Reviews originally published in Issue 104 of Electronic Sound magazine, August 2023:
BELBURY POLY
The Path
(Ghost Box)
The hottest summer days have always boasted an hallucinogenic quality. The shimmering haze that turns baking tarmac into sparkling floodplains. The swaying cornfields that coalesce, briefly and tantalisingly, into alluringly arcane patterns. And what if some malevolent, mischievous figure was co-ordinating them all? Some giggling, hairy homunculus hiding amid the hawthorns of a silent, shadowy thicket?
As seasoned Ghost Box spotters will doubtless note, this is the second consecutive Belbury Poly album to concern itself with such sinister fairy folk. But where 2020’s The Gone Away saw genial Vice Chancellor Jim Jupp crafting solo electronica in a stark throwback to the label’s roots, ‘The Path’ boldly incorporates a lavish, full-band sound. On bass, the gently funky Chris Budd. On drums, the intuitive Max Saidi. On flute and keybords, a bona fide rock star in Jesse Chandler, whose Ghost Box recordings as Pneumatic Tubes are a fascinating adjunct to his globe-straddling work with both Midlake and Mercury Rev.
And “gently funky”? Really? Yes, but it’s a very Ghost Box school of funk, owing more to Roy Budd and a legion of gritty 1970s British crime flicks than to James Brown and George Clinton. The instrumental title track could easily accompany a kipper-tied Michael Caine being pixie-led around half-demolished Gateshead slums, and ‘Highways and Byways’ boasts the sweaty rhythms of the backstreet boxing clubs where Dennis Waterman once took out his frustrations on swinging, flea-ridden punchbags. But Ghost Box has always thrived on cognitive dissonance, on the juxtaposition of unlikely influences. So the villains here are not cigar-chomping Cockney gangsters in trilbies, but those chortling fey folk, leading us astray from the urban grime of these crumbling streets to sinister, pastoral realms of the uncanny.
The crucial mixer in this whole giddy cocktail is US writer Justin Hopper, whose languid narration has become an integral part of the Ghost Box sound. “There is no reasoning with the fairy path,” he warns amid the psychedelic maelstrom of ‘The Wrong Spot’. “One step into the stray sod and you’re committed to the cause.” It’s a perfect metaphor for those of us whose lives continue to be soundtracked by Jupp and Co’s continually evolving journey through their own gloriously hallucinogenic summer of strangeness.
Album available here:
https://ghostbox.greedbag.com/buy/the-path-47/
MELOSTME
RPG
(Upset The Rhythm)
“What other things have you seen in real life and thought ‘That’s not real – that’s like a video game?’” asks Jayne “MeLostMe” Dent at the outset of this superlative album. The progression of folklore from ancient, oral tradition to the fantastical realms of 21st century consoles is the overriding pre-occupation of a collection suitably adept at combining the mythical and the modern.
So ‘The Oldest Trees Hold The Earth’ is a traditional round worthy of The Watersons, composed in a Danish forest with Dent and fellow North-eastern folkie Ditte Elly writing impromptu lyrics on a sheet of paper passed between the trees. “On a dark day, do they wail as the wind whips through them? These skeletons of wood are skyscrapers…”
But elsewhere, ‘Eye Witness’ combines looped woodwind with eldritch bleeps and ‘The God Of Stuck Time’ sounds like The Unthanks locked in a cupboard at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. And through it all, Dent’s smoky, haunting voice is an appropriately timeless constant. Game over.
Album available here:
https://melostme.bandcamp.com/album/rpg
CHELA
Diagonal Drift
(Worst Bassist)
Ajay Saggar is the mastermind behind Dutch post-punkers King Champion Sounds. Kohhei Matsuda is guitarist with ace Japanese psych-rockers Bo Ningen. Their collaboration? Surely a thumping, ear-splitting riot of punchy, noise-addled uppercuts? Not at all. Diagonal Drift owes more to Saggar’s raga-influenced work as Bhajan Bhoy, with extended drone workouts frequently fragmenting into delightfully disorientating chaos.
It’s an aply-named collection. Tracks are launched onto deceptively gentle seas before drifting into choppier waters. ‘Flyspray’ sets the tone, its recurring piano motifs gently subsumed by a squall of electronic noise. In ‘Appalachjo’, the ponderous plucking of a mountain banjo is destroyed by an avalanche of distortion. ‘Heiwa’ (translation: ‘Peace’) provides sanctuary from the elements with the soothing tinkle of a detuned church piano, before the ominous guitar shards of ‘Ticker’ and the foghorn blasts of ‘Tanker’ rumble like malcontent thunder. An album of contrasting charms, offering both storm and shelter in equal measure.
Album available here:
https://chela1.bandcamp.com/album/diagonal-drift
NOLAN POTTER’S NIGHTMARE BAND
Honey
(Library Of The Occult)
“Psychedelics were in, baby! But she was the only one who could supply this special, all-natural high”. Ah, 1967. A time when kaftan-wearing Flower Children could innocently cultivate hallucinogenic honey from the rotting corpses of their long-deceased parents. Library Of The Occult continue their ripping Tales From… series with John Reppion’s seductive story of homicidal apiculture, narrated by gravelly thespian Peter Baker and with a perfect soundtrack of mellotron and fuzz guitar supplied by Texan-based Nolan Potter’s Nightmare Band. As Honey herself succinctly puts it, “Heav-ee…”
Album available here:
https://libraryoftheoccult.bandcamp.com/album/honey-tales-from-the-library-of-the-occult
FIRESTATIONS
Thick Terrain
(Lost Map)
“Is it the creeping dread that keeps you in your bed? The shadow walking past, the hunter in the grass?” From the lyrics of lead single ‘Undercover’, it seems this Walthamstow fivepiece have had a tough old time since their last album proper, 2018’s The Year Dot. But frontman Michael Cranny’s streak of doleful melancholy is tempered by the band’s shimmering shoegaze stylings. ‘Hitting A New Low’ is a dead ringer for Going Blank Again-era Ride, ‘Swim Under The Winter’ adds synthpop bleeps to jangling guitars and heartmelting Byrds harmonies. A wistfully swoonsome delight.
Album available here:
https://lostmap.bandcamp.com/album/thick-terrain
Electronic Sound – “the house magazine for plugged in people everywhere” – is published monthly, and available here:
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