The Shildam Hall Tapes: The Falling Reverse (Dawn Light Edition)

Hand-finished white/black limited edition CD album in speckled recycled fold-out sleeve with fold-out insert, sticker and badge: 1. Custom printed using archival giclée pigment ink. 2. Metal badge, secured with removable glue on string bound tag. 3. Sticker printed on vinyl style material. 4. Folded sheet of accompanying notes, printed on textured laid paper, hand numbered and signed on the back. Limited to 208 copies. * * * Set among the cultural hinterlands of wyrd, otherly pastoral, folk, psychedelic and hauntological culture, The Shildam Hall Tapes: The Falling Reverse follows the journey of a song through time: one that appears to bring disarray to all who hear it. Is this coincidence or something more? 1799: A young woman who lives at the Shildam Hall country mansion writes a lament for a lover she can never be with, and locks it away forever. 1840: The song is discovered by one of her relatives and begins a journey through time. It entrances those who hear it, but does it also lead to their potential demise? 1969: A film set among the decadent milieu of late 1960s counterculture commences production at Shildam Hall, before collapsing amidst potential scandal after the song is rediscovered. 2004: A recording of the song is stumbled upon but all who listen to it seem to disappear... * * * The Shildam Hall Tapes: The Falling Reverse, written and recorded by Stephen Prince, is a further exploration of an imaginary abandoned film that first began on an album released with the same name in 2018, which featured music by Gavino Morretti, Sproatly Smith, Field Lines Cartographer, Vic Mars, Circle/Temple, A Year In The Country, The Heartwood Instititute, David Colohan, Listening Center and Pulselovers. The world, stories and journeying through time of The Shildam Hall Tapes are also explored in The Shildam Hall Tapes novella, which was released simultaneously with The Shildam Hall Tapes: The Falling Reverse album in 2021. That novella was also written by Stephen Prince, and the 2021 album is both a soundtrack to accompany it and a standalone piece of work set amongst the fragmentary memories and dreamscapes of The Shildam Hall Tapes. All of the above albums and novella can be listened to and read as standalone pieces of work. They also interconnect with the story and world of the near-mythical imaginary lost folkloric fever dream film The Corn Mother, which was explored in the 2020 novella The Corn Mother and album The Corn Mother: Night Wraiths, both of which were written and recorded by Stephen Prince; and also the 2018 album The Corn Mother, which included music by Gavino Morretti, Pulselovers, The Heartwood Institute, United Bible Studies, A Year In The Country, Widow’s Weeds, Depatterning, Sproatly Smith and Field Lines Cartographer. As with the novellas, and much of the A Year In The Country project, which it is released as part of, The Shildam Hall Tapes: The Falling Reverse’s structure is inspired by the cycle of the year, hence there are seven tracks, as in the number of days in the week. The titles of the tracks contain a particular year or set of years, which refer to sections in both the novella and the timeline of The Shildam Hall Tapes’ world and story as a whole, and accompanying them in the included notes are sections quoted from The Shildam Hall Tapes novella.