The Golden Apples of the Sun

A Year at the Country on Willows Songs

GOLDEN APPLES SUMMER SCHOOL

Running from December 2023 through to February 2024, The Golden Apples of the Sun presents ’Summer School’. The show’s regular presenters, guests and friends present a curated season of weekly 2-hour explorations to different musical places. Summer School commences Sunday 24 December with ‘Summerisle Song Mists’.

Fitting perfectly between the Winter Solstice and Chistmastide Summer, School commences with ‘Summerisle Song Mists’. Inspired by The Wickerman and the psychogeography of its musical influences.

LISTEN

Show re-stream here

Mixcloud HQ Mixtape here – just the music – great with headphones

PLAYLIST

Golden Apples Lord Summerisle Theme

Far Black Furlong – Far Black Furlong – The East Room (2006)

Carl Turney & Brian Campbell – SumerIsIcumenIn – Folklore Tapes Calendar Customs Vol​.​II – Merry May (2015)

Magnet – Lullaby – The Wickerman OST (1973)

The Owl Service – Wake the Vaulted Echo (excerpt) – Wake the Vaulted Echo

Ivan The Tolerable – Gently Johnny – Library Of The Occult (2021)

Woodwose – Frenetique – Dancing Stones (2012)

Matt Berry – Fire Chant Alternate – Kill The Wolf (2020)

Matt Berry – Village Dance – Kill The Wolf (2020)

Doves – Reprise – Lost Souls

Doves – Reprise (Music Box)

Gwenno – Hi A Skoellyas Liv A Dhagrow (excerpt) – Le Kov (2018)

David Colohan – Loving Couples – The Ruined Church (excerpt) – Ballads Of Seduction, Fertility And Ritual Slaughter(2023)

Gwenno – Tonnow – Tresor (2022)

Hanna Peel – Pregnant – The Midwich Cuckoos (2022)

Hannah Peel – Ecovocative (Paddy Kingsland Remix) – Unheard Delia

Arianne Churchman – Fire Rites – Folklore Tapes Calendar Customs Vol​.​III – Mid​-​Winter Rites & Revelries

CLANN – Unseelie – Seelie (2017)

Keith Seatman and Douglas E Powell (feat Belbury Poly) – Broken Folk – Broken Folk EP (2018)

Murmur Mori – Willow’s Song ( The Wicker Man ) – self titles cassette (2014)

Johnny Jewel – Decay (excerpt) – Home OST

Pulp – Wickerman – We Love Life (2001)

Pulp – Sunrise (excerpt) – We Love Life (2001)

David Colohan – Loving Couples – The Ruined Church excerpt Ballads Of Seduction, Fertility And Ritual Slaughter

Gazelle Twin & NYX – Fire Leap – Deep England (2021)

The Hardy Tree – Chuffy – The Stone Tape Analysing A Ghost By Electronic Means (2023)

Lutine – So it Goes (Pete Wiggs mix) – Died of Love Remixes (2016)

CLANN – The Faerie Court (Under Sun) – Seelie

Magnet – Sunset (excerpt) – The Wickerman OST (1973)

Sneaker Pimps – How Do (Willows Song) – Becoming X (1996)

Yage – The Hunters Moon – The Woodlands of Old (2008)

Dialogue Appointment with The Wickerman

Cocteau Twins – Alice – Violaine EP (1996)

Jane Weaver – Arrows (Loops Variation) – Loops In The Secret Society (2019)

Matt Berry – October Son Live – Matt Berry and the Maypoles (2015)

The Heartwood Institute – The Old Way – Astercote

July Skies – Girl On The Hill – The Weather Clock (2008)

Vic Mars – Ystradfellte – The Beacons (2023)

Sproatly Smith – Gently Johnny – The Yew and the Hare

Murmur Mori – The Age of Conquest – Murmur Mori

WANT MORE?

Ballads Of Seduction, Fertility And Ritual Slaughter (2023)

About the LP – Why create it? here

Track by Track here

Ballads Of Seduction, Fertility And Ritual Slaughter on Bandcamp

The Stone Tape Analysing A Ghost By Electronic Means (2023)

Christmas Day 2022 marked 50 years since the original broadcast of the ground-breaking BBC supernatural thriller, ‘The Stone Tape’, written by Nigel Kneale.

In early 2023 Hidden Britain commissioned a group of UK based musicians to produce a new piece of work inspired by this extraordinary 1972 TV film.

Bandcamp

Folk Horror Tracks – List of almost 200 Tracks

This list is very complete and very recommended as a Launch Pad. Also includes a list of Finnish Folk Horror for a real deep dive.

The list is by Liero and can be found here

…and the Finnish Folk Horror list here

Pulp’s track Wickerman

Jarvis Cocker reciting “Wickerman” (Rough Trade East, 5th Dec 2011) with slide show by Jarvis.

“Eight minutes long, “Wickerman” is the album’s centrepiece: it’s about a real river that flows underneath Sheffield, channelled through “dirty brickwork conduits.” Cocker’s lyrics make me think of John Cooper Clarke’s “Beasley Street” or Morrissey’s “river/ the color of lead.” This is a stream of memory that carries Jarvis back to moments in love, like a first kiss in a shabby cafe where outside “a child’s toy horse ride… played such a ridiculously tragic tune.” This girl is a composite of lost lovers: he recalls another riverbank vignette, “except you were somebody else”. The river is also a witness, a Cocker-like observer of ordinary lives, flowing beneath “pensioners gathering dust like bowls of plastic tulips” and passing an old sweets factory that burned down decades ago leaving “caverns of nougat and caramel.” Finally, the river is also some kind of life-force, the polluted pulse of a bygone England, distorted by industrialisation yet indomitable. Jarvis imagines following its course all the way through and surfacing “surrounded by grass and trees”. Like Neil Young, he knows he’ll find “her” there”.

From Simon Reynolds review of We Love life (2-001) posted at Reynolds Retro

Wickerman

Just behind the station, before you reach the traffic island, a river runs through’ a concrete channel.
I took you there once; I think it was after the Leadmill.
The water was dirty & smelt of industrialisation
Little mesters coughing their lungs up & globules the colour of tomato ketchup.
But it flows. Yeah, it flows.
Underneath the city through’ dirty brickwork conduits
Connecting white witches on the Moor with pre-raphaelites down in Broomhall.
Beneath the old Trebor factory that burnt down in the early seventies.
Leaving an antiquated sweet-shop smell & caverns of nougat & caramel.
Nougat. Yeah, nougat & caramel.
And the river flows on.
Yeah, the river flows on beneath pudgy fifteen-year olds addicted to coffee whitener
And it finally comes above ground again at Forge Dam: the place where we first met.

I went there again for old time’s sake
Hoping to find the child’s toy horse ride that played such a ridiculously tragic tune.
It was still there – but none of the kids seemed interested in riding on it.
And the cafe was still there too
The same press-in plastic letters on the price list & scuffed formica-top tables.
I sat as close as possible to the seat where I’d met you that autumn afternoon.
And then, after what seemed like hours of thinking about it
I finally took your face in my hands & I kissed you for the first time
And a feeling like electricity flowed through’ my whole body.
And I immediately knew that I’d entered a completely different world.
And all the time, in the background, the sound of that ridiculously heartbreaking child’s ride outside.

At the other end of town the river flows underneath an old railway viaduct
I went there with you once – except you were somebody else –
And we gazed down at the sludgy brown surface of the water together.
Then a passer-by told us that it used to be a local custom to jump off the viaduct into the river
When coming home from the pub on a Saturday night.
But that this custom had died out when someone jumped
Landed too near to the riverbank
Had sunk in the mud there & drowned before anyone could reach them.
I don’t know if he’d just made the whole story up, but there’s no way you’d get me to jump off that bridge.
No chance. Never in a million years.

Yeah, a river flows underneath this city
I’d like to go there with you now my pretty & follow it on for miles & miles, below other people’s ordinary lives.
Occasionally catching a glimpse of the moon, through’ man-hole covers along the route.
Yeah, it’s dark sometimes but if you hold my hand, I think I know the way.
Oh, this is as far as we got last time
But if we go just another mile we will surface surrounded by grass & trees & the fly-over that takes the cars to cities.
Buds that explode at the slightest touch, nettles that sting – but not too much.
I’ve never been past this point, what lies ahead I really could not say.
I used to live just by the river, in a dis-used factory just off the Wicker
The river flowed by day after day
“One day” I thought, “One day I will follow it” but that day never came
I moved away & lost track but tonight I am thinking about making my way back.
I may find you there & float on wherever the river may take me.
Wherever the river may take me.
Wherever the river may take us.
Wherever it wants us to go.
Wherever it wants us to go.