Belbury Poly - The Geography/Insect Prospectus/Green Grass Grows

From the LPs  "The Belbury Tales" (2012) and "The Willows" (2004)
UK

Studies of the occult, Alfred Watkin's Ley-lines and British pyschogeography. To me these are all synonymous to the aesthetic and idea of the Ghost Box label. Akin to British authors and film-makers such as Iain Sinclair, Patrick Keillier and Stewart Home who have explored British geographies in the last few decades, the "hauntology" musical movement has likewise become a staple topic for cultural and historical investigations in recent years. Belbury Poly particularly envisage an exploration of the environment and landscape on this years release "The Belbury Tales". Inspired by weird fiction, folk and 60s/70s library and public information music like other Ghost Box acts The Advisory Circle and The Focus Group, albeit with distinct differences between them ; the alias of Belbury Poly (Jim Jupp) presents a future grown from the roots of hidden and forgotten histories of our past that make up our present internal landscapes. The psychosis of space - a collision between memory, time and the natural -  will form our character and relationship to it. That actually if you look around, Britain has a lot of strange things going on both under the surface and on it's surface. That's essentially what you're hearing on this record.

It is from using this constitution of recording a "lost Britain"; by exploring hidden streets, cemeteries, parks and other conventional landscapes; that we can appraise the geographies which we inhabit and the effects these can have on individual people and the identity of place. This has been greatly documented by the aforementioned writers and film-makers on their work in London and Southern England (London Orbital (2001), London (1994) Robinson in Space (1997), Robinson in Ruins (2010)). All of which can be consequently attributed to the influence of writings by JG Ballard, Daniel Defoe and loosely from origins that started within the Situationist movement . Jupp can similarly be seen to have been driven by these concerns in the making of his records. The music is eerie but also melodic, creating a journey that in the end always comes round to ones own doorstep and observations.  The use of vintage analogue synthesisers also play a key part in his philosophy which help create the sinister soundscapes reminiscent of British public information films . Importantly, this should be seen not so much as to be caught up in the nostalgia for a distant and romantic past but rather it's greater temporal significance. As the quote printed on the inner sleeve of the record states "It's seems to me the past is always happening now. In the present we are always memory". These words by the late Trish Keenan of Broadcast.

So here's three great tracks. "The Geography" and "Green Grass Grows" from " The Belbury Tales" which is probably my favourite record I've heard this year. The other "Insect Prospectus" is from the "The Willows", sinister yet jolly. I've also embedded  Patrick Keiller's "Robinson in Space" and one of Iain Sinclair's many talks about Hackney below.