We use cookies on our website to provide you with the best experience. Most of these are essential and already present.
We do require your explicit consent to save your cart and browsing history between visits. Read about cookies we use here.
Your cart and preferences will not be saved if you leave the site.
play

Sidney Sager

Children of the Stones (LP, single sided)

Label: Trunk

Format: LP

Genre: Library/Soundtracks

In stock

€23.40
−7%
€21.80
VAT exempt
+
-
Touted by the label as the scariest, most inappropriate and possibly most influential kids TV music of all time, Sidney Sager and The Ambrosian Singers’ ‘Children of the Stones’ really is a terrifying anomaly collecting polyphonic vocal drone and “wordless wails” you’d sooner associate with the darkest Italian library records than anything made for children’s television. It’s a real fucking find this one - highly recommended if yr into anything from Delia x Daphne to Demdike.

Super tip! Accompanied by some excellent liner notes from Stewart Lee, who manages to capture that weird pre-internet feeling of never being quite sure if that moment of weirdness you saw as a kid on tv was real or imagined, you’d be forgiven for putting ‘Children of the Stones’ down as some mad hallucination if it wasn’t for this artefact before you now.  

As Lee explains, ‘Children of the Stones’ presumed an intelligence and curiosity “beyond the usual assumptions about the pre adolescent audience” - touching on themes of adult fears and longings, and featuring as protagonists a village of lobotomised weirdos which provide the concept for the score. Blending unhinged choral work by the Ambrosian Singers, with radiophonic effects and horror film themes that resemble aspects of loftier avant-garde theatrical works of the era, it’s not hard to hear how this stuff could induce phantasmagorias in imaginations not yet overstimulated by the sugar rush of social media and hyper-strobing cartoons.

The whole thing lasts just 20 minutes and includes some 31 parts of music oscillating between echoes of church and theatrical music and richly evocative, dread-filled concrète and psychedelic fantasy that, luckily enough for these times, sound best with the heating off and a musty paperback illuminated by torchlight under the bedsheets.

Details
Cat. number: JBH 100
Year: 2022
Release notes:
Previously unreleased music from the 1977 TV series. Music by Sidney Sager performed The Ambrosian Singers. The first copies came with an A2 full colour print of the Les Matthews stones painting from the TV show plus six postcards of woodcuts from the original COTS book. Due to a printing error (the printers called Awesome Merchandise went bankrupt) and half the ordered postcards did not turn up. So there were about 300 sets of 6 cards, about 200 sets of 5 cards, about 300 sets of 4 cards…
Tracklist
A1HTV Ident
A2Children Of The Stones Opening Title
A3Mrs Crabtree Views The Painting
A4Someone Who Is Happy
A5Matthew And Dai
A6Adam Touches The Stones
A7Circle Of Fear (I Can't Wait)
A8Nobody Ever Leaves
A9Being Alone
A10 Within The Painting
A11Matthew's Accident
A12Serpent In The Circle
A13Tom Browning
A14Look, It's Jimmo
A15Narrowing Circle
A16Premonition Of Dr Lyle
A17Dai Cast The Bones
A18The Barber Surgeon's Amulet
A19Never, It's Mine
A20He's Not There
A21Anger The Fire
A22Such Power
A23It Is Time
A24Squaring The Circle
A25We've Lost Them
A26Go Now And Be Happy
A27I'll Return This At The Same Time
A28We're Trapped
A29The Circle Is Complete
A30The Circle Is Broken
A31Children Of The Stones End Title
Credits
The Ambrosian Singers
Performer