House News

* Blessed Initiative is a project by Yair Elazar Glotman, which suggests a dissonant, coexistent state of extreme highs and lows. The album attempts to articulate a mental state of simultaneity, in which equilibrium is fleeting, fragile, and its scarcity is embraced. Opposite states coincide, contrast and reflect, creating moments of uncertainty and insecurity. Absurdity and at times even bliss are possible results, in the attempt to channel anxiety into creative forces rather than debilitating ones. In an environment where personas are the sums of the images they project, sounds are also no longer evidence of invention but of ever-changing combination, curation, and editing. The final persona is a sum of the chosen and the deleted, as well as what may be projected from outside, creating a confusing and conflicted self. The sounds collected here are attempts to compose on these uncertain grounds, and to reflect the anxiety released in all these sources' meeting and interaction. As a singular project, Blessed Initiative stops to comment on the conditions that inform Glotman's composition before and after it, and to acknowledge it as a non-linear, ongoing process.

* The focus on process and uncertainty is apparent in the album's phrasing, re-articulation and cycles of repetition and deviation. The pieces were composed from sounds generated on the KYMA system, personal foley recordings as well as tape manipulations techniques. Minor sounds on major scales and micro-tonal tuning suggest an ambiguous harmonic sphere. These were then integrated within idiosyncratic rhythmic structures, at times integrating real spaces and resonating bodies as reverb and augmented echo chambers. Concrete, almost-recognizable organic sounds contrast with these abstract spaces and connect them to tactile experiences. These textures and structures are a palette that reforms and deforms as it cycles throughout the album.

* The photographic series "Relax (blue)", 2004, by the artist Josephine Pryde was chosen for the album's cover as a materialization of tension. The two images represent a closed cycle of energy and unfulfilled release.

* Yair Elazar Glotman is a classically trained musician and sound artist based in Berlin whose previous works on Subtext include the LP 'Études' and a collaboration with James Ginzburg titled Nimbes.

Following 16 albums and over twenty years of forward-thinking collaborations and experiments with some of electronic musics leading pioneers, Coppé (the "Godmother of Japanese Electronica") goes back to her roots for her 17th release entitled, 'Milk', paying homage to some of Jazz musics classics, greats and personal favourites.

As with anything Coppé applies herself to though, there is nothing standard about 'Milk'. Through brand new collaborations with the likes of Nikakoi, Atom™, Kettel, Modified Toy Orchestra's Brian Duffy, Christ. (ex Boards Of Canada), Terry D, Chris Mosdell and others, classics like 'I Fall In Love Too Easily', 'Candy' and 'My Funny Valentine' are taken into entirely new and unexpected realms.

However, through Coppé's clear, warm and sincere vocals, these interpretations never lose sight of honouring the originals, and form one of Coppé's most coherent and universal collections to date.

Coppé's own Mango + Sweetrice Records team up with UK label Bit-Phalanx Music to host 22rpm : An All-Day Electronic Music Festival on Saturday 7th October 2017, taking place at St. John on Bethnal Green church, Shoreditch, London.

Their third annual festival following two previous sold out events in Soho, this year's line-up includes exclusive live, AV and DJ sets from Valgeir Sigurðsson, Bola, Ash Koosha, Scanner, Ulrich Schnauss, Plaid, Gescom, B12, Digitonal, Derek Piotr and more, plus a unique second crypt space hosting a multi-channel 'Silent Disco', with hosting channel one.

Coppé will be performing in the main church hall with an all-new Jazz/Electronic quintet band, debuting Milk and other originals & classics.

The latest in a series of singles featuring regular Ghost Box artists, special guests and one off collaborations. This time round our guests are Lisbon's Beautify Junkyards, with a follow up single to their remarkable 2015 album 'The Beast Shouted Love'.

They are a highly accomplished six-piece band that weave a dreamlike blend of pastoral acid folk, tropicalia and electronica, with songs in both Portuguese and English.
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Slowfoot Records is proud to introduce Hello Skinny and the self-titled debut album. Hello Skinny is the brainchild of in-demand drummer extraordinaire Tom Skinner, who's other current involvements include Sons Of Kemet, Mulatu Astatke, Matthew Herbert, Eska, Finn Peters and The Owiny Sigoma Band amongst many others.

In demand drummer for Melt Yourself Down and the Owiny Sigoma Band, Tom Skinner, steps out of the spotlight from his recent worldwide successes with these acclaimed collectives and a recent EU tour with Owiny Sigoma Band supporting Atoms For Peace to release his new EP Revolutions as Hello Skinny. Swiftly following on from his acclaimed and self-titled debut album, Tom Skinner's Hello Skinny project ratchets back into view with the genre-blurring EP/mini-album Revolutions.


Side A of this new 12" comes in the form of two brand new Hello Skinny tunes, Revolutions parts 1 and 2, written and recorded with live band members Hugh Jones and Shabaka Hutchings.


Side B begins with Zero 7's minimal techno take on Crush from last year's self-titled Hello Skinny LP. Followed by two further remixes, a take on Knot Blue by fellow Slowfoot artist (and member of Hello Skinny's live band) Crewdson aka Hugh Jones and then capped off by Skinner's Melt Yourself Down colleague Pete Wareham and his midnight reverb reworking of Bump.

'Acrobats' is the debut album from Laura Moody, a wildly alternative cellist, vocalist and avant-singer songwriter. Fascinated with words and songwriting as well as sounds, noises and textures, Laura draws on the infinite possiblities available from her solo cello and voice. From a multitude of influences, Laura creates emotive songs that inhabit a unique space between the avant garde, classical music, pop and singer-songwriter tradition.

Incredibly exciting new music from ace producer Leo Abrahams, featuring contributions from Brian Eno, Karl Hyde and Leafcutter John.

A shimmering and tragic delirium - improvised piano of Richard Moult, recorded in single takes at St. Leonards Parish Church, St. Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex. Aside from the vocal by David Tibet on Five and the oboe of Mark Baigent on Four, the remaining sounds have been tweaked and teased out of the piano by The Bricoleur. Recorded by Michael Lawrence at St. Leonards Paris Church, 2008.

Limited edition - 500 copies.

Paulius Kilbauskas is a highly-respected Lithuanian producer, composer, multi-instrumentalist, a former member of “Empti”, a band called one of the most influential and forward thinking bands in Lithuania in the 90s.

In his most recent solo album Paulius has explored the world of Gamelan music by recording the ‘Elements’ together with local musicians in Bali. A product of deep creative explorations, ‘Elements' is the result of Paulius’s extraordinary talent in capturing and manipulating an ambient soundscape.

Be it Overtone, Dublicate, Bango Collective or any other Paulius Kilbauskas venture, it is approached with curiosity, natural feel and sincere fascination with Sound.

Paulius has made his name in the film industry by creating a number of noteworthy film soundtracks. Aubagne film festival 2019 nominated his collaborative work with Vygintas Kisevičius for the film ’Sasha Was Here' for the best film soundtrack award. Kilbauskas was awarded with the Lithuanian film award “Sidabrinė Gervė” award for best original score “The Gambler” (created together with Domas Strupinskas). Furthermore, movie “Redirected", which soundtrack was composed by P. Kilbauskas was acknowledged as the most popular movie in Lithuanian cinema history.

Racah is the merging of RSPTN (Milk & Beef) and The Bricoleur delivering dysfunctional and anxiety driven electronica. Produced by RSPTN and The Bricoleur. Mixed, mastered and lathe-cut by Michael Lawrence at Last Offices, Bladud Flies!

Racah is the merging of RSPTN (Milk & Beef) and The Bricoleur delivering dysfunctional and anxiety driven electronica. Produced by RSPTN and The Bricoleur. Mixed, mastered and lathe-cut by Michael Lawrence at Last Offices, Bladud Flies!

RSPTN (formerly Rasputin) is a London based producer and one half of both Racah and Milk & Beef. North/South is his first solo release for Bladud Flies! and the fifth volume of the Abhorrent Jukebox 7' series.

On Planet North, the resonance of temple gongs and dreamy tape-reversed ambience are interspersed with snippets of dialogue before settling into an almost industrial middle section. Blown-out, slowed-down drumkit and an off-kilter guitar loop disperse into what could be a symphony of tambouras propelled by a fantastically heavy hip-hop beat of the Madlib/Dilla variety, of which there are many throughout North/South.

The melancholic tremolo of a minor-key classical guitar phrase opens Planet South, accompanied by beats and the nocturnal noise of a thousand crickets chirping in the background. The track shifts gears abruptly: field recordings and a Puerto Rican jazz double bass line give way to hypnotic, Congolese inspired rhythms.

"This release is 2xLP and it's individually 500 hand-numbered limited edition. The first 100 copies are pressed on BLACK vinyls (AR011). It's dedicated to the 1987 masterpiece played by the magic flute of Roberto Aglieri... called by himself... ""La solitudine accompagnata"", with the ORIGINAL 1987 LP + a BONUS LP, containing unreleased material, other versions and unreleased tracks. Archeo Recordings is a reissue record label that regenerates old, lost, obscure (and forgotten) rare gems of Italian music of the 70s and 80s, and not only. All outputs are licensed by the artists and the vintage labels; audio tracks are remastered in their original form; the sleeves and center labels are graphically recreated for today but all based on the original images. Archeo would like to make the music available to a wider audience of collectors, DJs, music lovers of a forgotten time. All releases are hand-numbered limited edition vinyl. The first copies of each release are pressed in coloured vinyls."

Soccer96 is made up of two thirds of The Comet Is Coming, currently whipping up a cosmic storm on their Mercury Prize nominated album Channel The Spirits.


Their bold approach to improvised composition, recording processes and experimentation is reminiscent of Flying Lotus, Can, Thundercat and Gaslamp Killer.

WAYS OF SEEING is a beautifully produced and melodically rich suite of electronic pieces from The Advisory Circle and was inspired by late 70s and early 80s melodic electronic library music.

The Advisory Circle is the work of Jon Brooks, melodic and often melancholic electronic music inspired in part by soundtracks and library music of the 70s and 80s. Brooks is a stalwart of the Ghost Box label and an extraordinarily prolific artist. He has released five albums and four collaborative singles as The Advisory Circle. He also records as The Pattern Forms with Ed Macfarlane and Edd Gibson of Friendly Fires.

He works with vocalist Tim Felton as Hintermass, and along with Ghost Box founder Jim Jupp he is half of The Belbury Circle. Under his own name and several pseudonyms, he has released albums on Clay Pipe Music and his own Café Kaput label. Before joining the Ghost Box family in the early 00s Brooks recorded for Lo Records as King of Woolworths.

As a producer and mastering engineer, Brooks is a contributing presence on most Ghost Box releases. He has years of experience as a commercial and library composer and his mastering and audio restoration skills are much in demand, particularly on re-issue labels such as Trunk Records.

The CD&LP packaging is designed by Julian House. Elegantly simple artwork and typography, reminiscent of 80s photographic manuals and magazines, is rendered on metallic gold foil packaging. The heavyweight vinyl LP includes a free download card.

"Atmospheric, immersive, and arcane, The Invisible World Of.. is a record out of time and as such a natural fit on Ghost Box." SHINDIG

THE INVISIBLE WORLD OF BEAUTIFY JUNKYARDS is Lisbon band Beautify Junkyards's third album and effortlessly blend their love of English Acid Folk and Brazilian Tropicalia. In a collection of songs that conjure up a warm and verdant faerie world, delicate acoustic guitars evoke an autumnal England suffused with Iberian heat by other- worldly voices, the ethereal lilt of Joa o Branco Kyron and the warm languor of Rita Vian (a voice redolent of Gal Costa or Os Mutantes' Rita Lee.)

The production is tempered with a haunted electronic palette that anchors the band squarely in the world of Ghost Box. But more than this, Beautify Junkyards' sheer song writing talent, production skill and performance virtuosity grant them a place amongst the great outside-of-time bands like Broadcast or The High Llamas.

In 2012, the band's eponymous first album set out their stall, with a collection of cover versions, mainly of classics of the British Acid-Folk period, but also taking in Tropicalia and German Kosmiche. The album was a hit in Portugal and picked up for airplay in the UK on BBC Radio 2 & 6 Music. Their version of Kraftwerk's Radioactivity was included on DJ Food's Krafwerk Kover Kollection.

Their second album in 2015, The Beast Shouted Love, carried their influences forward with original songs and cemented a style that is at once traditional, experimental and exotic. In 2016 the band debuted on Ghost Box with a single as part of the label's Other Voices Series.

Packaging: The lavish packaging on all formats is designed by Julian House with artwork that attempts to capture the band's love of the Czech New-Wave and the twilight worlds of WB Yeats. The heavyweight vinyl LP includes a free download card.

Australian label Pocketmoth are back with a new imprint,
‘POCKET’, a V/A series centred on local producers from the
label’s home city, Brisbane Meanjin. For the rst edition, label
heads Quincy Raw and Iti are joined by close friends and
collaborators George and Squidgenini. A diverse yet cohesive
curation of tracks, POCKET 1 is designed to live in the DJ’s
bag.

Since Sensefloor released their debut EP last year, Venter have been continuously showcasing their live talents in Poland and worldwide, with a large number of club and festival bookings already throughout the course of 2015 thus far. The duo recently made an appearance at the Audioriver Festival (headlined by Underworld and Roisin Murphy), where on a sandy shore of Vistula River they are to present a brand new live act. And this time they were armed with a new full-length record - Venter LP.

To complete the album, Venter have hooked up with electronic-pop newcomers We Draw A, pianist Stefan Wesolowski and the magnificent Baasch - a Warsaw-based producer who most recently made his debut on Nextpop/Warner with the album 'Corridors'.

For this new project, Venter bring together a combined knowledge of musical worlds to create a truly delicate electronic album, packed full with refined atmospherics and precious soundscapes. Their live performances rivet and mesmerise, as electronic synthesis intertwines with the acoustic recordings of live performances on the violin and piano.

Elements of ambient, techno, house, classical and drone can all be found on this LP. A sound that has been brought together through clever production techniques, digital sampling, analogue synthesis and live performance.

'XOROS' has it's genesis in techno and dance music, but while they remain important elements in the language of this record, the lexicon has evolved into something other.

Will Ward’s musical background - having released on prestigious European labels such as Leisure System and Newrhythmic - combined with the accomplished jazz, ambient and electronic musicianship of Jack Wyllie - a member of Portico Quartet and Szun Waves - results in a record that will not sit uncomfortably alongside other ambient explorations, but draws from a wide scope of sonic universes.

For Ward and Wyllie, when working together a focus on texture and space emerged as their common goal and provided a fertile ground for collaborative experimentation. The starting point was to explore the possibilities of using saxophone to create the textural landscape of a fully functioning techno record.

As it evolved the rhythmic pallet gradually vanished to reveal a largely beat-free landscape. Small fragments of sax, synth and field recordings were collected and layered together, sometimes hundreds of parts used to create the textural basis of a track.

These were then collaged into longer compositions; inspiring monolithic soundscapes that suggest futuristic worlds that sit outside of any specific time, place or genre. It is the dense layering of these fragments that gives each second of music its own individual sound and atmosphere. It demands a deeper listening, a particular attention to the intricacies of each moment.

‘Opening’ begins with a recording of the ambient noise in their north London studio and expands outwards into a slow circular motif that feels like a lost jazz loop, followed by ‘The Gift’, a track that breaths as if it is alive, an organism tentatively exploring a new world.

‘Cascading’ is aptly titled as its watery rhythmic patterns formed out of field recordings emerge into slowly ascending synth and layered saxophone drones while ‘The Machine’ combines that with a propulsive mechanical rhythm. ‘Paradise Cinema’ continues in a more widescreen format, opening out into deep synth melancholia and ‘Master Blaster’ takes it's name from the subtly embedded recording of an eponymously named New York street artist’s performance.

Finally closer ‘Futures’ concludes by settling into a slowly evolving world where time is no longer linear and there is the sense that it could keep going forever.