The soundscape that emerges from the Ghost Box record label is difficult to describe with a single word. “Haunted” is probably the best match in the English language, but the eeriness of the aesthetic has more to do with the sense of nostalgia that it provokes in the listener – although the memories come from a past that doesn’t exist.
Listening to Ghost Box artists like Belbury Poly, The Focus Group, and The Advisory Circle reminds me of lying half-asleep on a couch with a fever in the middle of the afternoon while a British documentary from the mid-70’s plays faintly on a boxy old television. Of course, this memory never happened, but then, neither did any of the occurrences in the world of Ghost Box.
Nestled amongst the record sleeves of many Ghost Box releases are scattered references to an imaginary English town called Belbury which seems to be the psycho-geographical heart of the label’s sound. When all the hints are assembled, we learn that Belbury is a sleepy old village that contains little of interest other than a Neolithic stone circle known as Thornwood Ring which may or may not rest upon powerful ley lines, and which may or may not be related to the spectral buzzing in Belbury which coincides with strange television interference patterns.
The vocabulary of Ghost Box titles is a perfect synthesis of neo-pagan mysticism, vintage sci-fi, and what I can only describe as extreme Britishness. For example, there are other fictional towns mentioned in the label’s canon with plausible-sounding anglian names like Bunnerspeak, Clinkskell, and Froun.
Ghost Box curators Jim Jupp and Julian House, an architect and a graphic designer respectively, have a visual sensibility with very real origins. A blog called Toys and Techniques is a fantastic repository of the sort of modernistic mid-70’s album art and book jacket designs that have inspired the duo.
Also, see the Flashback Flickr pool for more examples of these washed out colors and sweeping vectors that blanketed the graphical landscape of that particular time.
It’s worth noting that the book sitting on the table in front of Jupp (left) is An Experiment with Time – a book written in the 1920’s by an Irish aeronautical engineer who claimed to have precognitive dreams. In the book, the author attempts to apply some semblance of scientific rigor to his premonitory experiences, and ends up leading himself to a new hypothesis about the nature of time.
My friend Jonathan Dean put together a fantastic Ghost Box label feature for the WVFS radio station in Tallahassee. Highly recommended. The entire show can be listened to here.
If this gets your spooky pseudo-nostalgic juices flowing, then head to the Ghost Box site to order some albums.
Here are a couple of short videos that will give the hauntology novice a taste of the aesthetic.
