A Year In The Country: Lost Transmissions: Dystopic Visions, Alternate Realities, Paranormal Quests and Exploratory Electronica

Lost Transmissions weaves amongst brambled pathways to take in the haunted soundscapes of electronica, the rise of the occult in the 1970s, cinema and television’s dystopian dreamscapes and hauntological work which creates and gives a glimpse into parallel worlds. It is a recording of a personal journey that delves amongst both the esoteric fringes and mainstream of culture, and which at times holds a shadowed scrying mirror up to the modern world and some of its ills, while also reflecting visions of a hopeful future in its depths.

Alongside other experimenters in electronic sound the book explores Boards of Canada’s invoking of “the past inside the present”; Paul Weller’s visiting of Ghost Box Records’ elsewhere universe; work by Cosey Fanni Tutti, Hannah Peel and the reformed Radiophonic Workshop, and their collaborations across time with electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire; Dominik Scherrer and Natasha Khan’s summoning of “pastoral spook” via a hidden language of angels; and takes a trip in the company of fairground and rural ghosts conjured up on records released by Castles in Space.

Alongside these it examines the paranormal and “worlds beyond” via the semi-lost supernatural-orientated television series Leap in the Dark which included work by Alan Garner and David Rudkin, Sharron Kraus’ contemporary investigations into the preternatural and the conjuring of modern-day phantasms in Luciana Haill’s artwork.

The book also includes an intertwined consideration of the “deluxe dystopias” that can be found in films such as Rollerball and Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca and prescient views of the future’s past & media collusion in film and television including Nigel Kneale’s work and the overlooked corners of science fiction.

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Book chapters:

Leap in the Dark, Alan Garner, David Rudkin, Fay Weldon and Russell Hoban: The Rise of the Paranormal

77 Posters/77 Plakatow, Quest for Love & The Man Who Haunted Himself: The Phantasmagoric World of Polish Film Posters and Other Celluloid Alternate Realities

Boards of Canada: The Past Inside the Present

Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca, In Time and Anon: Striving for the Stars and Tales of Near Tomorrows

Andy Votel’s Styles of the Unexpected & Bridge and Tunnel: Revisiting Hauntological Precursors

Rollerball, Three Days of the Condor and The Anderson Tapes: Deluxe Dystopias and the Cinema of Paranoia

Paul Weller’s In Another Room & Broadcast: Psychedelic Reimaginings & Signposts Towards Ghost Box Records’ Elsewhere Universe

Luciana Haill’s Apparitions: A Modern-Day Conjuring of Dreamlands

Burial: Spectres of Spectres Awash in a Landscape of Static

Death Watch, The Vision, The Year of the Sex Olympics & Network: Prescient Views of the Future’s Past

The Heartwood Institute’s Tomorrow’s People: Exploring Far Off Utopian Flipsides

Delia Derbyshire, Caroline Katz, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Hannah Peel, The Delia Derbyshire Appreciation Society, The Radiophonic Workshop & Drew Mulholland: Forging Bridges Across Time

Michael Radford’s 1984: Searching for a Last Inch of Space

Castles in Space, Nick Taylor, Pulselovers, Keith Seatman & Dave Clarkson: Otherly Geometries & Ghosts of the Seaside

Dominik Scherrer & Natasha Khan’s Soundtrack for Requiem: The Unexpected Appearance of the Language of Angels

Sharron Kraus’ Preternatural Investigations, Simon Reynolds’ “Haunted Audio" and Oliver Assayas’ Personal Shopper: Journeys on the Edge of Knowing

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The book is released as part of the A Year In The Country project, which explores wyrd rural & folk culture, the hidden tales of the land & where they intertwine with the parallel worlds of hauntology.