From eerie landscapes and folk-horror to the dysfunctional utopian visions of Brutalist architects via hazily misremembered cultural memories, A Year In The Country: Straying from the Pathways explores the wider realm of “otherly pastoralism” and its intertwining with the lost futures and parallel worlds of hauntology. It examines such varied and curiously interconnected topics as the faded modernity and “future ruins” of British road travel; apocalyptic “empty city” films; dark fairy tales; the political undercurrents of the the 1980s; idyllic villages gone rogue; photographic countercultural festival archives and “temporary autonomous zones”.
The book also discusses film, television and books including: Requiem, Prince of Darkness, The Prisoner, The Company of Wolves, Detectorists, A Very Peculiar Practice, Edge of Darkness, Day of the Triffids, Wolfen, Penda’s Fen, High-Rise, The Living and the Dead, Night of the Comet, The Twilight Language of Nigel Kneale, In the Company of Ghosts: The Poetics of the Motorway, GB84, This Brutal World and The Fountain in the Forest, as well as music that draws from, or interconnects with, hauntological spectres and reimaginings of the past, including hypnagogic pop, synthwave and the work of Ghost Box Records, Adrian Younge, D.A.L.I., Grey Frequency, The Ghost in the MP3, DJ Shadow and Howlround, amongst others.
As in months in the year, the book has 12 chapters. A selection of their topics are listed below:
1. Explorations of an Eerie Landscape:
The Changes, The Edge is Where the Centre is: David Rudkin and Penda’s Fen, Texte und Töne, Nigel Kneale, the miners’ strike 1984-85, Robert Macfarlane, Benjamin Myers
2. Fractured Dream Transmissions and a Collapsing into Ghosts:
John Carpenter, Prince of Darkness, Halloween III, John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos
3. Hinterland Tales of Hidden Histories and Unobserved Edgeland Transgressions:
Clare Carson’s Orkney Twilight, David Peace’s GB84, Tony White’s The Fountain in the Forest
4. Countercultural Archives and Experiments in Temporary Autonomous Zones:
Sam Knee’s Memory of a Free Festival, Sandford & Reid’s Tomorrow’s People, The Sun in the East: Norfolk & Suffolk Fairs, Raving ’89, Out of Order: The Underground Rave Scene
5. The Village and Seaside Idyll Gone Rogue:
Hot Fuzz, The Avengers’ “Murdersville”, The Prisoner, In My Mind, Malcolm Pryce’s Aberystwyth Mon Amour
6. Albion in the Overgrowth and Timeslip Echoes:
Requiem, The Living and the Dead, Britannia, Detectorists
7. In Cars – Building a Better Future, Peculiarly Subversive Enchantments and Faded Futuristic Glamour:
In the Company of Ghosts: The Poetics of the Motorway, Joe Moran’s On Roads: A Hidden History, Chris Petit’s Radio On, Martin Parr’s Abandoned Morris Minors
8. Brutalism, Reaching for the Sky and Bugs in Utopia:
Peter Chadwick’s This Brutal World, J.G.Ballard, Ben Wheatley, High-Rise, Peter Mitchell’s Memento Mori
9. Battles with the Old Guard and the Continuing sparking of Vivid Undercurrents:
A Very Peculiar Practice, Edge of Darkness
10. Lycanthropes, Dark Fairy Tales and the Dangers of Wandering off the Path:
The Company of Wolves, Danielle Dax, Red Riding Hood, Wolfen, Hansel & Gretel, The Keep
11. The Empty City Film and Other Visions of the End of Days – Survival and Shopping in the Post-Apocalypse:
Day of the Triffids, Night of the Comet, The Quiet Earth
12. Universe Creation, Spectral Lines in the Cultural Landscape and Reimagined Echoes from the Past:
Hauntology, Hypnagogic Pop, Synthwave, D.A.L.I., Mo’Wax, Tricky, Massive Attack, Portishead, DJ Shadow, Andrea Parker, Ghost Box Records, The Memory Band, The Delaware Road, Rowan : Morrison, Howlround, Mark Fisher, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Adrian Younge, DJ Food, Grey Frequency, Keith Seatman, Akiha Den Den
