The Texte und Töne published The Twilight Language of Nigel Kneale was the first of their books that I owned. As with all their releases, it is beautifully designed by Rob Carmichael of Seen Studios and Risograph printed, which is a process that is a cross between photocopying and screenprinting, and which creates a rather lovely tactile and human feeling finish.
The book came with a compilation cassette of specially composed work featuring tracks by Asterism & Xylitol, Emma Hammond, Robin The Fog, Hong Kong In The 60s, Listening Center, Mordant Music and The Real Tuesday Weld, a number of whom have come to be associated with the spectral explorations of hauntology.
It was released to accompany a one-day event in New York called called A Cathode Ray Séance: The Haunted Worlds of Nigel Kneale, which took place in 2012. The event included screenings of work written by Nigel Kneale including The Stone Tape, Murrain, an episode of Beasts, Quatermass and the Pit, a multimedia performance of his lost work The Road and a panel discussion
The book, cassette and event are a fine example of when otherly pastoral, hauntological related etc work from previous decades has inspired new and exploratory work.
Taking as its inspiration Nigel Kneale’s work, the text is eclectically themed and takes a varied approach to its subject matter. It featured essays, conversations and fiction orientated work by Mark Fisher, Will Fowler, Ken Hollings, Paolo Javier, Roger Luckhurst, Sophia Al-Maria, Bilge Ebiri, China Mieville, Drew Mulholland, Ken Hollings, David Pike, Dave Tompkins, Mark Pilkington, Michael Vazquez and Evan Calder Williams, alongside a number of other contributors.
The content’s eclectic nature includes amongst other things notes, stills and scripts of an imaginary lost series of Quatermass, discussion of Nigel Kneale’s Kinvig and its curious foray into comedy and how youthful discoveries lead to the creation of the Quatermass inspired album The Séance at Hobs Lane. The book also wanders amongst loosely interconnected subjects including tape loops, the intertwining of the space race and the electronic music of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Ghost Box Records, Sapphire & Steel, M. R. James’ ghost stories, and a whole lot more.
The original post published during the first year of A Year In The Country:
