Label: Folklore Tapes – FTOCI Series: Folklore Tapes Occultural Creatures – OCI Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, DVDr, Box Set, Limited Edition, Numbered Country: UK Released: Feb 2016 Genre: Non-Music, Folk, World, & Country Style: Experimental, Musique Concrète, Spoken Word, Field Recording
Elaborate multi-disciplinary boxset from the collectable local Folklore tapes label. (NM)
Black Dog Traditions of Englandtells the tales of eight spectre-hounds in an expansive, multi-disciplinary box-set. It is the product of extensive fieldwork conducted by Ian and David throughout 2015, as well as Ian’s own researches into black dog folklore dating back to 2007.
The LP features acousmatic sound compositions, site-specific field-recordings and original audio of local storytellers spinning out their black dog yarns. The hand-treated and rust-degraded film contained on the DVD incorporates materials gathered in the field, such as ashes from the fireplace at Dob Park Lodge (above) and scorched waterweed from Troller’s Gill. The project book is notable in its own right—a detailed, original study tracing the history of each black dog story from its earliest textual source to the present day. The book also includes a map and full-colour photographs from the project’s many expeditions. An embossed, hand-numbered and hand-stamped box holds the contents firm.
The box-set is a reliquary of objects, stories and sounds centuries, if not millennia, in the making. These are resonances of the never-was: artworks informed by those long-forgotten who, out lurking in the half-light of a country lane, saw shapes somehow darker than the surrounding night that preyed upon their idle minds.
Tracklist LP A1 Black Dog Summons A2 The Barguest Of Dob Park Lodge A3 The Black Dog Of Uplyme A4 The Legend Of Black Vaughan A5 The Procession At Black Dog Village B1 Tales Of Black Shuck B2 The Barguest Of Troller's Gill B3 The Black Dog Of Newgate B4 Watchdogs Of The Wambarrows DVDr 1 The Spectre Hound 12:32
