(First published in Issue 123 of Electronic Sound magazine, February 2025)

30 DOOR KEY
A Warning To The Curious
(Subexotic)

“The TV channel of an elsewhere, transmitted by a ghost frequency”. That’s Alessio Bosco’s own description of his 30 Door Key project, and this ripping collection of spectral themes should be enough to keep even the most grizzled of hauntologists hogging the remote control. For an Italian producer based in Palermo, Bosco has clearly seen a prodigious amount of creepy old British telly, with the squelchy synths of opening track ‘Mistery & Imagination’ sounding for all the world as though Peter Bowles is about to become possessed by the spirit of Abaddon.

Fans of early Ghost Box will find all their boxes resolutely ticked. ‘Cosmos Thru The Pond’ could comfortably be an outtake from some unreleased Belbury Poly album, ‘Old Ones’ belongs on a long-lost Advisory Circle record that has slipped between the cracks on some ancient sacrificial stone. But Bosco has his own irresistible dynamism and a sly sense of humour to boot, with ‘Monolith In Bowler’ adding hip-hop beats to crackly electronic flurries.

Album available here:
https://30doorkey.bandcamp.com/album/a-warning-to-the-curious

BLANCMANGE
Nil By Mouth VI
(Blanc Check)

“A tapestry of electronics, strange rhythms, found sounds and stray noises” claims the blurb, and opening track ‘Afterwards’ has them all with (literal) knobs on. For over a decade, Blancmange big cheese Neil Arthur has used the Nil By Mouth series to explore his passion for instrumental soundscapes, but rarely has the experiment felt so cinematic. No-nonsense beats, strident synths and the whirring dial of a GPO telephone combine to form what could easily be the title music to some grim 1970s Lancashire gangster movie. Get Arthur, anyone?

Arthur is rarely one to retread his past, but the six Nil By Mouth albums deftly capture the spirit of his earliest experiments with co-founder Stephen Luscombe. Veteran fans pining for the Kraftwerk-influenced grooves of 1980 EP ‘Irene And Mavis’ will certainly be drawn to the likes of ‘Pitched’ and ‘Circular Square’. But it’s the drizzly melancholy of ‘Vanishing Point’ that truly captures the heart, the wistful closing soundtrack to Arthur turning up his jacket collar and shuffling down a Barnoldswick back alley into a squall of freezing rain. 

Album available here:
https://blancmangemusic.bandcamp.com/album/nil-by-mouth-vi

MOUNT VERNON ARTS LAB
The Séance at Hobs Lane
(Ghost Box)

It’s the hauntology classic that refuses to be exorcised. In 2001, musical medium Drew Mulholland poured his love of Delia Derbyshire and Quatermass And The Pit into a record that inadvertently inspired the founding of Ghost Box Records and the creation of an entire genre. Ghost Box themselves reissued the album in 2007, and now – as part of an extensive back catalogue campaign – they have once again joined fingers and summoned its spirit to the table.

Rapping the woodwork from the other side? A coterie of illustrious shades. Norman Blake lurks amid the crackling transmissions of ‘The Mandrake Club’ and Isobel Campbell adds baroque cellos to ‘The Black Drop’. Portishead’s Adrian Utley, meanwhile, weaves a throbbing Moog around the quicksilver flutes of ‘Warminster 4’. By the time we reach 14-minute closing track ‘Percy Toplis’, a squall of electronic throbs and mutinous saxophones suggest ectoplasm is finally pouring through the wood-panelled walls. A quarter of a century on, it’s an album that still provides a potent glimpse of the darkness beyond the veil.

Album available here:
https://ghostbox.greedbag.com/buy/sance-at-hobs-lane-0/

PALE BLUE EYES
New Place
(Broadcast)

Married duo Matt and Lucy Board have been through the mixer in recent years, but describe this beautifully breezy new album as “a world of new beginnings”. So while 2023 album This House was a grief-laden tour of the Devonshire cottage that lay empty following the loss of Matt’s parents, New Place follows the Boards to pastures new. “The fear walks away / I’ve found my place,” sings Matt amid the minimalist beats and tremolo twangs of ‘Scrolling’, suggesting a move to Lucy’s native Sheffield has done them both a power of good.

Not that the past can be completely forgotten. Boasting impeccable Johnny Marr jangles, ‘Pieces Of You’ will chime with anyone who has ever unpacked the left-behind boxes of a loved one’s life: “Your pocket knife / Devon FA badge / Claddagh and wedding rings / Melted down”. It’s a touching moment. But the overall mood is one of renewal and recovery, with the likes ‘The Dreamer’ and ‘Half Light’ couching a life re-started in walls of sumptuous shoegaze guitars.

Album available here:
https://paleblueeyesmusic.bandcamp.com/album/new-place

THE BRITISH STEREO COLLECTIVE
Starburst
(Bandcamp)

Since 1977, Starburst magazine has been celebrating big and small screen science fiction with geeky aplomb. Phil Heeks is a long-term fan, and this officially-sanctioned album is a pitch-perfect tribute both to the magazine and to a golden age of cosmic thrills. ‘Moonbase Britannica’ adds disco beats to square-jawed synths, ‘Servant Of The Stones’ has wafty strings dancing naked amid the megaliths and ‘Galaxy Pirates’ is a brassy anthem to alien kingdoms with wobbly walls. Supplied with a spoof vintage issue of the magazine itself, it’s a splendidly arch homage.

Album available here:
https://thebritishstereocollective.bandcamp.com/album/starburst-the-album

APTA
The Pool
(Castles In Space)

Resolutely not making a concept album about swimming thirty lengths of his local baths, Manchester’s Barry Smethurst has taken what he calls a “psychedelic plunge” and emerged with this suitably immersive collection of rather lovely instrumentals.  ‘Awash’ submerges trebly guitar lines in a tide of ARP Odyssey synths – imagine the Velvet Underground’s ‘Heroin’ recreated by Roger Limb – and the euphoric arpeggios of ‘MLT’ are genuinely cockle-warming. By the time he reaches the soothing plinks of closing track ‘Breathe’, Smethurst is home and dry.

Album available here:
https://apta.bandcamp.com/album/the-pool

TAPE LOOP ORCHESTRA
Sabbat De Voix
(Spirituals)

In 2019, a trio of Tape Loop Orchestra albums – Interiors Parts One, Two and Three – explored the ambience of empty rooms. Sabbat De Voix finds Andrew Hargreaves outdoors but still alone, revelling in what he calls “foggy moor hermitude and a detached romanticism”. Comprising two ebbing 18-minute suites, it’s a soul-soothing ramble through treated piano and haunted woodwind, with ‘Voix Figées’ settling into an affecting Vaughan Williams stillness and ‘Voix Empruntées’ adding choral voices to layers of pattering hiss. A deserted church of an album on a pale-skied Sunday afternoon.

Album available here:
https://tapelooporchestra.bandcamp.com/album/psalm019-sabbat-de-voix

Electronic Sound – “the house magazine for plugged in people everywhere” – is published monthly, and available here:
https://electronicsound.co.uk/

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