Crossing the Boundaries of Woodland Wraiths, the Uncanny City, Edgeland Expeditions and Frontier Dreamscapes
Released 9th October 2023.
Author, artwork and design: Stephen Prince. 101 pages. Paperback and Ebook.
Paperback and ebook available from Amazon UK, Amazon US and their various other worldwide sites and also from Lulu.
The paperback is also available to order from other online and bricks and mortar shops; please contact them directly for more information.
A Year In The County: Threshold Tales is an exploration of the edgelands, borderlands and liminal places in film; of the places whether literal, in the mind, cultural or amongst the paranormal realm where the boundaries between worlds, ways of life, the past and the future become thin and porous.
The book wanders amongst the overlooked, the hidden from view, isolated spaces and parallel planes of existence in cinema, taking in films that interconnect with both rural and urban “wyrd” culture from the shores of Albion out into the American Deep South and across the snowbound landscapes of Europe.
Amongst its pages, you’ll find a wide-ranging interthreaded journey that takes in the woodland wraiths of Without Name and The Watcher in the Woods, Columbus’ love letter to a time capsule of modernist architecture, Nadja and Vampir-Cuadecuc’s media phantom reimaginings of their genres, Dark Tower’s concrete bound haunting, Ghost Dog’s intertwining of spectral hip-hop with ancient Japanese tradition, No Surrender’s black comedy set amongst 1980s urban decay, the creating and discovering of new worlds of electronic sound in The Shock of the Future and the darkly seductive temptations of a preternatural carnival in Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Elsewhere the book journeys through the American wyrd frontier in Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus and explores the folk horror precursor The White Reindeer, the unearthing of buried secrets in Stephen Poliakoff’s Hidden City and Glorious 39, the rudderless tumbling down the rabbit hole in Kate and Laura Mulleavy’s Woodshock and the thinning of the barriers of time and place in Mike Hodges’ Black Rainbow.
The full chapter list is below:
The full chapter list is below:
1. Without Name: Stepping Over the Threshold of a Liminal Landscape
2. Dark Tower: Otherworldy Dysfunction
3. Columbus: Stasis and Escape Amongst Faded Utopian Dreams
4. The White Reindeer: A Folk Horror Precursor
5. The Watcher in the Woods and Something Wicked This Way Comes: Disney Darkness and the Curious Shadowed Side Paths of the House of Mouse (and an Intriguing Sidestep to British Housing Estates)
6. Nadja and Vampir-Cuadecuc: Hinterland Vampire Hunters and Spectral Hallucinatory Genre Flipsides
7. The Shock of the Future: Creating and Discovering New Electronic Worlds
8. Stephen Poliakoff’s Hidden City and Glorious 39: Unearthing Buried Secrets
9. Mike Hodges’ Black Rainbow: The Thinning of the Barriers of Time and Place
10. No Surrender and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai: Views and Stories from the Rooftops and Urban Edgelands
11. Kate and Laura Mulleavy’s Woodshock: A Rudderless Tumbling Down the Rabbit Hole
12. Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus: Journeys Through an American Wyrd Frontier
A Definition of Hauntology, its Recurring Themes and Intertwining with Otherly Folk and the Creation of a Rural and Urban Wyrd Cultural Landscape
As with the structure of the A Year In The Country project as a whole, which this book is part of, is inspired by the passing of time and the cyclical nature of the years, and so, as with months in a year, the book includes 12 chapters.
A Year In The Country: Cathode Ray and Celluloid Hinterlands is one of a number of books released by A Year In The Country. More details on those can be found either by clicking here or using the site’s menu to visit the A Year In The Country book page.
All of which just leaves me to say thanks to…
All who have bought, streamed and otherwise supported the A Year In The Country music releases, books and artifacts and everybody that visits the website and/or shares etc. posts elsewhere online.
All the performers who have contributed music to the A Year In The Country releases. It’s been a pleasure.
The people who have sold and distributed the A Year In The Country releases and/or lent their advice, including, amongst others: Jim Jupp of Ghost Box Records, The state51 Conspiracy in particular Shaun Yule and all at Norman Records especially Ant and Phil and Justin Watson of Front & Follow.
All the many, many people who have written about, commissioned pieces on etc A Year In The Country and its releases, including, to name just a few, John Coulthart, Cathi Unsworth, Simon Reynolds, DJ Food, Jude Rogers, Ben Graham, Neil Mason, Ian White, Matthew Sedition, Grey Malkin, James Gent, Massimo Ricci, Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills, Andy Morten, Isaak Lewis-Smith, Melanie Xulu, David V. Barrett, Sarah Gregory, Push, Sukhdev Sandhu, Alan Boon, Dave Thompson, Bob Fischer of The Haunted Generation and everybody else at Starburst, Fortean Times, Shindig!, Electronic Sound, Moonbuilding, We Are Cult and Moof. Also, to all at, amongst other publications, sites, etc Music Won’t Save You, Bliss Aquamarine, Wyrd Daze, The Golden Apples of the Sun, Mojo, Goldmine and Folk Horror Revival.
All those who have included A Year In The Country released tracks in their radio broadcasts, podcasts, etc, including Stuart Maconie, Gideon Coe, Nick Luscombe, James Papademetrie and Pete Wiggs of the The Séance, Kites and Pylons, Sunrise Ocean Bender, Flatland Frequencies, Gated Canal Community Radio, On the Wire and many others.
Ian Lowey for the dab hand design and editorial work for A Year In The Country and also Suzy Prince for the equally dab hand editorial work.
Verity Sharp for inviting me onto BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction and playing tracks from the A Year In The Country released albums and, Rebecca Gaskell for her admirable production of the show, Gary Milne of BBC Archives for his compiling and curation of video spectres, Tales from the Black Meadow author Chris Lambert for the audio journeys he created to accompany the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book and William “Billy” Harron as always for accidentally pointing me in the direction of the undercurrents of folk.
Also, my family for the ongoing support and to everybody whose work has inspired me on the wanderings, explorations and pathways of A Year In The Country.
Thanks, and a tip of the hat to you all!
