Bavarian Fire Drill - British Space Programme (Milgram Records - ambient synth)

A new Bavarian Fire Drill EP. More ambient synth gurgle. Loosely based around the history of the British Space Programme. An interesting short piece about that is here - http://lapsedhistorian.com/an-empire-of-stars/.

Mordy Laye and the Group Modular - The Mystery of Mordy Laye

Just going through Fact Mag's Top 20 Bandcamp Releases of 2013 list and came across this

Radiophonic library funk moog doings. Ghost Box gone bachelor pad? Stereolab but dustier? Quality stuff.

Pye Corner Audio - Sleep Games (Ghost Box)

FLAC available from Boomkat for £6.99

A synth soundtrack to a memory of 60s & 70s concrete Britain.Somewhere between the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and John Carpenter. John Carpenter at his most restrained though. Not in a bad way, just it's not bombastic soundtrack stuff. More like if John Carpenter wore tweed and did a soundtrack for Kes.

It's on Ghost Box so you know full well it's going to be high quality. It fits quite nicely into the whole hauntological Ghost Box thing besides Belbury Poly and The Advisory Circle. The artwork is typically top notch. Maintains that 60s/70s Open University look. Also has some great liner notes. I always like an album with liner notes. Feels like there's a bit more thought gone into it.

The liner notes are all about "parapsychological disturbances" are public buildings made of concrete. There's JG Ballard quotes and something about "inorganic demons" infiltrating people by Reza Negarestani from something called Cyclonopedia: Complicity With Anonymous Materials. All very odd but all a very perfect fit the music and the artwork.

It's a step up from the Black Mill Tapes double LP we reviewed earlier this year - http://spoonfuloftar.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/pye-corner-audio.html. The music on those was fantastic but this feels more complete as a conceptual whole. Music is still fantastic though.

Definitely on my "best albums of the year" list.

FLAC available from Boomkat for £6.99

And here's their blurb which should entice you even more (oh, and it also made The Wire's Top 50 of the year as well):-

Pye Corner Audio's darkling synthetic transmissions had been hovering under the radar for a couple of years before 2012's Black Mill Tapes collection on Type brought them to a wider and grateful audience. Now, Martin Jenkins finds himself equally lauded by the likes of Sandwell District's Juan Mendez and Minimal Wave's Veronica Vasicka as by the UK hauntological set - a testament to the scope and adaptability of his stygian productions. Nonetheless, this album release feels right at home on Ghost Box, and it follows Jenkins' contribution to the label's 7" Study Series last year. If The Black Mill Tapes focussed on the unheimlich but decidedly driving meta-techno side of the Pye sound, Sleep Games gives as much time to exploring its more abstract and oneiric peripheries. Nonetheless, rhythm is foregrounded throughout: from the woozy, tape-warped Boards of Canada-ism of 'Sleep Games', via the Xander Harris/Umberto-esque giallo-disco chug of 'The Black Mill Video Tape' through to the distant, dubby pulse of 'Palais Spectres' and the rolling toms of 'Underneath The Dancefloor'. Eschewing the tweeness which has arguably softened the impact of recent Ghost Box releases, Sleep Games is refreshingly drug-hazed and zonked-out yet shark-eyed, minimalist and full of post-apocalyptic, cold-wave menace: you can more easily imagine this stuff soundtracking a car ride through the deserted industrial zones of coastal America than a ramble round the Belbury parish and its bucolic environs. At the same time, this feels like a Ghost Box release through and through: 'Print Through' is a radiophonic seance right from the grimoire of Eric Zann, 'Deep End' has the school textbook sci-fi sigh of classic Belbury Poly and 'Yesterday's Enemy' the occult public service broadcasting vibe of early Advisory Circle.

Listening Center - Example One

The fantastic GHOST BOX records put a new blog post up about some new releases they're doing - http://jimjupp.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/listening-centre.html

One of them is going to be a 7" by Listening Centre (including a remix by Pye Corner Audio!.

Never heard of them before but have given this album of theirs a few listens today and they fit right in with the whole Ghost Box thing (even though they are from New York).

Just look at this picture from their facebook page:-

Says everything! If you don't quite get it yet here's their bio:-

Researching imaginary pasts and lost utopias.

Listening Center is the alias of drummer and electronic musician, David Mason. Drawing primarily from influences such as the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, lost film/TV soundtracks, and Kosmische Musik, Listening Center presents a patchwork of imagined pasts/futures, in which the listener can make his or her way through an undergrowth of dream-like melodies and electronic sound palettes which have the effect of being now reassuring, now unsettling. Having grown up in Ireland in the 1980s, David evidently internalized similar effects of synth-based incidental music from sci-fi and schools programs which found their way from the BBC to the TV set in his parents' living room. His formal musical education began at the Cologne Music Conservatory in 1995, and he completed his studies at the New School in New York in 2000. During this time he studied jazz drumming with highly-esteemed players such as Keith Copeland, Billy Hart and Joe Chambers, and thereafter embarked on a career accompanying artists as diverse as Art Farmer, James Hunter, and Natalie Walker. Since then, he has also collaborated with the novelist/musician Michael Idov and filmmaker Miranda July, and since 2010 has held the electronic drum chair in multi-instrumentalist Mikkel Hess's project, Hess is More.

The Ghosts Of Bush

Discovered this via the great Belbury Parish Magazine, the home of Ghost Box Records.

I've only just started listening to it so I can't verify how good it is. However, the idea is fascinating enough that you need to give it a listen regardless.

Ghosts Of Bush’ was created entirely using the natural acoustic sounds of Bush House, the iconic home for the past seven decades of the BBC World Service which will shortly be closing its doors for the last time. All of the sounds were captured in the small hours of the morning in empty offices, corridors, stairwells and other hidden corners by a Studio Manager working overnight. These recordings were then dubbed onto quarter-inch tape in the basement studio deep in the bowels of the South-East wing using two of the surviving reel-to-reel machines.

Adjusting the playback speed of the spools and ‘bouncing’ the recordings between the two tape machines lead to the discovery of a number of interesting phrases and sound textures which were then looped, layered and fashioned into rough compositions. Over time the tape would start to degrade and alter the nature of the sounds, while occasional echo was created by recording and playing various loops simultaneously, feeding the sound back into itself. The entire album was produced using these simple methods, and no other effects or studio trickery have been used. Thanks to the sonorous quality of Bush House’s Portland stone walls and high ceilings, the natural resonance of the space was all that was needed.

When talking of historic buildings it’s become something of a cliché to say ‘If these walls could speak…’ I like to think that on ‘Ghosts Of Bush’ we come close to hearing them sing!

I hope that this album not only captures the size and the grandeur of this now largely empty building, but also a sense of its history too. As well as being produced in a rapidly disintegrating studio using equipment that was decommissioned years ago, buried deep within the mix are call-signs or ‘idents’ from a number of the BBC’s Language services, many of which have also closed down in recent years. By working in this way I wanted to create a sense of poignancy in the gradual winding-down of Bush House’s facilities, the emptying of its spaces and the departure of its people, as well as commenting on the passing of time and the impermanence of all things.

This very personal project was created partly to mark the dying days of a bygone era, as a last hurrah for obsolete equipment and a studio that will soon fall silent forever. It’s the sound of many sleepless nights spent isolated in a labyrinthine basement surrounding by a crepuscular soundtrack of creaks and crackles. It’s an attempted homage to the work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop who crafted the most incredible of sound-worlds from the most basic of sources. But mostly it’s my way of saying goodbye to a building that I and so many people have loved. A former hive of industry that now stands almost deserted. I really hope that on this album the listener gets a sense of all these things.

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.