The Quietened Village is a study of and reflection on lost, disappeared and once were villages and hamlets that have wandered off the maps or that have become shells of their former lives and times.
It is inspired in part by images of sections of abandoned, submerged villages and the spires of their places of worship reappearing from the surfaces of reservoirs and lakes, alongside explorations of places that have succumbed to the natural erosion of the coastline and have slowly tumbled into the sea or been buried by encroaching sands.
Some of the lost places which inspired The Quietened Village still exist but only as stripped down shadowlike settlements; their inhabitants have long since left as those who lived there were evicted at short notice so that their homes and hearths could be used as training grounds to prepare for operations during times of large scale conflict.
These points of reference have been intertwined with the spectres of fictional tales; thoughts of Midwich Cuckoo-esque fictions or dystopic tales told and transmitted in times gone by and reimagined in amongst the strands of The Quietened Village.
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Reissue of the 2016 album with new accompanying notes by the contributors, a revised tracklisting, three previously unreleased tracks and a selection of new badge, sticker and print designs.
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released March 8, 2019
Artwork/packaging design and fabrication by AYITC Ocular Signals Department
Artifact #11a
Released by A Year In The Country
www.ayearinthecountry.co.uk
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On the original 2016 release of The Quietened Village:
“This evocative album offers a score for crumbled communities, abandoned villages and sunken spires, honouring history with quiet grace befitting its title. The Quietened Village joins recent releases on Folklore Tapes and Wist Records as loving, tasteful tributes to a nearly-forgotten past.” A Closer Listen
“Ghostly, beautifully conveying a sense of loneliness and the passing of time.” Terrascope
“A Year In The Country have done an excellent job of rounding up many of the genre’s leading lights and despite the wide range of sounds represented, The Quietened Village sounds impressively coherent. Its themes are tackled with sadness, hope and respect for the past.” Folk Radio UK
“A really impressive album, packed full of original and exciting experimental music with a strong underground spirit.” Bliss Aquamarine
“The music contained within here perfectly conveys the sense that a place once inhabited can never be truly empty again. Echoes of long finished conversations and the thoughts and feelings of past inhabitants haunt these carefully curated pieces. There’s plenty more to love here too but the beauty of this release is that even though the constituent parts are all very strong indeed and all worthy of mention, it’s as a whole that The Quietened Village impresses most, and it’s not just down to the music. AYITC’s releases are all meticulously packaged, with The Quietened Village proving to be no exception, its two editions boasting all sorts of goodies, not to mention carefully orchestrated visuals that perfectly accompany the music contained within.” The Active Listener
“The album evokes a beautifully atmospheric pastoral reverie, and a ghostly sense of loss.” Jim Jupp, Ghost Box Records
“I hear a headlong collision between haunted summer days and the decay of man-made things. It seems to be all over this album from the cyclopean Radiophonics of Howlround to the mournful folk of The Straw Bear Band to the haunting work of Sproatly Smith.” Was Ist Das?
“For lovers of the sounds of nature, both violent and serene.” Joe Banks, Shindig!
“A delicate and entrancing, at times disconcerting, weave of absorbing instrumentation, electronica and tape manipulation, velvety vocals and half-recalled echoes. The music conjures roofless walls holding spirits not populations, skeletal spires pointing accusative fingers skywards, submerged shadows reflecting in water, crumbled remains wreathing a cliff’s base.” Folk Words
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The Quietened Village is released as part of the A Year In The Country project, a set of year long journeys through spectral fields; cyclical explorations of an otherly pastoralism, the further reaches of folk culture and the spectral parallel worlds of hauntology - a wandering amongst subculture that draws from the undergrowth of the land.
As a project, it has included a website featuring writing, artwork and music which stems from that otherly pastoral/spectral hauntological intertwining, alongside a growing catalogue of album releases.
Accompanying the music releases is a book called A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields which gathers and revises previous writing from A Year In The Country alongside new journeyings.
The book and the written posts on the site are intended to draw together and connect layered and, at times, semi-hidden cultural pathways and signposts, journeying from acid folk to edgelands via electronic music innovators and pioneers, folkloric film and photography, dreams of lost futures and misremembered televisual tales and transmissions.
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On the A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields book;
"...the first book of it's kind to catalogue all these disparate strands, many of which cross over time and space to influence one another." DJ Food
"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
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On A Year In The Country and its previous music releases:
"A Year In The Country quietly go about their business releasing beautifully packaged music that is influenced by folk, electronica, drone as well as by landscape, time and place... each have themes running through them, tying the music together and seemingly telling a story as they unfold." Terrascope
“A Year In The Country… operating like some sinister rustic arts and crafts movement manifesting online via a Wi-Fi connected scrying mirror... an almanac of unearthly sonics to tide you through the winter nights." Shindig!
"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
"…another exquisitely packaged affair… murky and ominous as befits the guiding thematic: places that are spectrally imprinted with past conflicts and struggles... a conceptual compilation of excellently eerie electronic music..." Simon Reynolds, author of Retromania and Energy Flash
"…a wonderfully curated concept album that rips up the green grass of the idyllic countryside and forces you to consider the darker undergrowth. Beautifully unnerving stuff." Electronic Sound
