Ghost Box

god that jon brooks shapwick record, its lovely. 110 copies indeed.

There are 10 copies of his latest ... http://cafekaput.blogspot.co.uk/

I love Ghost Box stuff so much, but reading 'Retromania' I kind of feel like its hypocritical. Esp since I have spent five years shitting on American chillwave "huh huh my band is called Agent Cale Dooper and our tape is called EVERY NIGHT IS SNICK" and its penchant for nostalgia as an ends-to-a-means...

I actually had NO IDEA all the reference points to 60/70s British culture lurking deep in the music. Especially since I grew up in Florida and British TV outside of like Mr. Bean is a complete nonentity in my life. The touchstones and period-evoking synth sounds and class-evoking accents that Simon details in these songs might as well be some comp from Syrian radio hits put out by Sublime Frquencies. I have LITTLE TO ZERO nostalgia when I hear this stuff, it all sounds alien to me! That;s why I like it.

Love, an American

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg6IVUvVsAs

lol, Whiney, that's a pretty huge thing to miss, even from an Auslander.

I mean, I obviously knew it harkened back to library music and horror scores and BBC Radiophonic, but like, not to the specific degrees or actual references that Reynolds points out

Yeah but the reference points in American chillwave are usually totally obvious and comfort-blanket ephemera that lazily pander to their intended audience. But the Ghost Box stuff I've heard evokes a time shortly before much of its audience was born. Like I remember the residue of this sort of stuff swilling around when I was a child but it was already from a slightly strange previous era, same goes for all those 60s psych record that are full of this English folk influence that's largely disappeared from British rock music since. Looking back at pre-punk, pre-Thatcher Britain is like looking into a different world, one that (at a guess) most of Ghost Box's audience weren't around for, which is what makes it so unsettling.

Yours, someone who was born in the year Thatcher came to power.

A lot of the references Ghost Box evoke were still around in the 1980's when I was growing up. I get the impression Ghost Box fans are now in the 35 and above age bracket (I may be wrong here obv). Kids in the 80's in the UK still got the TV public service announcements (Charlie and the like ran for years) and still had access to John Wyndham, who for me hasn't been mentioned enough in relation to GB.

Adore this stuff beyond reason btw. It feels like home.

yeah, i mean obviously my first reaction to Ghost Box was "wow this is def nostalgia-based but with an attention to detail" instead of like I SMEARED SALUTE YOUR SHORTS WITH KAOSS PAD"

were people really talking about this and hauntology in 2007 or did simon just invent that. i can't find any evidence that this was a talking point besides some, like, quietus articles

lol dude

this was pretty much all british crit theory informed music blogs talked about in 2007

i think k-punk alone wrote more about that one belbury poly ep than henry darger did about little girls

I mean, I don't read "brit crit theory informed music blogs" for at least three reasons

all of this stuff was made by and for those ppl and was more notable for its aetiology as an early example of ~ critical blogger discourse ~ feeding back into actual music than for any intrinsic value

the lols come from most of these people being disheartened former grime fans

2007 def when I started hearing the term.

K-punk was often ridic, but his pieces on The Fall were fantastic.

You're skewing a lot there in order to reach a lack of intrinsic value, dude.

Also, as a Critical Theory graduate, can I just get a pre-emptive 'fuck you' out of the way? Cheers.

this music isn't terrible at all, it's nice, well made, more or less worthless

"More or less" is doing a lot of work there. What music do you consider not worthless? Is there any worth in anything? Probably not.

did this have any impact in america at all? i didn't hear about it until The Wire put Advisory Circle at like No. 45 on a year end list in 2011. I bought and enjoyed Advisory Circle, Pye Corner Audio and Belbury Poly and was spinning the black circle like "la la la enjoying my cool little british label that no one seems to talk about" and then I open up a Simon Reynolds book with a Library of Congress call number and there's like 40 fuckin pages on how this is Britains version of hip-hop and I felt like I did when I learned Lonestar Steakhouse was a chain restaurant

the blackout crew, certain of the late beethoven quartets

It doesn't have any impact in Britain either really.

nb you will have noticed that crit theory wasnt dismissed, merely its lesser amateur practitioners

jon yeah athough in another context entirely i was going to say too much is written about the fall, the k-punk fall/lovecraft stuff is certainly towards the better end of this spectrum

how this is Britains version of hip-hop

Ahahahahahahahahaaaaa

I thought k-punk's piece on hauntological musics was quite good, in all seriousness.

I mean there are however many pages in Retromania about it doesn't really surprise me because Reynolds and his mates have been talking about it amongst themselves for years but its impact on or relevance to much of the rest of British music is virtually zero. It's a fairly isolated scene producing some excellent music but that's about it. The critical discourse around this label is largely awful and put me off actually listening to it for several years.

xpost nilmar totally, they are v over-talked-abt. that was one of the few Fall pcs that felt like it would rattle about my brain for the rest of my listening career.

you know who needs to get and love ghost box is film score nerds. I don't know if they know about it or not.

Well, I think the Julian House/Broadcast/Berberian Sound Studio crossover will make that the case soon if it isn't already.

yeah but emily that might nearly have been written for you

ghost box probably had some influence on demdike stare and that strain of olde englishes weird techno

yeah but emily that might nearly have been written for you

So, wait, does that mean you're writing me off as a lolcrit blog dilettante? Seeing as you indicate with your other posts that you think such things are laughable... Bah humbug.

while we're speaking about k-punk et al, I noticed there's a new cheap ebook of collected and augmented woebot pieces. Kind of tempted, I remember enjoying him on average more than kp.

<q> The critical discourse around this label is largely awful and put me off actually listening to it for several years.</q>

As someone whose been listening to this stuff for a year without seeing any critical discourse its like "HOLMES YOU DID NOT KNOW IT WAS A CAN OF DOG FOOD"

I don't think the hip hop thing is such a stretch. A year ago I had the idea of writing a blog post discussing Stereolab and Broadcast's sonic references/appropriation/thievery in the context of hip hop. Makes total sense.

I like most of this stuff, though only had the slightest idea of the aesthetic, being american and whatnot. But there are hazy memories of the 70s/early 80s that I have that aren't that different. Or maybe I just watched a lot of Dr. Who and The Prisoner while growing up.

But musically, it all sounds awesome to me, it just doesn't stick with me that much. Some of it is more musique concrete, some is more library music...Pye Corner Audio is the one that sticks with me because he works it in a lo-fi italo-disco/proto-house way.

And Broadcast is my favorite band of their era, no matter what they were ripping off at any given time.

Whiney I know you're partly playing it up for LOLs but this isn't actually going to ruin this stuff for you is it?

yeah i think some of my fairly mild scorn for these dudes itt was precipitated by seeing that woebot has repackaged his defunct blog into an ebook

i don't think it's even chutzpah so much as an english arts and crafty enamourment for careful artisanal labour, rather like the dude who carves spoons all day in hackney he wants to get paid in full (if only retroactively)

I dunno, I just like reading things on a dedicated reader more than I like reading them on blogs where the rest of infinity is constantly beckoning me to click away.

maybe he just wants to get paid?

yeah but he is a shitty writer and doesn't deserve to

ouch. regardless, not that big a deal that someone, anywhere, should publish an ebook. it's convenient. he's not going to retire from it.

if he needs to pay the rent then i might feel obliged to send him twenty quid for introducing me to some fine music when i was like 19, but reading that interview of him on (iirc) the quietus i was reminded of his precious cultural dirigism and those tendentious thinkpieces about musical history

the troubled ghosts of former ilxor NRQ haunts my posts itt like the fragments of the incredible string band limning their way throughout the work of skepta

Whiney I know you're partly playing it up for LOLs but this isn't actually going to ruin this stuff for you is it?

― ~farben~ (Jon Lewis), Thursday, January 10, 2013 6:26 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nah, I still love this stuff

reverse is also true, btw - ie there are plenty of uk telly genre-nerds who consume Children of the Stones and The Owl Service for breakfast, know every episode of Kinvig off by heart, but who wldn't touch the Ghost Box stuff w/ a fifty foot maypole

also think Electric Eden by Rob Young was a more important bk, in the UK at least, for popularising this idea of olde weird britain and a wider idea of what constitutes trad/folk music than the Simon Reynolds volume

Woebot's 70s ebook was a lot of fun. Wish it were longer.

reverse is also true, btw - ie there are plenty of uk telly genre-nerds who consume Children of the Stones and The Owl Service for breakfast, know every episode of Kinvig off by heart, but who wldn't touch the Ghost Box stuff w/ a fifty foot maypole

This. I tried a couple and even though they should be right up my street I just couldn't get into them at all. (For reference, they were Seance at Hob's Lane, We Are All Pan's People and The Owl's Map - feel free to point out they're unrepresentative and/or rubbish and I'm missing out.)

I really like the first Belbury Poly album, The Willows. Also check out the Broadcast/Focus Group collab.

so, thoughts on the new focus group lp anyone?