Ceremonial County Series

One of the most wonderfully warped Ceremonial Counties tapes yet: The Clare Voyants explore the mystical and musical elements of John Clare’s life via a collage of free folk, found sounds, traditional melodies and spoken word, while The Universal Veil take inspiration from Horace Harman’s Sketches of the Bucks Countryside and produce something that sits between Wicker Man psychedelia and Ghost Box hauntology (and is arguably more mind-bending than either).

Folklore Tapes visits Gloucestershire and Hampshire. Zandra explores Painswick’s yew tree legend with a beautiful, melancholic and uncanny incantation using ghostly vocals and acoustic guitar. Edd Sanders and Jamie McQuilkin tackle Hampshire with a sustained, organic drone and improvisational textures inspired by church bells. Both sides complement each other and shine a light on the eccentric corners of England, which should be celebrated but are in danger of being forgotten.

The latest in the Ceremonial Counties tape series from Folklore Tapes covers Bedfordshire, tackled by Radiophoric Labs, a hauntological project of unknown provenance who does a compelling job of creating an atmosphere of dreary, post-apocalyptic dread; and Greater London falls to Wooden Tape, the alias of Tim Maycox, a Liverpool art teacher whose focus is the commuter town of Surbiton. They present two very different sides of the hauntological coin.

The latest edition of the Ceremonial Counties tape series from Folklore Tapes features Bristol and Hertfordshire. Musician and visual artist Jake Blanchard tackles Bristol, the first part likened to Faust and Steve Reich in a competitive morris dance. Side two features Geology Disco and is devoted to Hertfordshire. While little is known of Geology Disco, the future of New Weird Britain is in safe hands.

This month’s edition of the Ceremonial Counties tape series from Folklore Tapes features Essex and Rutland, two counties that share strong links to Britain’s Roman history. Laurel Morgan’s contribution, The Last Stand at Ambresbury, draws lines between the mythic Boudicca and modern ideas about landscape, ecology, feminism and rebellion, while guitarist and improviser Richard Chamberlain creates seven distinct pieces, each inspired by a different phase of Rutland’s history.

For this month’s Ceremonial Counties offering from Folklore Tapes: Vol.XV Leicester/Northumberland, the first half features Experimental electronic musician Steve Watts and is dedicated to the legend of Black Annis. The second half, composed and performed by Grey Malkin, another British artist indebted to folk horror and hauntology, tells the story of the Duddo stone circle, an arrangement of five (formerly seven) sandstone megaliths in the shadow of the Cheviot Hills.

Folklore Tapes deliver one of the strongest and strangest in their Ceremonial County series. The Bohman Brothers provide the perfect primer for creating weird, place-specific atmospheres, while Jennifer Reid represents folk music as a living tradition, as entertaining as it is political.

Oxfordshire and Derbyshire are the latest Ceremonial Counties to get the Folklore Tapes treatment, courtesy of nebulous experimental collective The Funz and audio archaeologist Mark Vernon. Both tracks are awash with unexpected and often eerie beauty.

The latest Folklore Tapes Ceremonial Counties series features a satanic brew from dbh and The Dark Pool that most contemporary stoner rock bands would sacrifice their grandmothers for and a satisfyingly devilish and wholly fitting companion piece from the Primitive Percussion Youth Orchestra.

While the latest in the Ceremonial County Series is entirely wordless, both convey striking and very different stories: Bridget Hayden’s mythic and haunting, Daniel Weaver’s inevitable and personal. Rarely can so much have been said, and so eloquently, in half an hour of instrumental music.

The latest Folklore Tapes’ Ceremonial Counties series covers Berkshire and Kent. Stella Maris, Tim Hill, and Revbjelde demonstrate the sheer breadth of England’s folkloric traditions and the breadth and variety of art that we can use to interpret those traditions.

For the latest Ceremonial Counties release from Folklore Tapes, Benjamin D Duvall (Ex-Easter Island Head) explores the fragmentary nature of Merseyside’s Crosby Beach, and Sam McLoughlin delivers one of the most playful pieces in the series so far via eight Herefordshire tales.