September 25, 2020
Uncanny Landscapes #6 - Gareth E. Rees
An interview by Justin Hopper with writer Gareth E. Rees.
Gareth Rees is an author whose books explore modern myths and folklore of place. He has previously published 2013’s Marshland, about Hackney, and 2018’s The Stone Tide, before becoming nationally known for 2019’s Car Park Life. His new book is Unofficial Britain, about the 'first shoots of future folklore emerging from an urban Britain that ... remains very strange indeed'.
Links:
September 17, 2020
Uncanny Landscapes #5 - The Belbury Poly
An interview by Justin Hopper with musician and record-label head Jim Jupp.
Jim Jupp records music as The Belbury Poly, and releases his own music as well as that of many others via the Ghost Box Records label he operates with designer Julian House. His latest record, The Gone Away, is a concept album based on fairy lore and touching on ideas of ephemerality and memory in landscape and life.
Links:
The Ghost Box
website and
twitter feed provide info on Jupp and the label.
August 13, 2020
Uncanny Landscapes #4 - Stein Farstadvoll
An interview by Justin Hopper with archaeologist Stein Farstadvoll.
Stein Farstadvoll is an archaeologist of the contemporary world working in arctic Norway and based at the University of Tromso. His work images vestigial and out-of-place objects that contribute to uncanny places: from an abandoned landscape garden to the military ruins of the area’s World War 2 German fortifications.
Links:
You can read about the Boxgrove, West Sussex, horse butchery archaeological site on the
BBC News site, here.
July 30, 2020
An interview by Justin Hopper with photographer Roei Greenberg
Roei Greenberg is an London-based Israeli artist whose photographs explore borders and boundaries, whether they are the ‘hot’ political borders of his home on the Israel-Lebanon border, or the subtle, implicit boundaries of the English picturesque. We spoke about his projects English Encounters and Along the Break; about contested landscapes; and about the ghosts that haunt our places, fighting for the chance to be seen.
Links:
Music by Russell McAlpine
June 29, 2020
An interview by Justin Hopper with author and artist Angus Carlyle.
We spoke about his books of let’s-call-them-air-quotes-Nature-Writing that both reflect his lifelong love of the genre and some of the conflicts at its heart. About running through the downs at night. About nature writing and indices, and mental health, and hangovers, and about the dadaist bureaucracy through which he approaches the natural world.
There are a few technical glitches in these recordings. Please take these as they are - cracks, through which the light gets in.
Links:
Angus Carlyle's Night Blooms from Makina Books
Angus's website and his Twitter and, why not?, his Instagram
(Host Justin Hopper has a website, too)
Music by Teleplasmiste
Title sounds by The Belbury Poly courtesy Ghost Box Records
Icons by Stefan Musgrove / Firebrand Creative
