A selection of broadcasts, reviews etc of The Quietened Village reissue…
Pulselovers “The Coast In Flux” and Polypores “Playground Ritual” were included in the “You Will Improve Or Disappear” and “Anything, Anyone” episodes of Sunrise Ocean Bender, alongside their other eclectic and intriguing wanderings.
(As an aside the first of those episodes takes its title from Grey Frequency’s Ufology album, which I have written about previously. If “lo-fi drones, dark ambient textures, and cassette-looped field recordings” and an album themed around 20th century UFO folklore pique your interest then the album can be found here.)
The Heartwood Institute’s “Armboth & Wythburn” was on the playlist for episode 400 of Pull The Plug where it can be found in amongst the likes of tracks by Art Of The Memory Palace and sometimes fellow A Year In The Country travellers Listening Centre.
You, the Night & the Music played The Soulless Party’s “Damnatorum”, Cosmic Neighbourhood’s “Bunk Beds”, A Year In The Country’s “47 Days And Fathoms Deep” and The Rowan Amber Mill’s “Separations” on two separate shows originally broadcast on Sine FM, which can be visited here and here.
(As a further aside the gent who hosts that show also works as Pulselovers and has created the Woodford Halse released Undululating Waters compilations which I have also mentioned at A Year In The Country before and which are well worth a visit.)
Cosmic Neighbourhood’s “Bunk Beds” and Sproatly Smith’s “Lost Villages Of Holderness” were included in two episodes of the flipside of folk and spectral hauntological selections of The Unquiet Meadow. Visit the playlists for those here and here and the show’s page at Asheville FM here.
Verity Sharp played A Year In The Country’s “47 Days And Fathoms Deep” on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction – a show which is rather aptly described as involving “Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners.”
Visit the episode of the show here.
Cosmic Neighbourhood’s “Bunk Beds” and Sproatly Smith’s “The Lost Villages Of Holderness” were also played on episode 84 of Mind De-Coder:
“Sproatly Smith’s contribution addresses the strange lands lying east of Hull to the North Sea known as Holderness. This area has the fastest eroding coastline in Europe, losing 2 metres every year. The soft cliffs had supported villages and communities that have been swallowed by the tides. Elegiac, but never less than lovely, the track inhabits the slightly mournful quality of the shipping forecast alongside the wyrdfolk otherlysness of all their music.”
Visit the episode’s blog page here and its Mixcloud here, where you are likely to find “the sort of music that has slipped away into the cracks between reality”. Sounds good to me.
Dave Thompson reviewed the album at his Spincycle column, which can be found at Goldmine magazine’s site:
“The collection conjures its own memories – a landlocked version of Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic, perhaps. Each track unfolds like a snatch of soundtrack to a documentary that ought to be made; each one conveys a sense of the desolation it honors, whether at the moment of its destruction, or at some point on either side. Even those tracks that reach more for the feel of the theme, as opposed to the mood of a specific place, cannot help but touch the walls, or trace the ghosts, of these forgotten places. And remind us that maybe they’re not as quiet as people think.”
The Quietened Village is a study of and reflection on lost, disappeared and once were villages and hamlets that have wandered off the maps or that have become shells of their former lives and times.
The album features music and accompanying text on the tracks by The Straw Bear Band, Field Lines Cartographer, The Heartwood Institute, Howlround, The Rowan Amber Mill, Polypores, Pulselovers, The Soulless Party, Time Attendant, A Year In The Country, Sproatly Smith and Cosmic Neighbourhood.
More details on it can be found here.
As always a tip of the hat and thanks to all concerned.
