The Belbury Tales and Radio Belbury Programme 8

The Belbury Tales is finally here on Vinyl, CD and download, with sumptuous Julian House designed packaging and sleeve fiction by Electric Eden author Rob Young. Vinyl cutomers to the Ghost Box shop (only) get a free download version. If you've not already seen it here's a video for the track Summer Round, and you'll find more album art, info and clips here.

(By the way if you'd like to see or download more Ghost Box flyers like the one above they're here.)

To mark the release there's a new Radio Belbury programme which features another Belbury Tales album track along with Francis Monkman, Spacedog, Fingerbobs and Black Sabbath.

Dieter Rams Reconstructions

Jon Brook's and Pye Corner audio put the trusty old alarm clock through its paces yet again on a new download single, available from Cafe Kaput.

The Seasons on Trunk

A very exciting new release on Trunk this week, its The Seasons by the BBC Radiophonic workshop's David Cain and poet Ronald Duncan.

Trunk says: "Originally made as part of the BBC’s Drama Workshop broadcasts, this album was meant for educational purposes. Coming in the later period of what is commonly known and remembered as “Music and Movement” or “Movement and Mime Classes”, the album was issued briefly as a teaching aid for the modern thinking 1960s classroom. The idea was to play the album and get the school children to dance, improvise, think and create to the sounds and words."

David Cain

The original is now worth around £200 and probably one of my luckiest ever charity shop finds a few years back.(In your face Sue Ryder ! ). Its an album that's very much part of the DNA of Ghost Box; the perfect example of the spooked educational media we  reverence and reference so often. A few familiar sounds here to BBC RW aficionados, with much more besides. There's a disitnct folksy / early music feel with Ronald Duncan's icy, not quite child friendly poetry running throughout.

A long time in the making for Jonny Trunk, this one but lavishly kitted out with photos of the original slides made to accompany the record, notes by Mr. Trunk, Jon Brooks and an interview with a surprisingly curmudgeonly David Cain by Julian House. This one definitely will be on the exams so make sure you get a copy. Vinyl and CD in the Trunk shop now or through the usual iffy channels for those of you on the Trunk mailing list.

Ghost Box in The Wire's Invisible Jukebox feature

Julian House and I were recently invited to take part in Wire's very own version of Name that Tune. We consistently failed to "name the tune" - but had a very nice chat to Rob Young anyway. Its in issue 337 (with the mighty Earth on the front cover) in shops now-ish.

We give the Wire photographer our best "like you've just seen a ghost."



Summer Round Video

This is an excerpt from Julian House's film New Summer Wavelengths. The track Summer Round is taken from the new Belbury Poly album The Belbury Tales.

FACT Magazine Mix and Chat

Kiran and Tim from FACT magazine dropped in to the vicarage the other day for a chat and a pot of tea and left with some valuable spiritual guidance, several pamphlets, and this Mix...

Belbury Poly's mix for FACT

You can read what we talked about here. The Mix includes another exclusive preview track from The Belbury Tales and an a completely new one by The Advisory Circle.  A couple of other tunes maybe familiar to Radio Belbury listeners, who might also be relieved to hear that my tiresome and factually inaccurate links are absent this time.