★Folklore Tapes
Larksong
For the 2023 British Textile Biennial, collaborative artists Nick Jordan and Jacob Cartwright created a new film, Larksong, and textiles installation, in Goodshaw Chapel - a nonconformist Baptist chapel established by textile workers and farm labourers in 1760. With the chapel as a central leitmotif, the film captures the surrounding landscape of cloughs, rivers and moorlands, laced with the remnants and imprints of the textile workers and industries that shaped the environment.
The musical scor…
Brown Wardle Hill
Brown Wardle Hill stands as an imposing yet noble hill on the South Pennine Moors of Whitworth, Rossendale, Lancashire. Regarded as a site of prehistoric importance due to the overwhelming amount of mesolithic flint scatterings discovered during the early 20th century, the hill also boasts an incredible amount of lore and legend. In 2019 David Chatton Barker spent a year walking and researching into the hill and its surrounding moors, the material gathered formed a series of performances, culmin…
Fae Transit
*200 copies limited release* Fae Transit is an expedition into a realm of faerie music Sam McLoughlin introduced us to in his contribution to Folklore Tapes’ Swifter than the Moon’s Sphere. If Green and Brown was a sighting of a faerie parade, Fae Transit is a full abduction, a journey through a woodland inhabited by spirits and haunted by the living.
The album is written entirely for harmonium, nylon guitar, hand percussion and dictaphone, with harmonium and finger-plucked guitar continually ex…
La Sorcière de Rochefort-en-Terre
*300 copies limited release* Folklore Tapes first foray into overseas finds them in a rural Breton village known as Rochefort-en-Terre. Once inhabited by the renowned witch Naia, who along with her ‘spirit stick’ familiar ‘Gnami’ cured ills, cursed locals, split in two and crushed hot coals into dust! Naia is a collaboration with Brittany arts group Le Bon Acceuil and features two distinct sonic explorations into the infamous witch, largely based around the article and photography of Charles Gén…
When The Frog From The Well Sees The Ocean (Reports From English UFOlklore)
200 copies limited edition "This latest collection from Folklore Tapes borrows its title from a Japanese proverb about knowing one's limitations ("the frog in the well knows nothing of the sea"), which was itself borrowed from a Chinese fable. In the context of an album devoted to UFO lore, of course, humans are the frogs, the infinite universe is the ocean, and the usual eclectic Folklore Tapes cast of characters gleefully devote themselves to celebrating the colorful hoaxes and stories of thei…
The Ritual Year Book - Dave Pearson's English Calendar Customs 1973-1983
A hauntological beauty reminiscent of Seventies folk horror movies and Broadcast’s soundtrack work
Folklore Tapes: Ten Year Anniversary Book (2011-2021) (Book)
186 page full colour photo book, covering ten years of 35mm photography in the field, stage and studio. Includes essay by Jez winship and archival artwork. The Tenth Anniversary Book is filled with hitherto unseen images and text. Over the past decade, Folklore Tapes have amassed a vast archive of 35mm and slide film photography, detailing their activities on stage during live performances, and on-site during fieldtrips. This behind-the-scenes material will finally see the light of day through t…
Devon Folklore Tapes Volume V: Ornithology (2x10")
Twin Ten-Inch Gatefold Edition Contains 2x 10" Records & 12page Research Booklet & Download Code Housed in manilla hand stamped & numbered paper sleeve // First released in 2013 as a limited-run cassette of just 30 copies, Ornithology has been expanded and refurbished for glorious double vinyl as part of the Folklore Tapes Archival Reissue series. Fluttering out into the world at the end of last year, this upcycled package offers a welcome revisitation of dark avian power, with Mary Arches’ cree…
Industrial Folklore Tapes Volume Three - Film As Fabric
Numbered limited edition of 250. The third Industrial Folklore Tapes release is constructed from live recordings of a performance tilted ‘Film as Fabric’ by Mary Stark, which examines relationships between textile practice and filmmaking. From 2012-2016, Mary’s studio practice and numerous performances took place in Rogue Artist Studios at Crusader Mill in Manchester, formerly a production site of machinery for the cotton industry and a garment works. The performance has been enriched by explora…
Theo Brown And The Folklore Of Dartmoor
Limited to 300 numbered copies. Gatefold sleeve with booklet & obi. Some copies also contained an A3 poster & badge. Theo Brown and the Folklore of Dartmoor is the sixth volume in the Devon Folklore Tapes Series. The album provides acousmatic soundscapes for fourteen Dartmoor tales collected by the late Devon folklorist Theo Brown, whose spirit and research guided the project throughout. Initially released as a limited-run box-set in 2014, this long-awaited second edition contains all the origin…
The Heavenly Realms
Folklore Tapes grow yet another branch of investigation through their new Mystic Series, which begins with the Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg, who spent the latter portion of his life living in England.
Ethereal Transects - The Lore of Celestial Objects
The latest installment in the Folklore Tapes canon sees the collective cast its gaze skyward - to the glittering orbs that steal their way silently across our night sky. Ethereal Transects is a compilation album and booklet exploring the lore of celestial objects through experiments in sound and vision. Each contributor has researched a particular orb and - inspired by the tapestry of its myth and legend - fashioned an original soundscape in its likeness. The result is an audio voyage around the…