastic fictions from before it suggest a knowledge, interest and love of such things that stretches back some way… Randall & Hopkirk isn’t as dark but thinking back this episode may have shared some ground with the similar time period’s The League Of Gentleman and its mixing of horror and comedy in a rural setting gone bad where “You bain’t be from round here” is the general refrain).

So, borrowings from Albion in the overgrowth… as a TV episode this is a guilty pleasure but a pleasure nonetheless.

A previous glimpse of Albion in the overgrowth at Day #146/365, in the good company of pop-psych-folk courtesy of Stealing Sheep.

Some background information on Randall & Hopkirk (deceased) via the electronic pages of the world’s current Encyclopedia Britannica-And-All-Else here.

The Curse Of The Crimson Altar and the majesty of Ms Steele at Day #184/365.

That from which it borrows: The Wickerman – the future lost vessels and artifacts of modern folklore at Day #90/365.

Randall & Hopkirk-collage-A Year In The Country

 

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Day #273/365: Artifact #39/52; She Rocola Burn The Witch / Molly Leigh Of The Mother town CD released – Night / Day Editions

The CDs are now sold out but the single is available to download at our Bandcamp page.

She Rocola Burn The Witch / Molly Leigh Of The Mother town CD.
Night Edition £22.00.  Day edition £15.00.

She Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-Night and Day Editions side by side-A Year In The CountryAudiological Research and Pathways; Case #5.
Audiological contents: Burn The Witch (2.20) / Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town (2.41).

Hand-finished albums available via our: Artifacts ShopDiscogs Audiological Archive and our Bandcamp Ether Victrola.

 

Night Edition: Limited to 52 copies. £22.00.

Hand finished box-set contains: album on all black CDr, 12 page string bound booklet, 4 x 25mm badge pack, 3 x vinyl style waterproof stickers.

She Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-Night Edition-box set-A Year In The CountryShe Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-Night Edition-open box-A Year In The Country.psdShe Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-Night Edition-top and bottom of all black CDr-A Year In The Country.psd
Top of CDr.                                                            Bottom of CDr.

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She Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-Night Edition-inner page back cover-A Year In The Country She Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-Night Edition-inner page 2-A Year In The CountryShe Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-Night Edition-back of booklet-A Year In The Country
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Night edition details:

1) Booklet/cover art custom printed using archival Giclée pigment ink.

2) Contained in a matchbox style sliding two-part rigid matt card box.

3) Printed box cover print.

4) Fully black CDr (black on top, black on playable side).

5) Black string bound 12.8cm x 12.8cm booklet:
a) Hand numbered and signed
b) Hand bone creased cover.
c) 12 pages (6 sides printed).
d) Front and rear covers are printed on 310gsm textured fine art cotton rag paper.
e) Two inner sheets are printed on 245gsm paper.
f) Two inner sheets are printed on semi-transparent 110gsm vellum paper.

6) 4 x 25mm/1″ badge set, contained in a see-through polythene bag with a folded card header.

7) 3 x vinyl style waterproof stickers: 9.5 x 6.8cm, 7.2 x 6.8cm, 2.9 x 2.6cm.

 

Day Edition: Limited to 52 copies. £15.00.

White/black CDr album in 10 page string bound booklet packaging.
She Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-Day Edition-front of booklet-A Year In The Country
She Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-Day Edition-Zoe Lloyd photograph with vellum overlay-A Year In The CountryShe Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-Day Edition-Zoe Lloyd photograph-A Year In The CountryShe Rocola-Burn The Witch-Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town-Day Edition-top and bottom of CDr-A Year In The Country
Top of CDr.                                                         Bottom of CDr.

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Day Edition Details:

1) Booklet custom printed using archival Giclée pigment ink.

2) Wrapped in wax sealed, hand stamped black tissue paper.

3) White/black CDr (white on top, black on playable side).

4) Jute string bound 14.4cm x 13.2cm booklet:

a) Hand bone creased cover.
b) 10 pages (5 sides printed);
c) Front and rear covers are printed on 310gsm textured fine art cotton rag paper.
d) Two inner sheets are printed on 245gsm paper.
e) One inner sheet is printed on semi-transparent 110gsm vellum paper.
h) Hand numbered and signed.

5) CDr held in protective fleece-lined sleeve.

 

Credits:

Burn The Witch (2014)
Words: She Rocola.
Music: Andrea Fiorito.
Vocals: She Rocola.
Violin: Andrea Fiorito.
Recorded and produced by Joe Whitney and Andrea Fiorito.

Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town (2014)
Words: She Rocola.
Music: She Rocola/Joe Whitney.
Vocals & Guitar: She Rocola.
Bass & Toy Piano: Joe Whitney.
Recorded and produced by Joe Whitney.

www.soundcloud.com/sherocola

www.flytowhitneysmoon.com

Artwork and packaging design by AYITC Ocular Signals Department.

 

She Rocola-Ellen Terry beetlewing dress-Zoe Lloyd-Mrs Nettleship-A Year In The CountryVictorian wet-plate photograph of She Rocola by Zoe LLoyd.

Ms She Rocola’s dress is inspired by a beetle wing dress made for Ellen Terry in the 19th century. The dress was originally designed and made by Mrs Nettleship…

The intention was to make the original dress “…look as much like soft chain armour as I could and yet have something that would give the appearance of the scales of a serpent… (it is) sewn all over with real green beetle wings, and a narrow border in Celtic designs, worked out in rubies and diamonds“.

More details via the Victoria and Albert Museum here and via electronic printed matter here.

www.zoelloyd.co.uk

 

The song Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town draws from Ms She Rocola’s own personal folklore and that of her home town; childhood experiences of chasing her playmates around Molly Leigh’s grave and the rhymes which accompanied such games. It is an audiological conjuring of hazy, sleepy small-hours memories and dreams from those times.

Burn The Witch’s story is interconnected with those childhood memories and is in part inspired by formative viewings of late-night folk-horror films from in front of and behind the sofa.

Here at A Year In The Country, we are proud to be able to send these stories out into the world.

The story and mythology of Molly Leigh can be investigated further here.

 

Available via our: Artifacts ShopDiscogs Audiological Archive and our Bandcamp Ether Victrola.

Prices include free UK shipping. Normally ships within 7-14 days.

 

Preview Burn The Witch / Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town below.

 

Previous wandering amongst the corn rigs and Victorian light catching with Ms She Rocola at
Day #39/365 of A Year In The Country.

 

The full current library of the A Year In The Country Audiological Research and Pathways series:

Case Study #1: Grey Frequency: Immersion
Case Study #2: Hand of Stabs: Black-Veined White
Case Study #3: Michael Tanner: Nine of Swords
Case Study #5: She Rocola: Burn The Witch / Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town

Grey Frequency-Immersion-Night Edition-A Year In The Country-2Hand of Stabs-Black-Veined White-Night Edition-boxset-A Year In The CountryMichael Tanner-Nine Of Swords-Night Edition-box set-A Year In The Country

 

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Day #272/365: Axel Hoedt’s folkloric club kid rogues gallery and symbolic expulsions…

Axel Hoedt-Fasnacht-Once A Year-Der Steidl-German folklore-A Year In The Country-rogues gallery collage 1
File under: Trails and Influences: Recent Explorations. Case #38/52.

I find Axel Hoedt’s images of German folkloric costume, from his Once A Year book, somewhat intriguing and also somewhat unsettling.

…they put me in mind of folklore as rethought by club kids (think Party Monster), with a certain percentage of 1970s Doctor “how do we scare the heck out of people for relatively tuppence ha’penny” Who added for good measure.

There’s a sense of being in amongst the denizens of a land far from the twee fields of folklore with this particular slice of karnivalesque dressing up…

This is from information about the book:

The Swabian-Alemannic carnival, known as Fasnacht, Fastnacht or Fasnet, is a custom in southwest Germany when the cold and grim spirits of winter are symbolically hunted down and expelled. Every year around January and February processions of people make their way through the streets of Endingen, Sachsenheim, Kissleg, Singen, Wilfingen and Triberg dressed up lavishly as demons, witches, earthly spirits and fearful animals to enact this scene of symbolic expulsion.

The language used seems brutal and harsh; hunted down, expelled, expulsion, fearful…

Axel Hoedt-Fasnacht-Once A Year-Der Steidl-German folklore-A Year In The Country-7-collage 2

The creatures his photographs capture (and I use that word somewhat appropriately and possibly hopefully) seem like the darker urban cousins of Charles Frégers Wilder Mann (see Day #65/365), which in themselves are not all cuddly and light… but Axel Hoedt’s once a year capturees are voyagers from further flung outlands and less well-lit crevices of imagination.

Hmmm. Not sure I want to spend all that much time amongst these particular revelers…

Axel Hoedt-Fasnacht-Once A Year-Der Steidl-German folklore-A Year In The Country-2

Visit Axel Hoedt in the ether here. Visit his bibliographers Steidl Verlag here.

 

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Day #271/365: The Spirit Of Dark And Lonely Water and a hop and skip to lost municipal paternalisms…

Dark and Lonely Water-2-A Year In The Country-Public Information Films-1973-Central Office Of Information-Charley Says-Network DVD
File under: Trails and Influences. Recent Explorations. Case #37/52.

The Spirit Of Dark And Lonely Water is a “classic” Public Information Film from 1973, renowned for having scared the heck out of a generation of youngster…

Public Information Films were a curiously blunt tool used to educate the population, often on matters of health and safety, issued by the government-run/funded Central Office Of Information in the UK. The whole structure, naming and concept puts me in mind of a previous eras underfunded, unsophisticated take on a kind of benign paternal, “we know best” tea and limp sandwiches committee in charge of a sub-sub-sub-Orwellianism… but which actually may well have sprung forth in part from that previous eras social consensus orientated wish to help, nurture and protect its citizens.

Dark and Lonely Water-2-A Year In The Country-Public Information Films-1973-Central Office Of Information-Charley Says-Network DVD-2

The first thing that struck me when I went back to revisit this particular Public Information Film was some kind of similarity with that other cultural artefact of 1973, The Wickerman, at the point when Lord Summerisle tells Sergeant Howie of the characteristics he had that made him ideal as their sacrifice/source of plant renewal…

I am the spirit of dark and lonely water, ready to trap the unwary, the show-off, the fool…

A man who would come here of his own free will. A man who has come here with the power of a king by representing the law… A man who has come here as a fool…

(Of course, adding some extra phosphorous, nitrogen and potassium to the plants nourishment via a good fertiliser may well have had a better chance of increasing apple growth but probably wouldn’t have made for as good a story. Such are human foibles…)

Dark and Lonely Water-2-A Year In The Country-Public Information Films-1973-Central Office Of Information-Charley Says-Network DVD-3

I suppose in part, both films have come to signify/been repurposed to become part of a form of modern-day folklore… The Wickerman more directly in a folkloric sense, Dark And Lonely Water more in a hauntological manner.

Also, it wasn’t as scary as I thought it might have been. On a first re-viewing I found it oddly almost comic in a way, although that may just be my mind connecting particular clothing aesthetics with knockabout 1970s childrens shows.

But then what struck me was the scene that pans across rusted debris on a river bank…
Under the water there are traps: old cars, bedsteads, weeds, hidden depths…

There was something about this, mixed with the styles of clothing in the film and the sense of, well essentially playing on wastelands, that reminded me of just how foreign and far away place the early 1970s are from today; the journey that a society has gone on from youngsters playing amongst a cultures debris, in the muddy puddles and potential deathtraps of its then edgelands (although that world did not yet exist at the time) and discarded places to a time of much more intensified commodification and birthday trips to softplay centres and the like that cost hundreds of pounds.

Hmmm.

In that sense, the film seems like an antideluvian recording of a pre-Thatcher, (not actually) end of history, the market is all time and with but a hop and a skip or two could be seen as a document produced during one of the times when UK society was battling over its future shape, order and social consensus. A transmission from a time when the future was being fought over and lost; hence the link to the themes/interests of hauntological study and its yearnings for forgotten futures and municipally organised utopias.

Such themes/work appear to consider in part that maybe such paternalistic tendencies within politics/society weren’t such a bad thing, particularly in contrast with the harsher market lead times in which we live; a sense that what was once considered Big Brother was also possibly a more nuanced “big brother”.

Dark and Lonely Water-2-A Year In The Country-Public Information Films-1973-Central Office Of Information-Charley Says-Network DVD-4

So yes, it’s that year, 1973.

Hmmm again…

Dark and Lonely Water-2-A Year In The Country-Public Information Films-1973-Central Office Of Information-Charley Says-Network DVD-5

A few earlier and outside pathways;

Playing amongst the discards and the work of Jon Brooks: Mind How You Go; Day #81/365.

Edgeland Report Documents: Day #115/365; Edward Chell’s Soft Estates. Day #160/365 (Cases #1a (return), #2a-5a.).

Day #183/365: Steam engine time and remnants of transmissions before the flood.

Dark and Lonely Water-2-A Year In The Country-Public Information Films-1973-Central Office Of Information-Charley Says-Network DVD-6

View Dark And Lonely Water: via the official apparatus, via a samizdat video platform which groweth rich on the fruits of largely unpaid labour and enthusiasm for dissemination.

…peruse the script here. Charley Says: an extensive silver disc archiving here and here.

 

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Day #268/365: Forest. Graveyard and wanderings towards darker shores and glades…

Forest-Full Circle-A Year In The Country

File under: Trails and Influences: Touchstones. Case #34/52.

And while I’m in the subject of overlooked gems that turned my head towards the further fringes of folk music and its possibilities away from the cultural stereotypes that can be associated with it (see Day #266/365)…

Forest’s Graveyard, which I also discovered via Bob Stanley’s Gather In The Mushrooms compilation (see way back near the start of the year here).

For a long time I knew almost nothing about Forest and quite enjoyed it that way. In fact, I knew so little that for a good while of that long time I had assumed that the singer was female…

I’ve actually read quite a bit about them I think but my mind seems to have quite quietly hidden away the associated information and I seem to enjoy just wandering off into the music.

The little else I know; they were a trio from the late 1960s/earlier 1970s who hailed from a Northern English town (with a most unethereal name considering the music they produced). One of the band has since worked on music with his son which appears on one of the Dark Britannica John Barleycorn albums (see Day #248/365)…

They put out two albums and then… well, no more.

How would I define Forest’s Graveyard? Well, minstrel like, classical/early music/medieval balladry, acid/psych folk may well be a reasonable reference point… gothic folk maybe?

On first glance the cover of the album Full Circle from when and where the song came appear quite pleasant, gently, pastoral and whimsical… and photographs of the band from the time put me in mind of the gentle kind of English reverie that the likes of Bagpuss and Emily may well have sprung from…

Forest-Full Circle-psych folk-acid folk-A Year In The Country

…but if you should step into the inner sleeve of Full Circle or listen closely to the lyrics of Graveyard… well that would be stepping towards the territory of the unsettling folk-horror of the likes of Comus.

I shall let you wander off into those particular pastures and nightmares if you should wish here and here.

John Barleycorn Reborn Rebirth-Dark Britannica-Cold Spring-A Year In The Country-collageAnd now that I come to type and think about it, it would not be particularly hard to draw a line that stretched from this song and forward to what is sometimes labelled doom-folk, gloom-folk, neo-folk, pagan-folk and the like… the outer, darker shores of folk music that are associated with and in a way a mutation from certain strands of industrial music (more in the exploratory art sense, ie post-Throbbing Gristle than the electronic body music use of that genre name)… some of which is explored on the aforementioned Dark Britannica series.

Novemthree-tshirt design-A Year In The Country

(If you should wish to explore such things, then heading towards the work of Novemthree may well prove fruitful – see Day #86/365)…

Considerably more background information and story on Forest courtesy of Terrascope here.

A saggy old cloth cat and curious cultural connections here and studies of such things here.

 

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Day #267/365: Morning Way. Trader Horne.

Morning Way-Trader Horne-Judy Dyble-A Year In The Country-2
File under: Trails and Influences: Touchstones. Case #33/52.

Well, this is something of a hop, skip and step back to near the start of the year…

Morning Way by Trader Horne, as come upon by my good self amongst the oft-overlooked treasures of Gather In The Mushrooms (see below)…

To my mind and ear this particular song is something of an apotheosis of all things that have come to be known as acid/psych folk.

It sits just at a particular point at the very end of the 1960s/very start of the 1970s and in amongst its notes there is a crystalline purity of a heady, exploratory dream just before it began to tip over into something and somewhere else.

Morning Way-Trader Horne-Judy Dyble-A Year In The Country-disc
The song is from the album of the same name (their only album it pains me to say)… and talking of playful lysergisms, the cover art reminds me of Malcom English’s Carnaby Street illustrations but re-thought by way of Oliver Postgate and The Pogles, maybe after stepping out for an imbibe and escapade or two with Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius (albeit during an evening when he was in a lighter mood)…

I’ve mentioned this before but this was probably one of two songs that I heard where I thought “Hmmm, something interesting going on here, this isn’t the idea of folk music that I thought I knew”…
Judy Dyble-Fairport Convention-A Year In The CountryIt’s a decidedly explorative (that phrase again) track but also wonderfully melodic and accessible. It is a shimmering and a promise of an other world that you may just be able to step into, amongst and back to, even if only for but a few brief moments.

I’ve just gone away and taken a look and listen at the lyrics in full for Morning Way… the opening set of lines still stops me in my tracks when I hear them… and looking at the remainder of the lyrics, there’s a sadness, a gladness, a hope and an optimism to what may well be somebody’s passing.

…and in an alternative timeline, Judy Dyble of Trader Horne went on to be lauded as one of the voices of the high watermark of folk rock (prior to this she sang with an early incarnation of Fairport Convention but stepped back from music in 1973 for a number of years… ah, it’s that year again).

Morning Way-Trader Horne-Judy Dyble-A Year In The Country-4Trader Horne had what could be called a psychedelic/folk influenced appearance/image but one that had a sharp, almost high fashion touch, edging towards the likes of Ossie Clarke and Celia Birtwell…

With that in mind, that other timeline I expect would need to be curated and visualised by Psychedelic Folkloristic (once again, see below),

Ah, we can but dream.

Talking of which…

Dreaming strands of nightmare
Are sticking to my feet
It’s time to wake up and throw away
The last remaining sheet

Sunlight sliding down my back
And dripping on the gray
It’s time to watch the dawning light
Reveal the morning way

Dreams are fading
Now it’s nearly noon
And then it’s afternoon
The leaves are creeping
Green inside the day

Morning Way-Trader Horne-Judy Dyble-A Year In The Country

To where the friends
Who used to lend me love
Are all above my head
And looking down at me
To smile at how it ought to be

Morning Way-Trader Horne-Judy Dyble-A Year In The Country-back cover
To where the friends

Who used to lend me love
Are all above my head
And looking down at me
To smile at how it ought to be

To where the friends
Who used to lend me love
Are all above my head
And looking down at me
To smile at how it ought to be

Visit Mr Bob Stanley’s rather fine collection of such semi-lost gems, Gather In The Mushrooms, here.

Visit a few other crystalline voices that have been lost and found over the years at Day #141/365.

1-Judy Dyble-Trader Horne-Fairport Convention-Psychedelic Folkloristic-A Year In The Country Judy Dyble-Trader Horne-Fairport Convention-Psychedelic Folkloristic-A Year In The CountryVisit Psychedelic Folkloristic at A Year In The Country here and its curators rather fine slight decade displacement elsewhere in the ether here.

Ms Judy Dyble in the ether today here.