Belbury Poly – ‘Far Off Things’


Ghost Box has reissued its two first album releases on vinyl.

The Focus Group‘s Sketches and Spells and Belbury Poly’s The Willows, the work of label co-founders Julian House and Jim Jupp respectively, are the latest items in the Ghost Box catalogue to receive the vinyl treatment, following The Advisory Circle’s Mind How You Go and Belbury Poly’s Farmer’s Angle EP.

Sketches and Spells, originally released on CD in 2004, finds library music aficionado House using an array of esoteric samples to map out an eerie, psychedelic world redolent of  “the school music room, dusty archives and hidden rural rituals” across 25 short tracks. The Willows (also 2004), FACT’s favourite Ghost Box release to date, is a more synthesizer-based work, with a palpable debt to German electronic icons like Dieter Moebius, Kraftwerk and Monoton as well as quaint/creepy TV themes from 1970s Britain.

Both vinyl editions (inc. free download versions) are available now from the Ghost Box site; both albums have also been reissued on CD.

In what looks like it will be a busy year for Ghost Box, new albums are planned from The Advisory Circle (around May) and Belbury Poly (early summer). The label’s Study Series 7″ releases will continue with entries from Jonny Trunk and Hintermass (a new collaborative project from The Advisory Circle’s Jon Brooks and Seeland’s Tim Felton).

Sketches and Spells tracklist:
1. Stringed Winds
2. Verberations
3. Open The Gate
4.Activity and Scales
5. Corn Holes
6. Verberations exp.
7. Bells Hazes
8. Alsh
9. Hocusing Fee
10. Colouring Toys
11. Danse & Atoms
12. Free Psych & Mirrors
13. Verberation int.
14. Jout Sections
15. Geometree Hou
16. Sun Groof
17. Diagonalam
18. Underwater Pries
19. Jass Tarp
20. Hocusing Joe
21. What Are You Seeing?
22. Bromiding Place
23. Kasratu
24. Swirling Paths
25. Starry Wisdom

The Willows tracklist:
1. Wildspot
2. The Willows
3. Caerman
4. A Thin Place
5. Farmers Angle
6. Insect Prospectus
7. A Warning
8. Monstroon
9. Thorn
10. The Absolute Everywhere
11. Far Off Things