It’s Sunday, which means it’s time to introduce one of the first things I want to do every week. Namely, to play a record or two from my collection, and write about them.
Twenty years ago this year, long before my days in Denver, I lived in Des Moines, Iowa, and I started going to a bar called The Lift on a regular basis. I made a lot of friends, including the bartender there on Sunday evenings, Maggie. She started a weekly event called Vinyl Sunday and each week we’d all cart a couple records down to the bar, which didn’t have any TVs, or a jukebox, or anything like that, and we would all just listen to records and have drinks.
This is kind of a tribute to that.
I thought I’d start with two of my favorite records from the UK label Ghost Box Records, which is probably my current favorite record label. My wallet regrets this, as importing records is not cheap.
The Advisory Circle – Mind How You Go
I’m not entirely certain where I first heard about the blog Scarfolk Council, but I’d imagine, given that I heard about it sometime in 2012 or 2013, that it was either Boing Boing or Dangerous Minds.
The idea of Scarfolk Council was that it was something of a history of a fake town in the UK that was perpetually stuck in the 1970s. Here’s my favorite example of one of their Public Information posters:
I don’t think it was directly what led me to Ghost Box Records, but I think a post about it mentioned them. I bascially was fascinated that there was music that had the same sense of liminality that was suggested by the Scarfolk posts – the idea that it was a bit of a contemporary mirror held to a haunted past.
Back to the actual subject at hand – this record was probably the first I listened to from any artist on Ghost Box. It comes in two editions, this 10″ EP version having 8 tracks vs. the “Revised Edition” which has 12. Sadly, I missed the original vinyl pressing which was the Revised Edition, and instead managed to snag this version last year when Ghost Box started repressing much of their back catalogue one by one.
The Advisory Circle was a project of Cate Brooks, a prolific artist who has also released work under her own name as well as King of Woolworths (Stalker Song under that moniker regularly shows up on Reddit threads about music that is actually scary) and Cafe Kaput, among others. Unfortunately she’s retired the project, but I’m glad to have heard it.
I’ve had some contact with Cate via social media in the past and she is incredibly nice – I have a couple of her records that actually came from her personal collection that she signed. Sadly, this isn’t one of them.
This record sounds like a trip to Scarfolk. Other than the odd introduction we get in Logo, the short first track, the first side starts out bouncy and innocent, but things start getting strange rapidly – the last track, And The Cuckoo Comes, is mostly a odd voiceover about seasons that morphs slowly into something unsettling. This is a world where things are not as they seem – perhaps the cuckoos are cousins to the owls in Twin Peaks.
Side two gives a bit of light with Osprey, the starter for the second part of the journey. It sounds of watching birds take flight in a woodland marsh. This doesn’t last long, as we’re taken into the cautionary dance echoes of Nuclear Substation. Get in the Swim, the penultimate track, echoes with the chatter of children at the pool, beneath cheery wahwahs of 70’s style waves and heavily processed voices. The final track, Nuclear Substation PIF, brings us back to the same tones as the previous track, suddenly overrun by the buzzing of electric wires and a child’s scream, followed by a brief, final “Keep out”.
Overall, I really do love this record. I’ve always liked ephemeral films like the PIFs sampled here, and the synths have a wonderfully vintage vibe. It’s like listening to a washed out photograph, one that you can’t quite pinpoint the time or place of.
Kate Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Pye Corner Audio – Sleep Games
This was the first record from any artist on Ghost Box that I ever got my grubby little paws on, and it along with the record I just talked about, kickstarted my obsession with the label. I’m pretty sure I ordered this right when it was released.
Pye Corner Audio is a project of Martin Jenkins, who has also recorded under the names The House in the Woods and The Head Technican. He’s released several records on Ghost Box, but this, the first I heard, is still my favorite.
I’m not going to go track by track on this one, because I love every track on this. There is not a bad track here, and I will die on this hill. If I am having a very bad day or a panic attack, and listening to this does not fix me, please back away very slowly and take cover.
Standouts for me are Sleep Games, The Black Mill Videotape, Yesterday’s Entertainment, A Door in the Dry Ice, and Underneath the Dance Floor. But really, it’s the record as a whole that does it for me. It’s the soundtrack to no-clipping out of reality. I hope all the Backrooms loving, liminal space obsessed Youtube kids find this record eventually.
Kate rating: 5 out of 5 stars.
That’s all for today, folks. Next Sunday I think I will only pick one, because 2 turned out to be lengthy.
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