Bagging Area Book Club Chapter Three- Solstice Edition

Today is the summer solstice, midsummer, the longest day and shortest night, a celebration of the sun that has been observed since the Neolithic era. To mark this event I thought I’d add to my recent Bagging Area Book Club posts with some solstice adjacent reading material. In May 2019 the first edition of Weird Walk was published, specifically timed to coincide with May Day (Beltane in Gaelic). Since then there have been a further six editions, with the Number Seven in 2023 the most recent although as the photo above shows I only have issues one, three and seven so far. Weird Walk was started by three friends ‘walking and engaging with the British landscape and its lore’. Forty pages printed on good quality card, well designed with quality photographs and illustrations and packed with interesting articles, Weird Walk is a treasure trove to be dipped in and out of. The first page of the first issue quotes Julian Cope in The Modern Antiquarian- ‘people don’t go anywhere unless there’s a signpost’- and from that point has included articles on Medieval graffiti, dolmen, Dungeon Synth, flat roof pubs, a walk around Avebury, a feature on the life of ‘seminal Tudor loon’ William Kempe, an interview with writer Ben Edge, the folklore of booze and of cheese, explorations of portals in Wiltshire, acid folk, author Benjamin Myers writing abut Lindisfarne, and the pastoral ambient cassette sounds of the label Verdant Wisdom. 

Acid folk? Here’s some Pentangle from 1969…

House Carpenter

Weird Walk is well worth looking out for and can be bought online from their website, each edition available for £5.50. 

I thought I’d throw in some more sounds for the solstice, some acid house rather than acid folk, recent releases to soundtrack tonight and beyond. First up is Temples remixed by Jono from Jagwar Ma, originally released in 2014 for Record Shop Day and recently made available at Temples’ Bandcamp page. Shelter Song (Jagwar Ma Jono’s Wrong Mix) takes Temples psyche rock and gives it an electronic thump and pulse, the synthline twisting its way round and round. 

Richard Sen, who compiled one of the best compilations of last year and a superb remix EP to accompany it (Dream The Dream) and who appeared on our Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1 album with the speaker shaking sounds of Tough On Chug, Tough On The Causes Of Chug, is set to release a debut solo album later this year, an album called India Man. To lead into it he’s released a single, Hills Of Kashmir, a cosmic disco/ acid house thumper that goes on with little let up in intensity and is very good indeed. 

Richard also turns up today at the latest release by teenage wonderkid OBOST who’s debut album Er… Hello? I wrote about a month ago. Sen has remixed Don’t Want To Be Alone, a star sailing, bleepy, dynamic version of the song with Bobby’s vocal on top. The EP is out today at Bandcamp. Richard’s remix is worth the price of admission alone but you also get OBOST’s own Jittery remix of the song and a new track, Take The Message. Happy solstice.