If
Ghost Box are the torch bearers for the hauntology
"zeitgeist", as Simon Reynolds suggests in The
Wire 273, then label cofounder Jim Jupp's Belbury Poly
is the psychogeographer amongst his cohort. On The Owl's
Map Jupp aims for nothing less than the (re)creation of
previously unknown topography. The album's liner notes
detail a tourist guide to the fake town of Belbury, and the
songs leap from jaunty radio stings to clamarous drone rock
vamps and on into yet more uncertain territory, willing the
village into being via audiovisual means.
By accessing the disquiet of Britain's other
hidden reverse, Ghost Box trace an after-effect of the
realtionship between high modernism and populist thought
that was endemic to British culture between the 1950s and
1970s. This makes it easy to trace key influences: you can
hear the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Basil Kirchin, The
Wicker Man soundtrack and so on. But I can also hear, in
the jaunty TV ident music of Owls and Flowers and Your Way
Today, shadows of The Human League’s Dignity of Labour of
Thomas Leer’s Tight As A Drum, and the charmingly
gauche post Cluster solo recordings of Roedelius. Indeed,
the chintzy toytown quality and simple melodies of German
electronics post-Krautrock shines through good portions of The
Owl’s Map: music made after the experiment, somehow
"settled" or content and yet shot through with
disturbances drawn from creative impulses stored away in
history’s files.
