Reading List
Solar Stellar
The Solar Stellar, in the main, rules both rural landweird, children's fairytales and traditional witchcraft, so it's been a little messy to figure out what should be in which category. This is a grab-bag of "won't fit elsewhere" pastoral psychedelia, stuff to do with Pan, and blissful visions; expect things to be shuttled into other categories, or developed in future.
✪ Sumer Is Icumen In: The Pagan Sound of British & Irish Folk 1966-1975 (2015)
★★★★
Album | Three CD collection of the best of the weird folk of the late 60s/early 70s. Hey Haptalaon, it's that thing you like! This is just the perfect collection of sounds, earthy and spooky and underground. Grapefruit record has an incredible set of releases: Dust on the Nettles (acid folk), Milk of the Tree (female vocalists), anthologies of the vibes of this sort of mood, and are fantastic to throw on in the background while you're still curating your own playlists.
Poem: the Nympholept (1891)
Book | Long; Pan imagery; good
Virginibus Puerisque (1881/1887)
Book | Unread. Pastoral poems; I'm sure these are ten a penny, but I want to check through them. It came up in some of my other reading.
Adlestrop (2020)
★★★★
Album | Very lovely. Solar, tending Solar-Stellar: sounds like Englishness and the afternoon. Blissful. One of my personal favourites.
From Gardens Where we Feel Secure (1983)
Album | Lovely rural ambient, lilting piano and sheep in the distance. Dreams of the summertime.
The Curate's Friend (1912)
Book | Unread. 1920s Pan
✪ Relics (1971)
★★★★★
Album | A major influence on me from a very young age. Trippy pastoralism, psychedelic sunlight, golden afternoons by dreaming rivers,and imagined days. Relationship to Wind in the Willows and Pan. I'm aware that this was a real trend of the period, not only this band or album, but I've yet to find anything to match it. Look also at poster art of the period.