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Mount Vernon Arts Lab

The Séance At Hobs Lane - 2025 Reissue

    The next in an ongoing series of Ghost Box back catalogue re-issues, Séance at Hobs Lane is an overlooked classic of British electronics. Its sinister atmospherics are comprised of VCS3 synthesizer squalls, howling guitar, skronking sax, and oddly haunting keyboard and cello melodies. The album has a similar eccentric and disturbing atmosphere to the work of great mid-century British experimentalists like Desmond Leslie, Daphne Oram or Tristram Carey.

    Hobs Lane is the fictional tube station where the action of Nigel Kneale’s 1967 film, Quatermass and the Pit takes place. This movie sets the perfect tone as Mount Vernon Arts Lab plunges the listener into a world of abandoned underground stations, monochrome British science-fiction, eighteenth century secret societies and the footsore reveries of generations of flâneurs; from Thomas De Quincey to Iain Sinclair. History: It was originally released as a limited CD in 2001 on Via Satellite, then by Ghost Box in 2007. It was cited by the label’s founders Julian House & Jim Jupp as a major influence on the creation of the label, and the identity it would go on to develop.

    The album became a cornerstone of the nebulous, but hugely influential cultural movement known as Hauntology (2004-2024). Mount Vernon Arts Lab is the lifelong, ever mutating, experimental art and music project of Glasgow’s Drew Mulholland. Séance was his fifth and possibly his most ambitious album, with a large number of talented artists co-writing and performing: John Balance (Coil) on Hobgoblins, Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub) on The Mandrake Club, Isobel Campbell (Belle & Sebastian) on The Black Drop, Barry 7 (Add N to X) on The Submariner’s Song and Adrian Utley (Portishead) on Warminster 4. Also taking part were saxophonist Raymond MacDonald and broadcaster and producer John Cavanagh.

    TRACK LISTING

    1. The Fog Detonator
    2. Hobgoblins
    3. The Mandrake Club
    4. Dashwood's Reverie
    5. The Black Drop
    6. Sir Keith At Lambeth
    7. The Submariner's Song
    8. The Vauxhall Labyrinth
    9. While London Sleeps
    10. Warminster 4
    11. Percy Toplis

    The Focus Group

    Hey Let Loose Your Love

      Pieced together with musty samples from children’s exercise records, vintage drama, clunky British jazz and library records, this is an archaeology of emotion, an exploration of the power of not only childhood memories, but of the collective unconscious.

      Julian House’s own The Focus Group; oddly assembled sampledelic collages, stitched together from fragments of library cues and forgotten soundtracks. A beautiful, unhinged stream of consciousness that seems to prod at buried memories

      REVIEWS

      Julian Houses's Focus Group should appeal to anyone who grew up in Britain in the '70s: its a condensed memory of that decade's daytime and after hours television. These 19 soundbites ape the incidental music for The Tomorrow People, The Clangers and Follyfoot, jazz drums, bass flutes, continuity men and grubby science-lab electronica. Like Boards of Canada minus beats, the feeling of smothered innocence evokes powerful intimations of the uncanny.

      TRACK LISTING

      1. Icicle Wheel
      2. You Do Not See Me
      3. Clockbell
      4. Echo Release
      5. Xylophone Signal
      6. Modern Harp
      7. Inside The Rubber Box
      8. Lifting Away
      9. Today’s Rhythm People
      10. Hey Let Loose Your Love
      11. String Sine Romance
      12. The Moon Ladder
      13. Planning For Urban Green
      14. Swinging Phantom
      15. The Thre
      16. Jam-jar Carnival
      17. Baroque Face
      18. The Leaving
      19. Reflected Message

      The Focus Group

      Sketches And Spells

        The Focus Group is the recording alias for Ghost Box co-founder and well respected graphic designer and film maker Julian House. This debut album was first release in 2005 on a burn to order CD-R. Now packaged in a 4 panel digipack with the original sleeve art by Julian House that established the rules for the primary Ghost Box artwork layout. It’s a design grid that the label has continuously revisited and tinkered with ever since. 

        Large Plants

        The Carrier

          Large Plants started as a solo project for Jack Sharp, the singer and guitarist for Wolf People. It was spurred on by a writing frenzy during the lockdown of 2020 when Sharp played and recorded all the parts for what would become the debut single, La Isla Bonita and the first album The Carrier. In summer of 2021 the tracks were mixed by songwriter Chris Cohen (formerly of Deerhoof & Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti).

          Large Plants’ songs are immediate, heavy psychedelic rock belters filtered through a haze of analogue tape flutter. Sharp’s voice has an eerily distant and delicate tone that lends a strong folk sensibility to the album; like the scent of winter mornings and fresh soil mixed with the whiff of petrol. Though the songs are generally three-minute gems, they are lyrically more like ancient ballads; peopled with tragic youths, witches, lovelorn troubadours and femmes fatales. Sharp is now touring Large Plants as a four piece along with Ed Taylor on drums, Ollie Taylor on bass and Joe Wooley on guitar with dates booked so far at OSLO, Hackney -17th April and The Betsy Trotwood, Clerkenwell 5th May

          STAFF COMMENTS

          Barry says: Swooning, progressive psychedelia from Jack Sharp bringing to mind the loose garage wooze of BJM or heady echoic psych a-la Jefferson Airplane all tinged with Ghost Box's distinctive and almost ever-present tape-distressed aesthetic. A beautiful addition to the label and a wonderful full-length for the Large Plants. A superb addition to any collection.

          TRACK LISTING

          1. The Carrier
          2. No Difference
          3. Don't Let Me Let You Down
          4. Never Seen
          5. How Far
          6. Wreckers
          7. Hold Onto
          8. I Lie Awake
          9. Marceline
          10. The Witch

          Pye Corner Audio

          Entangled Routes

            Entangled Routes is the fourth Pye Corner Audio album for Ghost Box Records. It’s the third part of a loose trilogy of albums starting with Stasis in 2016 and followed by Hollow Earth in 2019. Each album is a kind of high concept sci-fi epic, the latest instalment of which plays with the idea of mycorrhizal networks and attempts by humans to listen in and communicate.

            As always with Pye Corner Audio and Ghost Box Records generally, narrative is not spelled out. It's only implied in the drama and mood of the music, with the help of careful attention to track titles and sequence and of course Julian House's consistently evocative artwork.

            Martin Jenkins builds up tension with his minimalistic synth sequences and dance floor abstractions. His masterful sound design creates a sense of awe and vast space as he takes us on a fantastic and exciting voyage from peril to redemption.

            Pye Corner Audio specialise in majestic, cinematic electronica that evokes sci-fi soundtracks, dystopian futures and the sound of haunted dance floors. The discography to date includes ten full length albums and many more singles and EPs across several labels. There are also remixes for John Foxx, Mogwai, Ride’s Andy Bell, Mark Lanegan, Alice Hubble, Stealing Sheep, Knightstown and Dolphin Midwives.

            TRACK LISTING

            New Roots
            Synaptic
            Paleolith
            Earthwork
            The Creeper
            Hive Mind
            The Clearing
            Growth Potential
            The Long Now
            Phantom Orchid
            Leaf Mould
            Buried Network
            Symbiosis

            Im Hag is the debut Ghost Box album for Berlin based Sebastian Counts’ ToiToiToi, following on from his single for the label’s Other Voices series in 2015. It’s very detailed and lovingly produced music, crafted from electronic, synth, sampled and acoustic sources. Its a wunderkammer of an album crammed with original ideas. All at once managing to be witty, spooky, melodic and abstract.

            The music and design explores the polarities of folklore vs modernity, and wilderness vs civilization. It’s an album about German culture but it pre-empts a nostalgia for the vanishing concept of internationalism, once exemplified by town twinning. It’s also a warm-hearted record, hopefully a tiny morale booster against Europe’s resurgent spectres. As always the beautiful CD and LP packaging is designed by Julian House.

            TRACK LISTING

            1 - Alte Weise
            2  - A Travel Agent's Dream
            3  - Outside In
            4 - Der Duft Der Wälder
            5 - Mond In Den Ästen
            6 - Cumulus Culture Centre
            7 - Gummi-Marsch
            8 - Leaving Backwards
            9 - Im Schatten Großer Bäume
            10 - Kilon
            11 - Tanz Um Den Kopf
            12 - Talkoller
            13 - The So-So Kids
            14 - Terminal To Nothingness
            15 - Lichtfest
            16 - Bei Der Hagschen
            17 - Perpetuum Mobile

            The Pattern Forms is a collaborative project between Ed Macfarlane and Edd Gibson of Friendly Fires and Jon Brooks of The Advisory Circle.

            Peel Away the Ivy is the culmination of a fruitful collaboration that followed on from a debut single for Ghost Box’s Other Voices series in 2015.

            On the surface this is a romantic pop album, but its roots lie in both bands’ shared love of soundtracks and electronic library music of the 70s and 80s.

            The artists bring their own distinct sensibilities to the project but find a common ground that conjures up something entirely new to both. A balance of powerful pop hooks and sonic experimentation that masterfully evoke the melancholy of lost summers and lonely outsider reveries.

            Heartrending ballads are lifted away on soaring electronics with beautiful pastoral and kosmiche instrumentals forming perfect atmospheric interludes.

            Brooks and Macfarlane both have proven track records as outstanding producers and the sound here is, unsurprisingly, breath-taking.


            STAFF COMMENTS

            Barry says: A perfect mix of Jon Brooks' impeccably realised library/synth sound and the ethereal echoing vocals of the Ed(d)'s. Triumphant arpeggios and silky saw basses are injected with beautiful pad sweeps and delightfully neon synth solos. Melodic and thoughtful, resplendent with shine and exhibiting a how-to in perfect songwriting, this is a dreamy and breathtaking synth-pop masterpiece.

            TRACK LISTING

            1. Peel Away The Ivy
            2. Black Rain
            3. Don't Let Me Dream
            4. A Simple Walk
            5. Daylight
            6. Sparrowhawk
            7. Man And Machine
            8. Fluchtwege
            9. Polymer Dawn
            10. First In An Innocent World


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