Ghost Box Records

Background

A record label established in London in 2004 by producer, Jim Jupp and music industry graphic designer, Julian House. It was originally created as an outlet for their own musical experiments with the idea that each release’s packaging would display a similar design sensibility and both music and design would allude to House and Jupp’s shared imaginary landscape; a very British parallel world of TV soundtracks, public information films, 60s and 70s horror movies, vintage electronic music, folk song, English psychedelia, supernatural stories and folklore.

Music journalist Simon Reynolds coined the genre term hauntology to describe Ghost Box's uniquely haunting visual and musical output.

Visual Style

What sets Ghost Box apart from other independent record labels is its strong sense of narrative and fictional setting. Jupp and House have described the label as existing in an imagined or misremembered past. It’s a world outside of time where cultural references from a roughly 30 year period (say 1960-1980) are happening all at once.

Influenced by library album covers and the rigid design grid of Penguin and Pelican paperback books, Ghost Box records and CDs were always intended to look and sound like artefacts from a parallel world, familiar, elegant, but somehow "wrong".

Artists and Guests

Ghost Box’s key artists are House's own The Focus Group and Jupp’s Belbury Poly and also The Advisory Circle the recording name for the work of producer and longest serving Ghost Box collaborator Jon Brooks.

Ghost Box have also released albums by Pye Corner Audio, Mount Vernon Arts Lab, Hintermass, The Soundcarriers and Roj.

There have also been releases by guest artists sometimes in collaborating with members of the regular roster over an ongoing series of Ghost Box singles. First the Study Series (nos. 1-10) and more recently the ongoing Other Voices series.

Guests have included include Broadcast, John Foxx, Cavern of Anti-Matter, Sean O'Hagan, Steve Moore The Listening Center and ToiToiToi.

Reception

Boing Boing's Mark Pilkington noted Ghost Box founders "fused pop concrète, soundtrack and library music with sharp design and a swarm of esoteric pop-cultural references to create a parallel reality built upon memories of a very British past."

In reviewing Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, PopMatters called Ghost Box "[o]ne of the most rousing (oc)cult phenomena of the past decade" with having "created a career conjuring past futurisms and collectively buried fears to create music that quite literally feels like it’s in a different league, even another dimension, than other modern musicians."