Ghostwriter - The Continuing Adventures Of The Strange Sound Association

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5...according to our Phil on Fri 07 May, 2010.

From those nice folks who brought us the Music & Migration CD and the Dollboy CD (which sold out super quick) Second Language lovingly present us with a Ghostwriter CD. First up the packaging is second to none. I opened it up and there's all kinds of shenanigans going on in there, library tickets, a little book attached to a laggy band, a sealed stamped envelope containing some sort of goodie (I hope...) and more nick nacks. I've been looking at the thing for 5 minutes and I still keep discovering new things. Ghostwriter is author and musician Mark Brend (who wrote Offbeat Instruments and Sonic Experiments in Pop) and this is his first full album under this name. The album is partially based around archive voice recordings, fragmentary texts and 'imagined works' by folks like Arthur Conan Doyle, John Steibeck, Colin Wilson, John Cowper Powys, Arthur Machen, Ivor Gurney and more. In, around and over the spoken word is a collage of weird instruments and toytown musings which form the album. It's great as well... it's got a proper playful vibe, it's fun yet serious and it's the kind of thing which I can see myself getting obsessed about. And anything that will stop me obsessively playing Omar Khorshid at the mo is a good thing. Also somewhere inside the packaging (fuck knows where as it's pretty cryptic) is a code which gives you access to a Ghostwriter site.

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Music For Men Of Letters

A Man’s Head (Waltz For George Simenon)
The Recidivist (Theme For Imagined Simenon Story)
Man On Wire (Ivor Gurney’s Noise)
(Colin Wilson Says) Like Brandy On A Cold Night
Dream Road Trip With Dustbowl Philosopher (Music For John Steinbeck)
The Life Behind The Life (Fragments for John Cowper Powys)
Spirit Photography (Invoking Arthur Conan Doyle)

Music For Imagined Technologies

The Anglo-French Music Machine
Avian Battery Machine
Via The Cavity Magnetron
Even Solemnity In The Instruments (Farina’s Automatic Translation Machine)

Music For Flotsam and Jetsam

Two Tides Meet
Last Strange Voyage (Lament For Donald)
Imagined South Coast Boarding House (in Which Sits David Jones)
Another Favourite Beach

“We all create a mythological world of our own out of certain shapeless materials.”

(John Cowper Powys)

Ghostwriter is the fascinating project of Devon-based Mark Brend; musician, author and respected expert on antiquarian sound apparatus (you may well know his book, Strange Sounds: Offbeat Instruments and Sonic Experiments in Pop – the definitive text on the subject). The Continuing Adventures Of The Strange Sound Association is his first longplayer under the Ghostwriter moniker. It is an album like no other.

Partially based upon archive voice recordings, fragmentary texts and ‘imagined works’ by literary figures eminent (Arthur Conan Doyle, John Steibeck), cult (Colin Wilson, John Cowper Powys) and arcane (Arthur Machen, Ivor Gurney), The Continuing Adventures… weaves ethereal atmosphere, wistful song and playful soundscape from a battery of instruments and sound sources, including dulcitone, persephone, harpsichord, autoharp, toy piano, modular synthesizer, recorder, banjo, accordion, bass, drums, sampler, miscellaneous voices and something called the brendonium.

Divided into three distinct ‘Chapters’: Music For Men Of Letters, Music For Imagined Technologies and Music For Flotsam and Jetsam, these mysteriously beguiling compositions run the gamut from frisky, jazz-flavoured vignettes to garden shed electronica and contemplative sound collages via Wicker Man folk and bygone soundtrack esoterica. Beyond easy categorisation, this is music informed as much by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and the British Sound Archive as it is various currents in leftfield pop, electronica, folk and plunderphonics.

Brend is assisted in his endeavours by a number of additional musicians and collaborators, including multi-instrumentalists Tim Conway and Matt Gale (Farina), singer Suzy Mangion (Piano Magic, George) and analogue synth collector Darren Hayman (Hefner), among several others. Ghostwriter‘s debut album is very much a product of Brend’s own unique imagination and compositional vision, however.

In addition to the sound recordings, the inquisitive will be ushered toward a bespoke, members-only, Ghostwriter website where an accompanying text (and other related information) will also be made available. Access to this material is by means of a code secreted about the album’s luxuriant packaging.

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