A selection of links and excerpts from reviews etc of The Shildam Hall Tapes album:
“Vic Mars contributes a woozy neoclassical dream sequence interspersed with snippets of vintage-style electronica; very lovely and totally in keeping with the album’s theme… The Heartwood Institute provide a foreboding piece of cinematic incidental music, its chilling and haunting atmosphere perfectly illustrating a seance taking part on the grounds of Shildam Hall… an engaging collection of dark, ethereal and psychedelic experimental sounds.”
“Morretti provides a marvellous piece in the Goblin/Fabio Frizzi manner that effortlessly conjures a title sequence of mists, coloured filters and Art Nouveau typefaces… (The Shildam Hall Tapes is) sinister, perfectly-pitched and leaving enough gaps in the scenario for the imagination to operate.”
“Suggestioni ispiratrici e caratteri del contenuto della raccolta corrispondono appieno con l’idea di colonna sonora per un film che non è possibile vedere, ma certamente immaginare, attraverso la sensibilità di artisti in grado di creare mondi immaginari, distanti nello spazio e nel tempo, ma originati ancora una volta da presenze immanenti tra i campi della Britannia rurale di questi anni.”
Raffaello Russo, Music Won’t Save You
(Read a fractured English translation here.)
“‘Ext – Day – Overgrown Garden’ is all knotweed and nettle, tendrils of melody and petals of expectation… Circle/Temple’s ‘Maze Sequence’ leads you through the silent hedges, and leaves you in the middle. You’ll find your own way out eventually. Probably… The Shildham Hall Tapes leaves you convinced that you remember the show; can picture certain scenes; might even recall the unease you felt when you went up to bed when it finished. Which is an startling achievement in itself. The fact that you now have proof that it happened is even more amazing.”
“The sounds venture into reinterpretation of folk culture and music, early electronic music experimentation, high fashion, psychedelia and the crossing over of the worlds of the aristocracy with pop/counter culture and elements of the underworld… Just as film is the visceral, visual experience needed to startle and stimulate the eyes, The Shildam Hall Tapes is the appropriate aural experience needed to caress and connect the ears to everything they are listening to.”
“…just as strange and accomplished as you’d expect… every track unsettles and enthralls in equal measure.”
Ben Graham, Shindig magazine, issue 82
“‘Day 12, Scene 2, Take 3: Hoffman’s Fall’… is a gorgeously woven twilight apparition that manages seamlessly to align itself to the outer points of the ghost box realm, amid a becoming spectral haze, these chiming serenades shimmer in and out of focus to play tic tac toe with both the enchanted and the eerie.”
Mark Barton, The Sunday Experience
The album can also be found in Simon Reynolds June 2018 Hauntology Parish Newsletter, in the company of the likes of Moon Wiring Club, Bloxham Tapes’ releases and Andrew Pekler’s Phantom Islands.
And now to the radio etc broadcasts:
Vic Mars “Ext – Day – Overgrown Garden” was featured on Eledir Seren’s Mind De-Coder show, which is described as:
“Your weekly fix of new and classic psychedelia, acid folk, krautrock, hauntology and avant-garde going’s on, segued into a continuous mix for listening pleasure.”
On that episode of the show you’ll find Vic Mar’s track amongst the likes of the Trunk Records release Music for Children, Lisa Knapp, Halo Maud, Folklore Tapes, Revbjelde and The Advisory Circle. Well worth taking a “trip” to visit.
The show was originally broadcast on Waiheke Radio, is archived at Mixcloud here and accompanying notes can be found at the Mind De-Coder site.
Verity Sharp played The Heartwood Institute’s “Shildam Hall Seance” on the 23rd August 2018 episode of BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction:
“A continuous curveball selection from the fringes of alternative music. Featuring the critically acclaimed voice of a rising star in English folk Jackie Oates, spontaneous explorations on repetition by Luke Wyland and reflections on an imaginary feature film lost to aristocratic decadence and psychedelic influences called The Shildam Hall Tapes, the latest release by A Year In The Country.”
Produced by Rebecca Gaskell, that show will be listenable to until around the 27th of September. Visit it here.
Pulselovers’, Listening Center’s and Gavino Moretti’s tracks from The Shildam Hall Tapes were played on Sunrise Ocean Bender (and where in a further connection to cinematic reimaginings they shared the airwaves with Sinoia Cave’s soundtrack to the “Reagan era fever dream” Beyond the Black Rainbow).
Originally broadcast on WRIR FM, the show is archived here.
Vic Mars’ and Listening Center’s tracks from the album were played on Flatland Frequencies:
“Playing the finest in electronic explorations, from early electroacoustic and musique concréte, to new and upcoming ambient and drone.”
Originally broadcast on Future Radio 107.8 FM, the show is archived here.
Field Line Cartographer’s “The Computer” was included in the 29th July 2018 episode of the Gated Canal Community Radio, which is ably hosted by the folk responsible for the Front & Follow and The Geography Trip labels, who respectively have been “offering a firm handshake to sonic reverie since 2007” and set out to explore “the exotic beside the mundane; tin foil glinting in the magpie’s mouth.”
Originally hosted by Reform Radio, the show is archived here.
Gavino Morretti’s “Dawn of a New Generation”, David Colohan’s “How We’ll Go Out” and Pulselovers’ “The Green Leaves of Shildam Hall” can be found amongst the spectral electronic and otherly folk wanderings of The Unquiet Meadow radio show.
Originally broadcast on WSFM-LP 103.3 FM, the show’s playlists are archived here, here and here.
Further details on the show can be found here.
Sproatly Smith’s “Galloping Backwards” was featured in a mix by The Ephemeral Man (alongside various musical accompaniments for a saggy old cloth cat created by misters Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate) which was released as part of issue 3 of the Wyrd Daze online zine/magazine.
That mix is archived at Mixcloud. Issue 3 of Wyrd Daze can be visited here.
And finally, in a rounding the circle manner, Vic Mars’ “Ext – Day – Overgrown Garden” was played on the You, the Night & the Music radio show, which is hosted by Mat Handley of Pulselovers.
Originally broadcast on Sine FM, the show is archived at Mixcloud here.
Thanks as always to everybody concerned.
The Shildam Hall Tapes contains “reflections on an imaginary film”:
“Little is known of the film’s plot but several unedited sections of the film and its soundtrack have surfaced, found amongst old filmstock sold as a job lot at auction – although how they came to be there is unknown.
The fragments of footage and audio that have appeared seem to show a film which was attempting to interweave and reflect the heady cultural mix of the times; of experiments and explorations in new ways of living, a burgeoning counter culture, a growing interest in and reinterpretation of folk culture and music, early electronic music experimentation, high fashion, psychedelia and the crossing over of the worlds of the aristocracy with pop/counter culture and elements of the underworld.
The Shildam Hall Tapes takes those fragments as its starting point and imagines what the completed soundtrack may have sounded like; creating a soundtrack for a film that never was.”
The album features work by Gavino Morretti, Sproatly Smith, Field Lines Cartographer, Vic Mars, Circle/Temple, A Year In The Country, The Heartwood Institute, David Colohan, Listening Centre and Pulselovers.
More details can be viewed here.
