A year in the country : wandering through spectral fields : journeys in otherly pastoralism, the further reaches of folk and the parallel worlds of hauntology / Stephen Prince.
A collection of essays that originally appeared as posts on the A year in the country website in 2014.
Contents:
Tim Hart, Maddy Prior and "The dalesman's litany" : a yearning for imaginative idylls and a counterpart to tales of hellish mills -- Notes on the text -- Electric Eden : unearthing Britain's visionary music : folk vs. pop, less harvested cultural landscapes and acts of eclosure, old and new -- Gather in the mushrooms : early signposts and underground acid folk explorations -- Hauntology : places where society goes to dream, the defining and deletion of spectres and the making of an ungenre -- Cuckoos in the same nest : hauntological and otherly folk confluences and intertwinings -- Ghost Box Records : parallel worlds, conjuring spectral memories, magic old and new and slipstream trips to the panda pops disco -- Folk horror roots : from but a few seedlings did a great forest grow -- 1973 : a time of schism and a dybbuk's dozen of fractures -- Broadcast : recalibration, constellation and exploratory pop -- Tales from the black meadow, The book of the lost and The equestrian vortex : the imagined spaces of imaginary soundtracks -- The wicker man : notes on a cultural behemoth Robin Redbreast, The ash tree, Sky, The changes, Penda's fen, Red shift and The owl service : wnaderings thorugh spectral television landscapes -- A bear's ghosts : Soviet dreams and lost futures -- From "Two tribes" to War games : the ascendancy of apocalyptic popular culture -- Christopher Priest's A dream of Wessex : twentieth century slipstream echoes -- Sapphire & Steel and Ghosts in the machine : nowhere, forever and lost spaces within cultural circuitry -- Kill list, Puffball, In the dark half and Butter on the latch : folk horror descendants by way of the kitchen sink -- The quietened bunker, Waiting for the end of the world, Subterranea Britannica, Bunker archaeology and The Delaware Road : ghosts, havens and curious repurposings beneath our feet -- From The unofficial countryside to Soft estate : edgeland documents, memories and explorations -- The ballad of Shirley Collins and Pastoral noir : tales and intertwinings from hidden furrowsal behemoth "Savage party" and Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) : glimpses of Albion in the overgrowth -- Uncommonly British days out and the following of ghosts : file under psychogeographic/hauntological stocking fillers -- Gone to earth : earlier traces of an otherly Albion -- Queens of evil, Tam Lin and The touchables : high fashion transitional psych folk horror, pastoral fantasy and dreamlike isolation -- Luke Haines : our most non-hauntological hauntologist -- Tim Hart, Maddy Prior and "The dalesman's litany" : a yearning for imaginative idylls and a counterpart to tales of hellish mills -- Poles and pylons and The Telegraph Appreciation Society : a continuum of accidental art -- Uncommonly British days out and the following of ghosts : file under psychogeographic/hauntological stocking fillers -- Gone to earth : earlier traces of an otherly Albion -- Queens of evil, Tam Lin and The touchables : high fashion transitional psych folk horror, pastoral fantasy and dreamlike isolation -- Luke Haines : our most non-hauntological hauntologist -- Tim Hart, Maddy Prior and "The dalesman's litany" : a yearning for imaginative idylls and a counterpart to tales of hellish mills -- Katalina Varga, Berberian Sound Studio and The Duke of Burgundy : arthouse evolution and crossing the thresholds of the hinterland worlds of Peter Strickland -- General orders no. 9 and by our selves : cinematic pastoral experimentalism -- No blade of grass and Z.P.G. : a curious dystopian minigenre -- The Midwich cuckoos and The day of the triffids : John Wyndham, dystopian tales, celluloid cuckoos and the village as anything but idyll -- Folk archive and Unsophisticated arts : documenting the overlooked and unregulated -- Folkloric photography : a lineage of wanderings, documentings and imaginings -- Poles and pylons and The Telegraph Appreciation Society : a continuum of accidental art -- Noah's castle : a slightly overlooked artifact and teatime dystopias -- The spirit of dark and lonely water : public information films and lost municipal paternalisms -- Magpahi, Paper dollhouse and The Eccentronic Research Council : Finders Keepers/Bird Records nestings and considerations of modern day magic -- Vashti Bunyan : from here to before : whispering fairy stories until they are real -- The owl service, Anne Briggs, The Watersons, Lutine and Audrey Copard : folk revisiters, revivalists and reinterpreters -- The seasons, Jonny Trunk, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Howlround : a yearning for library music, experiments in educational music and tape loop tributes -- An old soul returns : the worlds and interweavings of Kate Bush -- The stone tape, Quatermass, The road and the twilight language of Nigel Kneale : unearthing tales from buried ancient pasts -- Folklore tapes and the Wyrd Britannia festival : jouneying to hidden corners of the land/the ferrous reels and explorations of an arcane research project -- Skeletons : pastoral preternatural fiction and a world, time and place of its own imagining -- Field-trip England : Jean Ritchie, George Pickow and recordings from the end of an era -- Noah's castle : a slightly overlooked artifact and teatime dystopias -- Winstanley, A field in England and The English Civil War part II : reflections on turning points and moments when anything could happen. Detectorists, Bagpuss, The Wombles and The good life : views from a gentler landscape -- Weirdlore, Folk Police Recordings, Sproatly Smith and Seasons they change : notes from the folk underground, legendary lost focal points and privately pressed folk -- The moon and the sledgehammer and Sleep furiously : visions of parallel and fading lives -- From gardens where we feel secure, Wintersongs, Pilgrim chants & pastoral trails : lullabies for the land and gently darkened undercurrents -- Strawberry fields and Wreckers : the countryside and coastal hinterland as emotional edgeland -- Zardoz, Phase IV and Beyond the black rainbow : seeking the future in secret rooms from the past and psychedelic cinematic corners -- Winstanley, A field in England and The English Civil War part II : reflections on turning points and moments when anything could happen.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.