The Quietened Village is a new compilation from the beautiful blog/boutique CDr label A Year in The Country. Its available now in the Ghost Box Guest Shop in two lovingly made versions.
The regular Dawn Edition - A hand-finished textured fold out sleeve with white/black CDr with liner notes insert and badge.
and the deluxe Night Edition - A hand-finished box-set containing an all black CDr, 12 page string bound booklet, 4 x badge pack and 2 x stickers.
The album evokes a beautifully atmospheric pastoral reverie, and a ghostly sense of loss. And the names to conjure with...
Howlround, Time Attendant, The Straw Bear Band, Polypores, The Soulless Party, The Rowan Amber Mill, Cosmic Neighbourhood, A Year In The Country, Sproatly Smith, David Colohan and Richard Moult.
Both are ultra limited to only 52 copies and here's what A Year in the Country say...
The Quietened Village is a study of and reflection on the lost, disappeared and once were homes and hamlets that have wandered off the maps or that have become shells of their former lives and times.
Inspired in part by images of sections of abandoned, submerged villages and the spires of their places of worship re-appearing from the surfaces of reservoirs and lakes, alongside thoughts of dwellings that have succumbed to the natural erosion of the coastline and have slowly tumbled into the sea.
Some of the once were and lost villages which were seedlings for this body of work still stand but their populations are no more, those who lived there evicted at short notice and never to return so that their homes and hearths could be used as training grounds for those who would fight during great conflicts between nations.
Such points of reference have been intertwined with possibly more bodeful reasons for this stilling and ending; thoughts of Midwich Cuckoos-esque fictions or dystopic tales told and transmitted in times gone by and imagined/re-imagined in amongst the strands of The Quietened Village.
