A new album by Jon Brooks (The Advisory Circle, Pattern Forms, The Belbury Circle) is available now on his own Café Kaput label, as a download from Bandcamp.
Inspired by Alpine landscapes and performed entirely on the Buchla Music Easel and ARP Odyssey. Artwork by Ian Hodgson of Moon Wiring Club.
The Owl’s Map was the second album for Belbury Poly, first released in 2006. It’s music that is by turns, jaunty and dark and was inspired by TV soundtracks, folk and library music and 1970s electronic music technology. It established the mood and the imagined geography of Belbury, the fictional parallel-world setting for the record label itself.
This re-issue has been specially remastered by Jon Brooks for this first outing on vinyl. Ghost Box designer, Julian House has adapted the original CD artwork to the new heavyweight vinyl format. It includes a colour card inner sleeve with a visitor’s guide to Belbury and a free download code card. The vinyl version is released on 14th July 2017 and you can pre-order it from our shop now. The re-mastered digital version is currently being re-distributed to all major download suppliers and will replace the older version by the release date on the 14th. You’ll be able to buy the new remastered digital version from our shop on mp3 or lossless flac next week. (We’ll update the exact time of availability right here, as soon as we can.)
Also released on 14th July and available to pre-order now, is the new album from The Focus Group, Stop-Motion Happening. On LP, CD and DL.
Stop-Motion Happening with The Focus Group.
New album on LP, CD & DL 14th July.
Pre-orders from 23rd June.
Im Hag by ToiToiToi is out today on LP, CD or download. As always the beautiful CD and LP packaging is designed by Julian House. (The 180gm vinyl LP includes a free download card.)
Im Hag is the debut Ghost Box album for Berlin based Sebastian Counts’ ToiToiToi, following on from his single for our Other Voices series in 2015. It’s very detailed and lovingly produced music, crafted from electronic, synth, sampled and acoustic sources. Its a wunderkammer of an album crammed with original ideas. All at once managing to be witty, spooky, melodic and abstract.
The music and design explores the polarities of folklore vs modernity, and wilderness vs civilization. It’s an album about German culture but it pre-empts a nostalgia for the vanishing concept of internationalism, once exemplified by town twinning. It’s also a warm-hearted record, hopefully a tiny morale booster against Europe’s resurgent spectres.
The new album by ToiToiToi, Im Hag is due for release on 12th May. You can pre-order it in our shop now on Vinyl, CD or download.
Im Hag is the debut Ghost Box album for Berlin based Sebastian Counts’ ToiToiToi, following on from his single for our Other Voices series in 2015. It’s very detailed and lovingly produced music, crafted from electronic, synth, sampled and acoustic sources. Its a wunderkammer of an album crammed with original ideas. All at once managing to be witty, spooky, melodic and abstract.
The music and design explores the polarities of folklore vs modernity, and wilderness vs civilization. It’s an album about German culture but it pre-empts a nostalgia for the vanishing concept of internationalism, once exemplified by town twinning. It’s also a warm-hearted record, hopefully a tiny morale booster against Europe’s resurgent spectres. Counts’ is painfully aware of the way that folk tradition in his country is something of a poisoned well and had this to say about the album on his “Lo-Fi Longings” blog…
“When it comes to tradition, heritage etc. things get difficult over here and with finding an alternative way of dealing with german folk and culture by also emphasising its’ psychedelic elements and calling the kindred spirits of other cultures for support, I always felt like being in a minority of one. The more grateful I am now to have found a safe harbour in the imaginary world of Ghost Box and to be able to contribute my very own continental perspective.”
As always the beautiful CD and LP packaging is designed by Julian House. The 180gm LP includes a free download card.
By popular demand we’ve re-pressed The Soundcarriers’ remarkable, dazzlingly produced, psyched out masterpiece, Entropicalia. Available right now in the Ghost Box shop on heavyweight vinyl with beautiful artwork by Julian House and free download code card.
The second pressing of Pye Corner Audio’s Stasis LP is available from the Ghost Shop now. Also available on CD and Download.
Also new and exclusive to the shop is a Pye Corner Audio T-Shirt. It’s a two colour print of Julian House’s Stasis album artwork, on heavyweight vintage-orange cotton.
“A somnambulant trip through the cosmic void, Stasis is PCA’s strongest album to date.”
Shindig
“…from start to finish the standard never once slips, ensuring Stasis is an album in which you can happily lose yourself for hours on end.”
Kultur Magazin
“Rather than make up his own movies, Jenkins is happy to play the movies that are already running in our heads – and we are happy to let him do it. Every track shows the confidence of someone who knows exactly which buttons to push and when.”
The Wire
Incidentally Pye Corner Audio provide a large part of the soundtrack for the chilling documentary film by Adam Curtis, Hyper Normalisation. Still available to watch at the time of posting here on the BBC iplayer. Essential viewing and maybe more terrifying now than when it was released during the old reality.
Peel Away the Ivy by the Pattern Forms is out now on LP, CD and download.
There’s also a limited edition green vinyl version exclusive to Rough Trade, with a special in-store performance by The Pattern Forms in Rough Trade East tonight, 21st October, at 6:00pm.
The Pattern Forms is a collaborative project between Ed Macfarlane and Edd Gibson of Friendly Fires and Jon Brooks of The Advisory Circle, expertly blending blissful pop with more exploratory electronics, its roots lying in the artists’ shared love of soundtracks and electronic library music of the 70s and 80s. It will appeal strongly to fans of both bands.
“…starts with a clutch of songs so lovely, a floating flock of diaphanous electronic songbirds, that it feels like being seduced. The melodies and atmosphere of late afternoon sunshine slowly gathers you to its warm beating heart where, it turns out, you would rather like to stay. I haven’t heard music quite so evocative of time and place since first encountering Air’s ‘Moon Safari’. But while that consummate late-90s album had just enough dancefloor in its make up to ignite an ever-so-slightly strident sexiness, ‘Peel Away The Ivy’ swirls around a kind of epic lOcc pop beauty and whispers in your ear until you fail in love with it and its pastoral eroticism. Gorgeous.”
Electronic Sound
The Pattern Forms: Edd Gibson, Ed Macfarlane & Jon Brooks (off camera to the right)
A guest mix for Radio Belbury by Jon Brooks and Ed Macfarlane of The Pattern Forms.
Peel Away the Ivy by The Pattern Forms is out 21st October on LP,CD and Download.
Pre-orders are open today in the Ghost Box shop for the new album, Peel Away the Ivy by The Pattern Forms.
To launch the album there’ll be a live in-store performance at Rough Trade East, London, on 21st October by The Pattern Forms and a DJ set from Ghost Box sleeve designer, Julian House (also the man behind The Focus Group).
There’ll also be a limited edition of 300 translucent green vinyl LPs with alternate sleeve art exclusive to Rough Trade stores worldwide (including on line).
It’ll be 6:00 to 8:00pm and PLEASE NOTE this is a ticketed event . Wristbands are only available from Rough Trade with CD, LP or Colour Vinyl LP pre-orders or purchases on the day.
See Rough Trade’s page, here for full details.