From deep in the heart of Moomin Valley, frozen in time for many midwinters passed, comes a genuine treasure chest of never heard Moomin melodies and instrumental comet songs composed for the continued animated adventures of our Fuzzy-Felt freak folk friends who disappeared from UK TV pastures in the mid-1980s.

From the top of the Hobgoblin’s Hat and the bottom of Snufkin’s satchel, original Moomins composer Graeme Miller (‘The Carrier Frequency’) kindly shares this patchwork selection of spellbinding sound poems and percussive peons made using the very same selection of ocarinas, kalimbas, miniature squeak boxes, Waspy synths, cornflake box shakers and a seemingly endless array of talent and lo-fi home studio trickery. 

Regarded as one of the most enigmatic, beguiling and haunting imported children’s programmes to ever grace UK TV screens, ‘The Moomins’ was one of the first-ever commissions by Anne Wood (‘The Teletubbies’) who ingeniously replaced the original Polish/Austrian/Finnish soundtrack with homemade music experiments by unknown post-punk theatre students Graeme Miller and Steve Shill (aka The Commies From Mars) who, after the screening of two unforgettable series in 1983 and 1985, were left in eager anticipation of rescoring further Moomin adventures with new melodies, arrangements and sound designs, which then lingered in the ether waiting until the Groke awoke and Snorkmaiden sang once more. 

With future felt adventures screened exclusively in Poland and Germany for many years (often as feature films) these unheard recordings are the only genuine musical sequel to the bizarre UK version of ‘The Moomins’ and stand as important inclusions in Graeme Miller’s own portfolio of theatrical theme music and sound installations as part of The Impact Theatre Cooperative, including collaborations with artists and writers such as Russell Hoban.

Witnessed in fragmented form during a short run of incredible rare live screenings at The Barbican Theatre and various film festivals, this record marks the first time this music has been heard in its original full-length form, free from sound effects, dialogue and whimpers of euphoric joy and nostalgia from those who have continued to crave the company of our Moomintrolls and their mysterious music over the last five decades.

TRACK LISTING

1 .The Moomins (Occarina Theme)
2. Raft Journey
3. The Cave
4. Climbing The Lonely Mountain
5. The Moomin Hornpipe (Part One)
6. Woodland Band (Parade)
7. The Observatory (Unabridged)
8. Locusts
9. The Moomin Hornpipe (Part Two)
10. Indigenous Woodland Band
11. The Tornado
12. The Moomins End Titles (Occarina Theme) 

Frozen in time over four decades, this 1984 ‘cyclic incantation’ combines electroacoustics, grazed euphoria, industrial aesthetics, sampled salvage and recycled mechanic folk to score a widely revered dystopian physical theatre performance from the UK’s hugely influential Impact Theatre Co-Operative. From a seminal post-punk art-action faction (formed in a Leeds warehouse space alongside Gang Of Four and The Mekons), this apocalyptic prophecy not only cracked avant garde stage boundaries but provided a captive audience with stunning set design and an incredible broken-music soundtrack before its swan song amidst Poland’s 1986 power plant panic. From the sonic workbench of the very same bedsitsituationists that created the haunting 1983 music to ‘The Moomins’ TV animation comes the eventual isolated music release to this pioneering theatrical spectacle of truly mythical status.

‘The Carrier Frequency’ (1984) was a legendary stage work that emerged from the collaboration between the influential performance company Impact Theatre Co-operative and cult novelist Russel Hoban. The incantation of Hoban’s text voiced in the broken verbiage of a post-apocalyptic broken language and the entranced physicality of Impact’s ritualistic performance in a pool of cold dark water printed deeply on those who witnessed it. It reached an impassioned crescendo on the rising score by Graeme Miller and Steve Shill who also performed in the work. The music exploited samples from Hoban’s own recordings of the shortwave radio broadcasts which he tuned in as he wrote, helping him order the green phosphorescent letters on the screen of his Apple computer. Shill and Miller mirrored Hoban’s channelling in their approach to making the score, following the notion that this was the broadcast of some Central Eurasian radio station doomed forever to circulate fragments of static interlaced with desultory public information broadcasts and ‘The Record’, its only surviving fragment of a lost culture.

The score was forged on an 8-track tape recorder sandwiching harmonium and accordion with the output of a digital delay machine that could trap and fragments of audio to be triggered and manually pitched. It is a knowingly crude montage where samples denote fragmentation itself and their reassembly, like Frankenstein’s monster, shows the stitches that join the stolen body parts.

Available for the first-time ever on deluxe vinyl with the full cooperation of the composers and Impact Theatre Co-Operative lynchpins Graeme Miller and Steve Shill.

TRACK LISTING

A Long Paleness
Reggie Windmill
Landschaft
And Now The Record
Longdream
Beat Frequency Oscillator
Without Impatience
A False Altar
The Girl From Tirana

Imagine, if you will, a foreboding homemade electro-acoustic, new age, synth driven, proto-techno, imaginary world music Portastudio soundtrack for a Polish-made animated fantasy based on a modern Finnish folk tale, created for German and Austrian TV, composed in 1982 by two politically driven post-punk theatre performers from a shared house in Leeds!

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This one will obviously resonate with a lot of you. the Moomins is inseparable from the quirky library synth vibes and twanging cosmic blips and twee folky bloops. It's eminently nostalgic and essential.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Moomins Theme
2. Travelling Theme
3. Hobgoblin's Hat
4. Leaving Moomin Valley
5. Partytime
6. Hattyfatteners Row
7. Woodland Band
8. Most Unusual
9. Midwinter Rites
10. Piano Waltz
11. Creepers
12. Woodland Band Far Away
13. Comet Shadow
14. Comet Theme
15. The Moomins Theme (End)