The Quietened Dream Palace, A Year in The Country Pre-Order

Preorder 3rd November 2020. Released 17th November 2020.
Will be available at our Artifacts Shop and Bandcamp page.

The Quietened Dream Palace is an exploration of closed down cinemas, including those which have been abandoned, become derelict, reopened as something new or demolished and there is little or no trace of any more.

Features music and accompanying text on the tracks by: Grey Frequency, Field Lines Cartographer, Keith Seatman, Pulselovers, Sproatly Smith, The Howling (Robin The Fog of Howlround and Ken Hollings), Folclore Impressionista, Listening Center, The Séance, Widow’s Weeds, Handspan, The Heartwood Institute, A Year In The Country and Vic Mars.

The Odeon/Salon Cinema Southsea
My track on The Quietened Dream Palace "Saturday Matinee" was inspired by the
very noisy and chaotic Saturday mornings I spent there. 

Photos from Cinema Treasures

The Spectral Fields Wyrd Kalendar Mix

My conection with A Year in The Country happened in 2016 when Stephen Prince asked me to contribute to The A Year in The Country CD Release: Fractures. To date I have now contributed 7 tracks to Stephen Prince's superb A Year in The Country CD releases and have always enjoyed visiting and having a good rummage through A Year in The Country. A few years back I bought a copy of Stephen's Wandering Through Spectral Fields book. It is something which I find myself constantly returning to, and I always seem to find something new everytime I pick the book up.

I only bought the CD Gather in the Mushrooms:
The British Acid Folk Underground 1968-1974 because of chapter 2 page 24.
“A new book caught my eye recently – the title A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields, that goes in search of the darker, eerier side of the bucolic countryside dream by looking at films of a certain genre, books, TV series, music; it is great to have this fascinating subject explored so thoroughly and brought together under one title.”
Verity Sharp, Late Junction, BBC Radio 3

Over the last few years Chris Lambert (Black Meadow, Wyrd Kalender)
has put together a massive 4 part audio accompaniment to Stephen's book. Each installment comes in at 2 hrs or just under. The mixes very skilfully follow and link to all
52 chapters in the book.

All Wyrd Kalender Mixes here
But before you do listen, visit A Year in The Country first. It is th best place to start. 

Chapters 1-13

Chapters 14-26

Chapters 27-39
Chapters 40-52

The Final Spectral Fields Wyrd Kalendar Mix – An Aural Appendix to Accompany “Journeys in Otherly Pastoralism, The Further Reaches of Folk and the Parallel Worlds of Hauntology” 
 

Test Transmission Archive Reel 34

Been quite a while since my last Test Transmission Archive Reel, and to be honest probably the last one for 2018. Will def be more in 2019, just a tad busy at the mo working on 10in ep release and new album. So this time round to keep you all going through the Autumn and Winter you have XTC, Mary Hopkin, Darren Burn, Revbjelde, Richard Dawson, Paddy Kingsland, The Twelve Hour Foundation, Guy Pedersen and loads more. So until Archive Reel 35 wrap up warm take care and enjoy the dark winter nights (I always do)

The album is an exploration of abandoned and derelict industry, infrastructure, technology and equipment that once upon a time helped to create, connect and sustain society.

It wanders amongst deserted factories, discarded machinery, closed mines, mills and kilns and their echoes and remains; taking a moment or two to reflect on these once busy, functioning centres of activity and the sometimes sheer scale or amount of effort and human endeavour that was required to create and operate such structures and machines, many of which are now just left to fade away.
Pre Order Sept 11th 2018 Here and Here
Release Date October 2nd 2018

Featuring work by:
The Heartwood Institute
Quakers Stang
Depatterning
Embertides (The Hare And The Moon / United Bible Studies)
Dom Cooper (Rif Mountain / The Owl Service / Bare Bones / Circle/Temple)
Field Lines Cartographer
Grey Frequency
Howlround
The Soulless Party (Tales from the Black Meadow)
Keith Seatman
Listening Center
Spaceship
Sproatly Smith
Pulselovers
Time Attendant
Vic Mars
A Year In The Country

Also Available from here

Test Transmission Archive Reel 33 !!!!!!!

This ones taken a while to do because I got sidetracked with other things. The house is filling up with all these Archive Reels, might store them in the shed. This time round to keep you merry and joyous in the summer we have Vaughan Williams, Julian Cope, Renaldo and the Loaf, Mike Oldfield, Beautify Junkyards, Don Partridge, Causa Sui, Revbjelde, A Year In The Country, Shirley Collins & Davy Graham, Carya Amara, Rolling Stones and so much more.

The Quietened Cosmologists – Pre-order Release Dates and Audio Clips

Pre-order available 12th September 2017.
Released 3rd October 2017.

From a Year in the Country Another superb themed compilation. 

The Quietened Cosmologists is a reflection on space exploration projects that have been abandoned and/or that were never realised, of connected lost or imagined futures and dreams, the intrigue and sometimes melancholia of related derelict sites and technological remnants that lie scattered and forgotten.

It takes as its initial starting points the shape of the future’s past via the discarded British space program of the 1950s to 1970s; the sometimes statuesque and startling derelict artifacts and infrastructure from the Soviet Union’s once far reaching space projects; the way in which manned spaceflight beyond Earth’s orbit/to the moon and the associated sense of a coming space age came to be largely put to one side after the 1969 to 1972 US Apollo flights.

Featuring audiological explorations by: Field Lines Cartographer Pulselovers Magpahi Howlround Vic Mars Unit One (Dom Cooper of Circle/Temple and The Straw Bear Band in collaboration with Al Hill) A Year In The Country Keith Seatman Grey Frequency Time Attendant Listening Center Polypores David Colohan

Available from  

A Year in the Country Shop 

Bandcamp 
Preview audio clips can be heard at
A Year in the Country Soundcloud Page

Still Some CDs left here, but not there

There are still some CDs left and available from Bandcamp for all hold hands and off we go.
CDs now sold out in the Ghost Box Records Guests shop.

Press/Reveiws
It's music of a lost Albion, a windswept land of steel skies and old ways, of dark, satanic mills built upon psilocybin drenched earth fertilised by the endlessly copulating ghosts of generations of cunning folk. Through it's hands runs a stream of British outsider music from Coil to Bowie at his most enigmatic and it feels like it's redefining the boundaries of what constitutes a truly British music.
Ian Holloway (Wyrd Britain June 2017)  

Surreal retro analogue visions slide in and out of haunted fever dreams in this woozy, uniquely psychedelic, Radiophonic-flavored concoction that's suffused with ambivalent subconscious.
Carl Griffin Electronic Sound Magazine 28 (April 2017)
 
Odd In A Nightcap And Cup’ and ‘Please, Is It You’ very much recall Broadcast, ‘Tap Tap’ could be The Human League Mark One doing incidental music for Blake’s Seven and once again, Devon-based folky Douglas E Powell contributes some Syd-esque vocals on the haunting ‘Mr Metronome.
Jon Mojo Mills Shindig Issue 67 (May 2017)
 
Unsettling pastoral electronica on this 5th CD album from Keith Seatman.
He’s joined on two tracks by vocalist Douglas Powell.
Jim Jupp (Ghost Box Records May 2017)
 
The mixing and seamlessly combining and bringing together of atmospheres that you would not normally connect with one another is probably one of the defining aspects of the album; this is an unsettling, playful, warm, comforting, distant, familiar, experimental work with an intriguing pop edge.
A Year in the Country (April 2017) 

Strange exotica, repeated samples and a sense of quiet adventure are found on Keith Seatman‘s all hold hands and off we go.
A Closer Listen (April 2017)

An album length sonic journey into the surreal, the strange and the sinister, a psychedelic pseance populated by waking dreams, nocturnal nightmares and supernatural forbearance, a melodic map of discovered Barrett-esque continents and hitherto beyond the eye magick lands. Trippy stuff.
The Sunday Experience (Jan 2017) 

From The Furthest Signals

Artifact Report #22/52a: From The Furthest Signals – Clips Online

File Under: Encasments / Artifacts – Artifact #3a
From The Furthest Signals album clips are online for listening to.
Visit them at our Soundcloud Mark II Ether Victrola.
Pre-order 13th June 2017. Release date 27th June 2017.
Audiological explorations by Circle/Temple, David Colohan, Sharron Kraus, A Year In The Country, Time Attendant, Depatterning, Field Lines Cartographer, Grey Frequency, Keith Seatman, Polypores, The Hare And The Moon, Pulselovers and Listening Center.
Further details on From The Furthest Signals can be found here.

The Restless Field (A Year in the Country)

Pre-order available now 10th April 2017. Release date 2nd May 2017. Audio clips available here at Soundcloud.
Available via our Artifacts Shop, our Bandcamp Ether Victrola and at Norman Records. Audiological contents created by Field Lines Cartographer, Vic Mars, Bare Bones, Assembled Minds, Grey Frequency, Endurance, Listening Center, Pulselovers, Sproatly Smith, Polypores, Depatterning, Time Attendant, A Year In The Country and David Colohan.

The Restless Field is a study of the land as a place of conflict and protest as well as beauty and escape; an exploration and acknowledgment of the history and possibility of protest, resistance and struggle in the landscape/rural areas, in contrast with sometimes more often referred to urban events.
It takes inspiration from flashpoints in history while also interweaving personal and societal myth, memory, the lost and hidden tales of the land.
References and starting points include: The British Miners Strike of 1984 and the Battle Of Orgreave. Gerrard Winstanley & the Diggers/True Levellers in the 17th century. The first battle of the English Civil War in 1642. The burying of The Rotherwas Ribbon. The Mass Tresspass of Kinder Scout in 1932. Graveney Marsh/the last battle fought on English soil. The Congested Districts Board/the 19th century land war in Ireland. The Battle Of The Beanfield in 1985.

Sight & Sound Aug 2010. Old Weird Britain

After a lot of rummaging, tidying up and sorting things out I came across a copy of Sight and Sound from Aug 2010. In this issue is Rob Young's wonderful article on the films of Old Weird Britain called The Pattern Under the Plough. To read more on this please wander over to A Year in the Country.

Found Objects: Cold War Colossus

In light of the imminent release of the Year in the Country compilation The Quietened Bunker, I remembered that some years ago I posted this on Found Objects about the mighty Burlington Bunker.
Found Objects: Cold War Colossus: Air Vents Telephone Exchange P.A Systems valve amplifier The BBC Broadcast...........all is well Prime Ministers Bathroom Welcome to The mig...

Also A year in the Country has just posted this wonderful piece about signposted decommissioned Bunkers in the UK here. If you would like to investigate these things further then Nick Catford's book Secret Underground London is def worth a read.

The Quietened Bunker - Lower Level Clock Room

Here is my track/contribution to the new Year in the Country Album The Quietened Bunker. The track is called Lower Level Clock Room. Other musical contributions to the album are supplied by Grey Frequency, A Year In The Country, Panabrite, Polypores, Listening Center, Time Attendant, Unknown Heretic and David Colohan. Pre-Order is 1st August and Release date is 15th August.
There is an excellent, evocative piece on The Quietened Bunker and personal related history / explorations of an abandoned Cold War Monitoring Post by writer Simon Reynolds at his Retromania blog. The album will be available via the Artifacts Shop, Bandcamp Ether Victrola and Norman Records.

The Quietened Bunker – preorder and release dates

Pre-order 1st August 2016.
Release date 15th August 2016.

Will be available from the  Artifacts Shop and our Bandcamp Ether Victrola.
Audiological Transmissions Artifact #4
The Quietened Bunker is an exploration of the abandoned and/or decommissioned Cold War installations which lie under the land and that would have acted as selectively populated refuges/control centres if the button was ever pushed; a study and reflection on these chimeric bulwarks and the faded but still present memory of associated Cold War dread, of which they are stalwart, mouldering symbols.
Audiological contents created by Keith Seatman, Grey Frequency, A Year In The Country, Panabrite, Polypores, Listening Center, Time Attendant, Unknown Heretic and David Colohan.

Coming Soon The Quietened Bunker

Audiological explorations by:
Keith Seatman
Grey Frequency
A Year In The Country
Panabrite
Polypores
Unknown Heretic (The Owl Service / The Straw Bear Band / Rif Mountain) Listening Center
Time Attendant
David Colohan (United Bible Studies)

Fractures Night and Dawn Editions Out Today

 

Fractures is a gathering of studies and explorations that take as their starting point the year 1973; a time when there appeared to be a schism in the fabric of things, a period of political, social, economic and industrial turmoil, when 1960s utopian ideals seemed to corrupt and turn inwards.A Year in The Country (Fractures 2016)

Further Audiological Contents Details:
1) The Osmic Projector/Vapors of Valtorr – Circle/Temple
2) The Land Of Green Ginger – Sproatly Smith
3) Seeing The Invisible – Keith Seatman
4) Triangular Shift – Listening Center
5) An Unearthly Decade – The British Space Group
6) A Fracture In The Forest – The Hare And The Moon ft Alaska/Michael Begg
7) Elastic Refraction – Time Attendant
8) Ratio (Sequence) – The Rowan Amber Mill
9) The Perfect Place For An Accident – Polypores
10) A Candle For Christmas/311219733 – A Year In The Country
11) Eldfell – David Colohan

Fractures is Available from

Norman Records 

Ghostbox Records Guest Shop 

A Year in the Country Artifacts Shop

Bandcamp