Pye Corner Audio

Well, I'll be damned. I've always read their name as Pye Audio Corner but it's actually Pye Corner Audio. I guess it must have been some hauntological trick their music has played with my mind.



Now I haven't bought this digitally but that's because I've got the rather splendid limited double LP on Type Records. I think it might be hard to track down now though.

Pye Corner Audio exist in a similar space to all the Ghost Box stuff like Belbury Poly and The Advisory Circle. Kind of 70s library and synth music but very British. The name Black Mill Tapes makes me think of Yorkshire. Perhaps the soundtrack to a public information film about Shipley Market.

Sadly, I think that sign has now been removed. *angry fist waved at local councillors*

You know the rest of the deal - school television programmes, local radio theme tunes and warning films about drowning in reservoirs or electrocuted in substations. Actually, scratch the radio theme tunes because Pye Corner Audio don't go in for the chintzy melodic thing.

Basically, if you're into the whole Ghost Box thing then it'll be right up your street. I believe there's an LP on Ghost Box in the offing. Splendid stuff.

Here's a quick description from Boomkat who are also still selling the vinyl if you're that way inclined:-

His spellbinding works, now numbering two whole tapes, are spoken about in hushed tones by Moon Wiring Club, Ghost Box crew, Simon Reynolds and The Wire, and it's very easy to hear why. His music occupies that liminal nether zone at the peripheries of Hauntology and occult sonics, conducting wyrd experiments in the arts of electronic synthesis and memory transcription to create phantasmic Krautrock grooves and unheimlich, hollow drone spaces haunted by flickering tonal apparitions. It's often a lot less cute than the Ghost Box material, and by turns chillingly spooky, recalling bleaker ambient practices akin to Deathprod or Kevin Drumm, albeit with an Eldritch atmosphere siphoning the spirits of Mordant Music. Respect to Further Records for putting this out, it's an excellent release and should be hunted by any hauntologists.

.....they consume the senses with a cool-handed grasp of cinematic narration and mystical analogue production values at once evoking the soundtracks of mid-'60s Doctor Who, half-remembered Giallo missions and the home-smoked ambient techniques of early Boards Of Canada. There's also an underlying propulsion that pushes this collection forward, just perfect for narrowed-eye night drives (you'll want to listen to this alone; put a turntable on the passenger seat); learned and low slung rhythms which almost subliminally motor forward while faded melodies intimate a deeply layered personality which reveals new secrets with every listen. As anyone who knows this sound will cosign: it's an all too often imitated and hackneyed style. But we can sincerely say, this one really is a little bit special.