Wraparound cover art for The Marks Upon The Land book – a 60 page book which collects all 104 images that were created during the first spin-around-the-sun of A Year In The Country.
The images in the book are part of A Year In The Country’s explorations of an otherly pastoralism, a wandering amongst subculture that draws from the undergrowth of the land – the patterns beneath the plough, pylons and amongst the edgelands.
Those wanderings take in the beauty and escape of rural pastures, intertwined with a search for expressions of an underlying unsettledness to the bucolic countryside dream.
The Marks Upon The Land takes inspiration from and channels the outer reaches of folk culture and the layered spectralities of what has come to be known as hauntology, alongside memories of childhood countryside idylls spent under the shadow of Cold War end of days paranoia and amongst the dreamscapes of dystopic science fiction tales.
“The Marks Upon The Land… converts the bucolically familiar into something more eerie or even sinister, a series of widescreen mutations that create pareidolia spectres through symmetry and layering. Seen in isolation, these images are arresting enough but they gain power by being collected together, fashioning a statement of intent.” (John Coulthart at his Feuilleton site.)
Links:
Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
- Artifact Report #5/52a: The Dark Chamber EP / The Marks Upon The Land Clips
- The Marks Upon The Land / The Dark Chamber EP book, CD & cassette released: Artifact Report #10a/52a
- The Marks Upon The Land And Fellow Travellers; Broadcasts And Reviews: Artifact Report #11/52a
