Friday, February 13, 2009  12:01 am 

Prehistory

For the last few years Ghost Box have been releasing unto the world a steady stream of mysterious and intoxicating records dedicated to sound tracking a quintessentially eccentric British past saturated in Tomorrow’s World technology and ancient pagan traditions that may have never actually existed. Consequently Ghost Box have undoubtedly emerged to be one of the most easily lovable of British labels functioning at this moment in time, a statement which could be construed as ever so slightly contradictory in reference to Belbury Poly’s music and the recurring preoccupation with notions of eternalism that consistently has such an influence on it’s haunted analogue world.

Belbury Poly have a new album out now. It’s called From An Ancient Star and we urge you to buy it as it’s seriously incredible. The title track is an entrancing slab of sci-fi disco that sounds like Cerrone and Delia Derbyshire convened one night to throw a full moon party at Stonehenge where woodland nymphs and strange Lords and Ladies came out to sway beneath the constellations in the sky, hypnotized by the fruity, sinister sounds of Summerisle being engulfed by astral swirls of prog dancefloor atmospherics, and what sounds in the last seconds like the invoking of the spirit of Oliver Postgate and his family of magical cloth creatures.

Belbury Poly – From An Ancient Star

Zombi, meaner than Herod and bigger than Jesus.

Zombi- Spirit Animal

Your flabbergasted 20jazzfunkgreats crew can barely handle the awesomeness anymore, what with the Boredoms last week, Mi Ami sharpening the punji sticks of their percussive death-trap and now Zombi, an outfit which leaves the rest of the macabre crew so far behind they find themselves puffing on a cigarette in the passenger seat of a second hand chevy parked in the middle of the night listening fearful to the ominously metronomic sound of an indescribable something that pounds against the ceiling above them, it is Zombi who stand there brandishing a grotesquely grimacing head they bash with the fury of their darken convictions.

This is not an imaginary soundtrack for an Argento chiller that doesn’t exist, it is the real soundtrack for an Argento chiller that should be made just so that its shadowy confines can be filled with these thick progressive and beautifully poignant vibes. This is the reason why Dario Argento should get his shit together, and John Carpenter and George A. Romero should go back to shooting with the grainy photographic styles of yore. It sounds like Fabio Frizzi, Jean Claude Vannier and Wendy Carlos wasted on laudanum duelling with silver daggers in an Italian basement studio packed with arcane synthesisers and walls covered with grainy photographs of softcore porn.

On a full moon.

Spirit Animal is the real deal, it is the sound of falling in love as you enter the house of Usher, seriously, get it for your sweetheart and have happy Valentine’s Day!

labels >> Belbury Poly, xxjfg, zombi

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