Ghost Box Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 16 Items

We're absolutely delighted to announce the reissue of Ouroborindra on the Ghost Box Records label.

Ouroborindra was first released in 2005 on Cd-r, and now re-issued on CD and, for the first time, on Vinyl. Eric Zann was an alias for the more experimental work of Jim Jupp, aka Belbury Poly and Ghost Box co-founder.

Inspired by early 20th century cosmic horror fiction, Ouroborindra sets out to conjure up it's own awe inspiring and chilling imagery. It's drone music with melodic elements, stitched together with synthesizers, samples, found sound and effects.

Another exceptional reissue from the consistently excellent Ghost Box.

The first in a complete series of Ghost Box re-issues, starts with the 2004 EP Farmer’s Angle by Belbury Poly. The very first release for label co-founder Jim Jupp was joyfully naïve yet oddly sinister electronica. It very much set out Ghost Box’s stall with its strong roots in library music, TV soundtracks, folk and psychedelia.

Farmer’s Angle is issued on 7inch vinyl, CD and all digital channels. Packaged in the original sleeve art by Julian House that was to establish the label’s strong visual identity. Drawing influences from library music albums and Penguin books of the 60s and 70s with a classic British modernist aesthetic, House’s work for Ghost Box predated the eventually ubiquitous use of paperback book visuals in popular commercial graphic design. Farmer’s Angle was included in an Electronic Sound magazine feature, A History of Electronic Music in 75 Records.

Belbury Poly Jim Jupp has released EPs, singles and seven albums on Ghost Box under the name of Belbury Poly. He is also a member of The Belbury Circle along with Cate Brooks (of The Advisory Circle) and occasional collaborator, John Foxx. In 2019 he co-wrote and produced the music and spoken word album Chanctonbury Rings with Justin Hopper and Sharron Kraus. He has recorded library tracks for KPM, BMG and Lo-Editions. He has remixed tracks for several artists including John Foxx and Bill Ryder-Jones (The Coral) and co-written a song with Paul Weller for his 2020 album On Sunset.

Still rooted in these early influences and with a consistent and strong visual identity, the label has developed over the years and now has a more international roster with a broader range of musical styles. But each new release continues to be a unique fit into the label’s distinctive parallel universe.

The Focus Group is the recording alias for Ghost Box co-founder and well respected graphic designer and film maker Julian House. This debut album was first release in 2005 on a burn to order Cd-r. Now packaged in a 4 panel digipack with the original sleeve art by Julian House that established the rules for the primary Ghost Box artwork layout. It’s a design grid that the label has continuously revisited and tinkered with ever since.

Concept: On this new album for Ghost Box Records, The Advisory Circle (aka Jon Brooks) explores darker territory than on 2012’s more pastoral As The Crow Flies. This time Brooks hints at a Wyndham-esque science fiction story, where bucolic English scenery is being manipulated and maybe even artificially generated by bizarre multi-dimensional computer technology.

Sound: Brooks’ strong sense of melody and composition is still evident as are his renowned sound design and production skills. Consequently the album is a rich and rewarding experience that subtly showcases a wealth of musical experience. The usual analogue synth sound palette is augmented with found-sound from antique tape reels and Brooks’ ever growing tangle of home built electronics.

The Invisible World Of Beautify Junkyards is Lisbon band Beautify Junkyards’s third album and effortlessly blend their love of English Acid Folk and Brazilian Tropicalia. In a collection of songs that conjure up a warm and verdant faerie world, delicate acoustic guitars evoke an autumnal England suffused with Iberian heat by other- worldly voices; the ethereal lilt of João Branco Kyron and the warm languor of Rita Vian (a voice redolent of Gal Costa or Os Mutantes’ Rita Lee.)

The production is tempered with a haunted electronic palette that anchors the band squarely in the world of Ghost Box. But more than this, Beautify Junkyards’ sheer song writing talent, production skill and performance virtuosity grant them a place amongst the great outside-of-time bands like Broadcast or The High Llamas.

In 2012, the band’s eponymous first album set out their stall, with a collection of cover versions; mainly of classics of the British Acid-Folk period, but also taking in Tropicalia and German Kosmiche. The album was a hit in Portugal and picked up for airplay in the UK on BBC Radio 2 & 6 Music. Their version of Kraftwerk’s Radioactivity was included on DJ Food’s Krafwerk Kover Kollection.

Their second album in 2015, The Beast Shouted Love, carried their influences forward with original songs and cemented a style that is at once traditional, experimental and exotic. In 2016 the band debuted on Ghost Box with a single as part of the label's Other Voices Series.

Packaging: The lavish packaging on all formats is designed by Julian House with artwork that attempts to capture the band’s love of the Czech New-Wave and the twilight worlds of WB Yeats. The heavyweight vinyl LP includes a free download card.

Jon Brook's fifth album as The Advisory Circle is a beautiful and uplifting selection of electronic pieces, inspired by late 70s and early 80s library music. Never descending into parody or obvious re-enactment Brooks is the absolute master in this field.

The LP packaging is designed by Julian House. The elegantly simple artwork and typography, reminiscent of 80s photographic manuals and magazines, is rendered on metallic gold foil packaging. This edition, repressed by state51, is specially cut on gold Colored Vinyl to match the packaging.

Black Vinyl ediiton limited to 500 copies.

The long awaited third album from much loved vintage synth maestros Billy Bainbridge and Mike Johnston, finally finds its home on Ghost Box Records. This is unironically joyful and melodic electronica; informed by library music, music for children’s TV and a deep passion for the history of music technology.

Plone are very much part of Ghost Box’s DNA. They were a central part of the 90s retro-futuristic scene in Birmingham that included Broadcast and Pram and to which the label has always had strong ties through graphic designer and co-manager, Julian House. They are also cited by the label’s other boss, Jim Jupp, as a major influence on his work as Belbury Poly.

The band was formed as a three-piece in the mid-90s and their debut single, Press a Key, was championed by John Peel. The first album, For Beginner Piano, was released on Warp Records in 1999. Their warm, witty and unfunky music stood out from the crowd, almost in defiance of the moody and masculine post-rave electronica of their contemporaries.

A selection of bootlegged demos from the early 00s was rumoured to be the follow up album, but it never materialised. After that Billy went on to tour with Broadcast and later formed Seeland with another former band member Tim Felton (also of Ghost Box’s Hintermass). Meanwhile Mike formed the ZX Spectrum Orchestra, released solo singles as Mike in Mono and was a member of The Modified Toy Orchestra.

Twenty years on and Plone have reconvened as a duo with a third album, Puzzlewood. It’s compiled from material recorded at various points since the “lost album”, right up to the present day.

The A side is a cover of The Incredible String Band’s Painting Box, originally written by Mike Heron. It’s a collaboration between Beautify Junkyards and Belbury Poly and produced by Jim Jupp. The flipside is an original by Beautify Junkyards, Ritual in Transfigured Time, produced by João Branco Kyron.

Both have a delightfully disorientating sound. The artists complement each other perfectly with their through-the looking-glass electronic psychedelia.

Beautify Junkyards: A talented group of Lisbon based multi-instrumentalists headed up by João Branco Kyron on vocals and keyboards with Helena Espvall (formerly of Espers) on cello, flute and electric guitar, Martinez on vocals, João Moreira acoustic guitar and keyboards, Sergue Ra on bass and Antonio Watts on drums and percussion.

Belbury Poly: Jim Jupp is co-manager of UK label Ghost Box Records. As Belbury poly he’s released EPs, singles and six albums on the label. He is also a member of The Belbury Circle along with Jon Brooks (of The Advisory Circle) and occasional collaborator, John Foxx. He’s remixed tracks for several artists including John Foxx and Bill Ryder-Jones (The Coral) and has co-written a song with Paul Weller for his 2020 album On Sunset.

A Letter from TreeTops is the debut album from Pneumatic Tubes, the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Jesse Chandler. Grounded here in his own bucolic makings, Chandler opens his imagination to the world with this very personal and contemplative album. It’s a kind of American Kosmiche Music, a paean to the wild landscapes of the Adirondacks and Catskills of Upstate New York where he grew up. (TreeTops is the name of a summer camp, fondly remembered by several generations of the Chandler family.)

The album came to Chandler almost as an automatic transmission. Shortly after the death of his father, he holed up alone in the old family home with a few synths, a couple of vintage keyboards, percussion instruments and of course his beloved flutes and clarinets - the “pneumatic tubes” of his nom de plume. Channelling raw memory and landscape, Chandler laid down most of the material for this mystical and elegiac suite of music in just a few days. He later called on some talented friends to flesh out the final recordings; Paul Alexander on bass, Bill Campbell on drums, Marissa Nadler backing vocals and Robert Gomez on electric guitar.

The result is a series of beautifully faded musical photographs. Gentle melodies are propelled along by synth arpeggiators or laidback sidestick and felt beater drums. Chandler’s wind instruments are woven throughout like wild vines binding the elements together. Towards the end of the album an underlying note of melancholy swells into grief during the very moving Witch Water, which is subtly underpinned with Marissa Nadler’s haunting voice. The clouds soon clear, the mountains reappear, and the wheel of the year and of the generations turns again as A Letter from TreeTops signs off with the same lilting melody on which it began.

Originally hailing from Woodstock, New York and now living in Denton, Texas, Jesse Chandler is the keyboard and woodwinds player for the bands Midlake and Mercury Rev. His particular warmth as a composer and improviser is informed by a childhood ensconced in the mystical Catskill mountains, where he absorbed the area’s rich musical history and developed a fascination with keyboard and woodwind instruments.

A Letter from TreeTops is not his first appearance on Ghost Box, he also contributed organ and flute on the Soundcarriers’ incredible Entropicalia album.

Evocative liner notes are provided by Justin Hopper, author of Old Weird Albion and writer of the Ghost Box spoken word album Chanctonbury Rings. By happy coincidence Hopper also grew up in New York State and has his own deep connection to the landscapes there.

Full Circle is the sixth album by long time Ghost Box roster member, The Advisory Circle. Self-avowed synaesthesiac, Cate Brooks conjures a very visual fantasy in four acts (the vinyl version across four sides of a luxurious gatefold double 10”). Her tracks evoke human dramas played out against the timeless backdrop of a utopian built environment, where leisure, luxury, elegance and romance are always in fashion.

Brooks' music is by turns ambient, dramatic, upbeat and melancholic. It's instrumental electronica of the very highest calibre, an expert and masterly manipulation of electronic equipment both old and new. Light touches of acoustic and electric instrumentation and flourishes of both tape and digital sound manipulation add colour throughout.

This long running solo project is saturated in 70s and 80s TV and library music influences, and in some ways Full Circle is a call back to the 2005 debut EP Mind How You Go. However, the music and production have evolved over the yers, into a distinctively rich and three dimensional soundworld. The album wears its influences and sonic components proudly, but feels contemporary, cool, and fresh. Brooks' music career predates and now transcends the world of hauntological electronica that it inspired.

The Focus Group is the recording alias for Ghost Box co-founder and well respected graphic designer and film maker Julian House. This debut album was first release in 2005 on a burn to order Cd-r. Now packaged in a 4 panel digipack with the original sleeve art by Julian House that established the rules for the primary Ghost Box artwork layout. It’s a design grid that the label has continuously revisited and tinkered with ever since.

The Path is the latest album from Belbury Poly (aka Ghost Box records founder Jim Jupp). This time round Jupp has recruited a full band roster to expand his own unique electronica. He is joined by occasional Belbury Poly collaborator Christopher Budd on Bass and Guitar, Jesse Chandler (of Midlake, Mercury Rev & Pneumatic Tubes) on flute, clarinet and keyboards, Max Saidi on drums plus narration from author and poet, Justin Hopper.

Musically it takes as its starting point a particular moment of early 1970s British film soundtracks by the likes of Roy Budd and Roger Webb; a soundworld of easy-going jazz and funky rhythms gently coloured with pastoral strings and flutes. The Path, however, is unmoored from time or place thanks to Hopper’s narrative style, Chandler’s rustic flutes and keys, Budd’s soulful psychedelic guitars and Jupp’s production and electronics. The co-writers were all chosen for their unique abilities and an intuitive understanding of the ongoing Belbury Poly project. The spoken word elements form a loose, open-ended narrative; very much an album with spoken word rather than a spoken word album.

Pieced together with musty samples from children’s exercise records, vintage drama, clunky British jazz and library records, this is an archaeology of emotion, an exploration of the power of not only childhood memories, but of the collective unconscious.

Julian House’s own The Focus Group; oddly assembled sampledelic collages, stitched together from fragments of library cues and forgotten soundtracks. A beautiful, unhinged stream of consciousness that seems to prod at buried memories. Reviews Julian Houses's Focus Group should appeal to anyone who grew up in Britain in the '70s: its a condensed memory of that decade's daytime and after hours television. These 19 soundbites ape the incidental music for The Tomorrow People, The Clangers and Follyfoot, jazz drums, bass flutes, continuity men and grubby science-lab electronica. Like Boards of Canada minus beats, the feeling of smothered innocence evokes powerful intimations of the uncanny.

The Path is the latest album from Belbury Poly (aka Ghost Box records founder Jim Jupp). This time round Jupp has recruited a full band roster to expand his own unique electronica. He is joined by occasional Belbury Poly collaborator Christopher Budd on Bass and Guitar, Jesse Chandler (of Midlake, Mercury Rev & Pneumatic Tubes) on flute, clarinet and keyboards, Max Saidi on drums plus narration from author and poet, Justin Hopper.

The Endless Echo is the fifth album on Ghost Box for the highly prolific Martin Jenkins. Pye Corner Audio cinematic electronica shifts effortlessly between brooding ambience and menacing dance floor grooves. It evokes awe-inspiring vistas and moments of sublime spine-tingling wonder. This time around Jenkins draws inspiration from scientific and science-fictional notions about the nature of time and the idea that it may be entirely unreal.

Pye Corner Audio’s discography includes eleven full length albums and many more singles and EPs across several labels. There are also remixes for John Foxx, Mogwai, Ride’s Andy Bell, Mark Lanegan, Maps, Apta, Alice Hubble, Stealing Sheep, Knightstown, Dolphin Midwives and Japanese Television.

Pye Corner Audio’s music appears in the soundtracks to Adam Curtis’s 2016 film HyperNormalisation, the 2018 Shudder TV series Deadwax, Sky TV’s 2019 sci-fi drama series Curfew and 2022 Netflix documentary Slay.