Rob Young’s peerless overview of Britain’s ‘visionary music’ explores a tangled web of folk connections, from song collectors and pastoral composers to acid folk eccentrics and electronic pioneers. All are united by the inspiration they draw from this haunted old place we call home.

Here was the land of Silbury Hill and Avebury stone circle, of Wayland the Smith and the great Uffington White Horse, whose annual scouring is a true pagan survival; here also was the land of the druids, the first farming communities, the last Saxon kings, and countless age-old folk tales. It was a potent path indeed, and the trip soon led to others. Running through modern Scottish and Irish mythology, the legend of the Cailleach may well have begun life in literature before tumbling into the world of folklore. The goddess is a shaper of mountains and wild places, a bringer of storms and winter. Although it is unclear how old the animistic practices associated with Tigh nam Bodach actually are (some say they were developed in the 18th or 19th centuries by shepherds), the place names in this landscape certainly suggest a venerable association with the goddess. Hutton’s brilliant investigation into deity-like figures in Christian Europe shows us that these characters are much more complex than was once thought. The epilogue features the definitive account of the evolution of the Green Man. Tigh nam Bodach, from where the goddess Cailleach, her husband and their children watch over the land. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian SPRING Watch the equinox sunrise light up the floating capstone of Pentre Ifan and connect with the Cailleach at the shrine of Tigh nam Bodach in the remote HighlandsLeyline is a quest and a rite of re-enchantment: by day seeking out connections in the landscape, and by night delighting in music and merriment, we embrace a collective endeavour in the time of the individual.

Dartmoor is not as out of the way as it once was, and we would hope that there is less need to reach for the salt cellar these days. However, this land has somehow managed to retain a peculiar flavour of isolation well into the 21st century, and, especially away from its most-frequented spots, it still holds almost limitless possibilities for exploration. WINTER Make merry at the Chepstow wassail, and listen out for the sunken church bells of the lost medieval city of Dunwich So infuriated were the gnomes by the quarrying of their finest granite to rebuild the farmhouse at Fernworthy that they stole the firstborn child of the farmer who had committed the sin. On Dartmoor, “don’t upset the gnomes” seems to come pretty high on the list of folk rules.A lovely mix of early Autechre and classic Tangerine Dream… this is electronica as an enveloping tonal journey, chiming and pulsating with analogue life” Fenella operate in a shadowy, crepuscular world. The experimental ensemble led by Jane Weaver (and long term collaborators Raz Ullah and Pete Phillipson) return with hallucinogenic excursions into ambient textures and hypnagogic drones. Fenella make spirited melodic progressive pop music that pulsates with the same magnetism that fans of Jane Weaver’s own The Silver Globe and Modern Kosmology have come to expect and hold closely. A ruminative and rather beautiful thing. Boards Of Canada, Cluster and Craven Faults are among those whose influence can be felt throughout” Just an absolute and total TOME, without which it is highly unlikely we would be typing these words you are reading. Top shelf material of the most sacred and venerated kind. He’s a dab hand at writing tunes too. Hail to the Arch Drood.