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.

Culo - My Life Sucks And I Could Care Less (Deranged)

For some reason I'd written this off as yet another generic d-beat 'noise' punk thing. My mistake. It's more like Career Suicide or something like that. Hardcore with a bit of actual songwriting going on in the riffs.

The intro is doing my head in because I'm sure I recognise it. Sounds like Delia Derbyshire or John Baker or one of those other BBC Radiophonic Workshop people. If they made it themselves then they definitely need to do an album of that kind of 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.

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.