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The A Year In The Country: Wyrd Explorations book

A Decade Of Wandering Through Spectral Fields

Released 29th June 2024.
Author, artwork and design: Stephen Prince. 551 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 Country: Wyrd Explorations collects writing from the first decade of the A Year In The Country project, which has explored and documented the interconnected rise of interest in the wyrd, eerie and re-enchanted landscape, folk horror, the further reaches of folk music and the parallel worlds of hauntology.

The book includes a selection of revised and at times extended writing from the first five A Year In The Country non-fiction books and the first ten years of posts on the project’s website alongside previously unpublished work from the A Year In The Country archives.

It reflects a personal journey through hidden pathways in the cultural undergrowth, a “wandering through spectral fields” that across 52 chapters includes writing on amongst many others the films, television series, directors, writers, books, musicians, record labels etc:

The Wicker Man, Ghost Box Records, Vashti Bunyan, Broadcast, The Changes, The Radiophonic Workshop, Quatermass, Castles In Space, The Hare And The Moon, Excalibur, The Black Meadow, Penda’s Fen, Howlround, Rob Young’s Electric Eden…

The Day Of The Triffids, The Delaware Road, Mark Fisher, Kill List, Jonny Trunk, Gone To Earth, Weird Walk, The Watcher In The Woods, The Heartwood Institute, Detectorists, The Stone Tape, Sapphire & Steel, Peter Strickland, The Book Of The Lost, Wolfen, Benjamin Myers Tam Lin…

Raven, Folklore Tapes, Sproatly Smith, Delia Derbyshire, The White Reindeer, John Carpenter, Curse Of The Crimson Altar, Boards Of Canada, Robert Macfarlane, The Company Of Wolves, Burial, Finders Keepers Records and The Owl Service.

The chapters and topics in the book are listed below:

Preface: A Definition of Hauntology, its Recurring Themes and Intertwining with Otherly Folk and the Exploration of a Rural and Urban Wyrd Cultural Landscape

The Wicker Man: Casting Aside Convention on Summerisle

Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music: Folk vs Pop, the Harvesting of Cultural Landscapes and Acts of Enclosure Old and New

Ghost Box Records, Paul Weller and Broadcast: Parallel Worlds, Conjuring Spectral Memories and Journeys Through Exploratory Avant-Pop Landscapes

Weirdlore, Folk Police Recordings, Seasons They Change, Sproatly Smith, Rowan :  Morrison and The Hare And The Moon: Notes from the Acid Folk Underground and a Trio of Wyrd Folk Travellers

Bagpuss: Portal Views into a Magical Never-Never Land

Texte und Töne, Benjamin Myers and Robert Macfarlane: Explorations of an Eerie Landscape

Curse of the Crimson Altar, Witchfinder General, The Blood on Satan’s Claw and Tony Tenser: Folk Horror Roots and From but a Few Seedlings Did a Great Forest Grow

Benjamin Stone, Sarah Hannant, Homer Sykes, Charles Fréger and Axel Hoedt: Folkloric Photography and a Lineage of Documentings and Imaginings

Hot Fuzz: A Rural Idyll Gone Rogue

Jane Weaver, Magpahi, Andy Votel, Paper Dollhouse and The Eccentronic Research Council: Finders Keepers/Bird Records Nestings and the Deep Running Roots of Wyrd Cut and Pasting

John Carpenter, Prince of Darkness, Halloween III and Village of the Damned: Fractured Dream Transmissions and a Collapsing into Ghosts and Shadows

Excalibur: John Boorman’s Creation of an Otherworldly Arthurian Dream

Gone to Earth and The Wild Heart: Stories from the Haunted Borderlands

Jeffrey Siedler’s Logic Formations, The Spectron Video Synthesizer and Kevin Foakes’ Wheels of Light: Spectres of Video’s Past and Far Off Lightshows

Kill List, Puffball, In the Dark Half and Butter on the Latch: Folk Horror Descendants by Way of the Kitchen Sink

Judy Dyble and Andy Lewis’ Summer Dancing: Acid folk Meets Acid Jazz via a Left-Field Pop Parallel Universe

Katalin Varga, Berberian Sound Studio and The Duke of Burgundy: Arthouse Evolution and Crossing the Thresholds of the Hinterland Worlds of Peter Strickland

Marion Adnams, Paul Nash and Unsettling Landscapes: Wyrd Art Forebears and Pathways Through Time

Oss Oss Wee Oss: Joining the Dance Far Away from the City

The Stone Tape, Quatermass and The Road: Nigel Kneale’s Unearthing of Tales from Buried Ancient Pasts

See Blue Audio, Fragile X and Lyli J: Soundscapes of Discovery and Escape

Shadows: Josephine Poole, Susan Cooper and the Layering of Time, Folklore and Myth

The Pale Horse and Endless Night: Lost Amongst Spells and Urban Wyrd Nightmares

The Mind Beyond and Stones: Activating Ancient Preter-natural Defence Mechanisms and a Sidestep into the Pioneering Work of Irene Shubik, Verity Lambert and Delia Derbyshire

Sapphire & Steel, Mark Fisher and Ghosts in the Machine: Nowhere, Forever and Faded Spaces within Cultural Circuitry

Requiem, The Living and the Dead, Britannia and Detectorists: Albion in the Overgrowth and Timeslip Echoes

Raven: Unearthing Hidden Buried Power and Battles to Safe-guard the Future

Folklore Tapes and the Wyrd Britannia Festival: Journeying to Hidden Corners of the Land and the Explorations of an Arcane Research Project

Delia Derbyshire, Caroline Katz, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Hannah Peel, Delia Derbyshire Appreciation Society, The Radiophonic Workshop and Drew Mulholland: Forging Bridges Across Time

Boards of Canada: The Past Inside the Present

Play for Today and Rainy Day Women: Village Mob Rule and the Spectres of Archival Television

The Delaware Road, Bunker Archaeology, Waiting for the End of the World, Subterranea Britannica, The Quietened Bunker and Disinformation: Ghosts, Havens and Curious Repurposings Beneath our Feet

Queens of Evil, Tam Lin and The Touchables: High Fashion Transitional Psych Folk Horror, Pastoral Fantasy and Dreamlike Isolation

Burial: Spectres of Spectres Awash in a Landscape of Static

“Savage Party”, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and E4’s Wicker Man Ident: Further Glimpses of Albion in the Overgrowth

Resistance and Tank 432: Conflict in the Landscape and Interconnected Pathways to the Outer Edges of Genre Film

Richard Mabey’s The Unofficial Countryside and Edward Chell’s Soft Estate: Edgeland Documents and Memories

Tales from the Black Meadow, The Book of the Lost and The Equestrian Vortex: The Imagined Spaces of Imaginary Soundtracks

The Company of Wolves, Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Gretel: Witchhunters, Wolfen and The Keep: Dark Fairy Tales, Lycanthropes and the Dangers of Wandering off the Path

The Heartwood Institute, Jeremy Sandford and Ron Reid’s Tomorrow’s People and Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s Winstanley: Exploring Far Off Utopian Flipsides

José Ramón Larraz’s Symptoms and Robert Altman’s Images: Hauntological Begetters and Gothic Bucolia

Castles In Space, Nick Taylor’s Spectral Studio, Pulselovers, Keith Seatman and Dave Clarkson: Otherly Geometries and Ghosts of the Seaside

Takashi Doscher’s Still: Southern Gothic, Wyrd Americana and Eternal Cycles

The Seasons, Jonny Trunk, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Howlround: A Yearning for Library Music, Experiments in Educational Music and Tape Loop Tributes

Robin Redbreast, Children of the Stones, The Ash Tree, The Changes, Penda’s Fen, Red Shift, Sky and The Owl Service: Otherly Television Landscapes

David Rudkin’s White Lady: Darker Hued Mainstream Transmissions from a Far Away World

The Midwich Cuckoos and The Day of the Triffids: John Wyndham, Celluloid Cuckoos and Survival in the Aftermath

The Owl Service, Anne Briggs, The Watersons, Lutine and Audrey Copard: Folk Revisiters, Revivalists and Reinterpreters

The Watcher in the Woods and Something Wicked This Way Comes: Disney Darkness and Curiously Shadowed Side Paths of the House of Mouse (and an Intriguing Sidestep to Urban Wyrd amongst British Housing Estates)

Vashti Bunyan: From Here to Before: Whispering Fairy  Stories until They are Real

Without Name: Stepping Over the Threshold of a Liminal Landscape

The White Reindeer: Folk Horror Far Away from the Darkened Woods

 

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