The Quietened Bunker – Night and Dawn editions released

The CDs are now sold out but the album is available to download at our Bandcamp page, Amazon, The Tidal Store, 7digital etc and can be streamed on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube etc.

Audiological Transmissions Artifact #4
The Quietened Bunker is an exploration of the abandoned and/or decommissioned Cold War installations which lie under the land and that would have acted as selectively populated refuges/control centres if the button was ever pushed; a study and reflection on these chimeric bulwarks and the faded but still present memory of associated Cold War dread, of which they are stalwart, mouldering symbols.

Audiological contents created by Keith Seatman, Grey Frequency, A Year In The Country, Panabrite, Polypores, Listening Center, Time Attendant, Unknown Heretic and David Colohan.

Both editions hand-finished and custom printed using archival giclée pigment ink by
A Year In The Country.

Available via our Artifacts Shop, our Bandcamp Ether Victrola and at Norman Records.
Released today, 15th August 2016.

Night Edition. Limited to 52 copies. £25.00.
Hand-finished box-set contains: album on 1 x all black CDr, 12 page string bound booklet, 4 x badge pack, 4 x sticker pack & landscape format sticker.

Further encasement 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 with cover print.
3) Fully black CDr (black on top, black on playable side).
4) Black string bound booklet: 12 pages (6 sides printed);
Printed on textured fine art cotton rag paper, heavy card and semi-transparent vellum.
Hand numbered on the reverse.
5) 4 x badge set, contained in a see-through polythene bag with a folded card header.
6) 4 x vinyl style sticker pack, contained in a see-through polythene bag with a folded card header.
7) 1 x vinyl style landscape format sticker.

Dawn Edition. Limited to 104 copies. £12.00.
Hand-finished 1 x white/black CDr album in textured recycled fold out sleeve with inserts and badge.

Further encasement details:
1) Custom printed using archival giclée pigment ink.
2) Includes 25mm/1″ badge, secured with removable glue on string bound tag.
3) Back of one insert hand numbered.

Notes and Scribings:
The Quietened Bunker is an exploration of the abandoned and/or decommissioned Cold War installations which lie under the land and that would have acted as selectively populated refuges/control centres if the button was ever pushed.

They could be seen as once modern fortresses – reinforced concrete and blast doors replacing moats and stone battlements.

However, these subterranean fortresses would likely also have been places of entombment – somewhere that those who once ran the infrastructure and defence of the nation would watch the days pass as supplies dwindled and the inevitable time came when the air filters would give out, all long before the world would become habitable again.

Accompanying the main bunkers in the UK were a network of hundreds of small underground monitoring posts which would report on the size of an attack and the resulting fallout. Manned by volunteers, they were to be operational for just three weeks.

The intention was that these would form part of a network of civil defence and management, accompanied by government issued Protect and Survive leaflets/broadcasts that would have offered advice on how to protect home and hearth via little more than whitewashing windows as blast protection and forming a shelter by leaning mattresses against an inner wall of your house.

Looking back, such preparations can seem a reflection of some kind of madness or delusion in the collective consciousness and the halls of power – a tilting at windmills that was necessary to protect national psyches from the reality and aftermath of the sudden use and descending of mechanisms with almost indescribable destructive power.

Now it can all seem like a dream from another world, one where for a number of decades populations lived under the day-to-day threat of total annihilation and where millions was spent on this network of shelters and defences; preparations to allow fiddling once all had burned, such bunkers possibly being nearer to utilitarian national follies than fortresses.

Indeed, today they are as likely to be signposted tourist attractions as operative defences.

The Quietened Bunker reflects on these chimeric bulwarks and the faded but still present memory of associated Cold War dread, of which they are stalwart, mouldering symbols.

Further Audiological Contents Details:
1) Lower Level Clock Room – Keith Seatman
2) Drakelow Tunnels – Grey Frequency
3) The Filter’s Gone / The Last Man Plays The Last Piano – A Year In The Country
4) Aggregates II – Panabrite
5) Bunker 4: Decommissioned – Polypores
6) Comms: Seen Through The Grey – Listening Center
7) Crafty Mechanics – Time Attendant
8) Crush Depth – Unknown Heretic
9) Waiting For The Blazing Skies – David Colohan