
A Year In The Country: Cathode Ray and Celluloid Hinterlands
The Rural Dreamscapes, Reimagined Mythical Folklore and Shadowed Undergrowth of Film and Television
Stephen Prince(Author)
A Year In The Country (Publisher)
Published on 9. June 2022
978-1-9160952-6-7 (ISBN)
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Description
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The book undertakes in-depth studies of films, television programmes and documentaries and wanders amongst depictions of rural areas where normality, reality and conventions fall away and the landscape becomes deeply imbued with hidden, layered and at times dreamlike stories, taking in modern-day reinterpretations of traditional myth and folklore and work that has become semi-obscured from view through being unofficially available or otherwise having become partly hidden away.
It explores film and documentary hinterlands including, amongst others, the embracing of the 'old ways' in The Wicker Man; John Boorman's creation of an otherworldly Arthurian dreamscape in Excalibur; the alternate retelling of folk legend in Robin and Marian; the unreally vivid seeming snapshots of folk rituals in Oss Oss Wee Os; the slipstream explorations of The Creeping Gardenand stories from the 'haunted borderlands' in Gone to Earthand The Wild Heart.
The book also investigates the hauntological spectral and 'wyrd' undergrowth of television, including, alongside other programmes, the unearthing of mystical buried powers in Raven; the utopian meeting of starships, pedlars and morris dancers in Stargazy on Zummerdown; teatime Cold War intrigues amongst bucolic isolation in Codename Icarus; the layering of time and myth in anthology drama series Shadows; Frankenstein-like meddling away from the mainland in The Nightmare Man; the magical activation of stone circles' ancient defence mechanisms in The Mind Beyondepisode 'Stones'; and the 'Albion in the overgrowth' recalibrating of mainstream television in Mackenzie Crook's Worzel Gummidge.
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A Year In The Country: Cathode Ray and Celluloid Hinterlands is released as part of the A Year In The Country project, which since 2014 via the posts on its website, artwork, music and book releases has explored the wyrd, eerie and re-enchanted landscape, folk horror, the further reaches of folk music and culture and the spectral parallel worlds of hauntology.
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"A Year In The Country make excellent music and excellent books about all things dark rural, folk horror, liminal England and hauntology." Stuart Maconie, Freak Zone, BBC Radio 6
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"A Year In The Country has created a tangled, overgrown enclave of twisted, rustic oddness and continues to weave its own darkly entrancing magic over the countryside." Bob Fischer, Fortean Times' The Haunted Generation columnist, writing at his website and in Electronic Sound Magazine
More details
Language
English
File size
0,36 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-9160952-6-7 (9781916095267)
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Press quotes on A Year In The Country releases/Stephen Prince:
"Author Stephen Prince is a multimedia artist who's been building his own otherworldly visions of Arcadian England under the name A Year In The Country. Both an exploration of a pastoral past and a rumination on a dystopian present, his recordings marry spectral folk to an electronic otherworld, whilst he has written books of non-fiction that investigates the inner-psyche of our collective histories." Thomas Patterson, Shindig!
"A Year In The Country has been steadily building up a body of work that presents an alternative view of rural Britain, the project's output is consistently fascinating." Psychogeographic Review
"Audio Albion is the latest brilliant release in an ongoing project to map landscape and memory through eerie instrumentals and twisted takes on folk culture." Jude Rogers, The Guardian
Press quotes on A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields, also written by Stephen Prince and released as part of the A Year In The Country project:
"Stephen Prince's densely packed tome covers everything from folkloric film and literature to electronic music to acid folk to folk horror to the dystopian fiction of John Wyndham and the classic unearthings of Nigel Kneale to the formation of under-the-furrows record labels like Trunk, Ghost Box and Finders Keepers... This incredibly well-researched book, which is obviously written by a man with an enormous passion for this subject, is probably as comprehensive as it is possible to be... Books this culturally valuable don't grow on hedgerows, so make sure you harvest it immediately."Ian White, Starburst
"Author Prince has pulled together a mass of material culled not only from the website and its associated albums, but also a great deal more that was written specifically for the book. And the result is spellbinding." Dave Thompson, Goldmine
"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
The book was also selected for Electronic Sound magazine's Top Ten books of the year in 2018.
Content
Preface - A Definition of Hauntology - its Recurring Themes and Intertwining with Otherly Folk and the Creation of a Rural and Urban Wyrd Cultural Landscape, The Wicker Man: Casting Aside Convention on Summerisle, Paul Wright's Arcadia: Views from a Not Always Arcadian Idyll, Excalibur: John Boorman's Creation of an Otherworldly Arthurian Dream, Play for Today and 'Rainy Day Women': Village Mob Rule and the Spectres of Archival Television, Bagpuss: Portal Views Into a Magical Never-Never Land, Takashi Doscher's Still: Explorations of Southern Gothic, Wyrd Americana and Eternal Cycles, Gone to Earth, The Wild Heart and Talking Pictures TV: Stories from the Haunted Borderlands, Conflicts Between the Old Ways and the New and Preserving the Fading Shadows of Film and Television History, Strange Invaders - Robert Fuest's Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush - Oklahoma Crude and Twilight Time: A Time Warp Small Town Invasion, Passion Amongst a Downbeat Landscape - Untamed Frontiers and a Media Sunset, The Mind Beyond and 'Stones': Activating Ancient Preternatural Defence Mechanisms and a Sidestep into the Pioneering Work of Irene Shubik - Verity Lambert and Delia Derbyshire, Oss Oss Wee Oss: Joining the Dance Far Away from the City, The Straight Story: Road Movie Quests and a Gently Lynchian View of Journeying Through a Near-Mythical Landscape, Shadows: The Layering of Time - Folklore and Myth, Codename Icarus: Teatime Cold War Intrigues Hidden Amongst the Bucolia, The Creeping Garden: The Slipstream Explorations of a Science/Science Fiction Fantasia, E4's 'Wicker Man' Ident: An Edge of the Field View of a World Unto Itself, Raven: Unearthing Hidden Buried Power and Battles to Safeguard the Future, Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker: Seeking Answers in the Forbidden Zone, Radio On and Fords on Water: Escape and Exploring the State of the Nation in British Road Movies, Whistle Down the Wind: Adventures in a Time Capsule Landscape, Hell Drivers and The Bargee: Searching for Freedom and Autonomy in an Overlooked Corner of the Landscape and During the End of an Era, Stargazy on Zummerdown: Starships, Pedlars and Morris Dancers Meet in Utopia, Robin and Marian: The Return and Reimagining of a Living Legend, The Nightmare Man: Frankenstein-Like Meddling Away from the Mainland, Worzel Gummidge: Mackenzie Crook's 'Albion in the Overgrowth' Recalibrating of Mainstream Family Television
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