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Recommended by us on 11th February 2011
...according to our Brian on Thu 10 Feb, 2011.
This is a fun recording. Originally a CDr in 2004, it's now since garnered the status of desirable collectors item so GB have seen fit to re-issue it & It's contents of immeasurable delight on a proper mastered format. So the artwork hasn't been tampered with, the bloopy vintage electronic sample collage remains the same. Hints of Radiophonic Workshop, White Noise, bent-out-of-shape 60s kitsch, snippets of a collapsed folk jam & musique concrete all mingle together in a psychedelic aural haze! As always with this Ghost Box stuff, there's a warm nostalgia to be gleaned from immersive listening but also something quite magical and profound from The Focus Group in particular. He truly leads you on a disorientating trippy journey & I, for one, am so grateful that Mr. House was given the opportunity to work with the so, so sadly missed Trish Keenan, alongside James Cargill on that wonderful collaboration. In lieu of brand new stuff, if you've not got this beautifully tangled, eccentric & dreamlike opus then think snappy & get involved!
The first album from the Focus Group, a psyched out patchwork of collaged samples. Evoking the school music room, dusty archives and hidden rural rituals.
Julian House’s own The Focus Group; oddly assembled sampledelic collages, stitched together from fragments of library cues and forgotten soundtracks. A beautiful, unhinged stream of consciousness that seems to prod at buried memories.
eviews
House is a scholar of library music, film soundtracks (especially Italian), early electronic music, the sort of arcana Trunk exhumes for our delectation, and so forth. The imprint of these sources is discernible in Ghost Box, but there’s something uncanny and oneiric that comes through that takes it well beyond mere esoterrorism and "record collection pop"; this is a genuinely spectral sampladelia.
Simon Reynolds,
Blissblog
1. The Focus Group - Stringed winds
2. The Focus Group - Verberations
3. The Focus Group - Open the Gate
4. The Focus Group - Activity and Scales
5. The Focus Group - Corn Holes
6. The Focus Group - Verberations exp.
7. The Focus Group - Bells hazes
8. The Focus Group - Alsh
9. The Focus Group - Hocusing fee
10. The Focus Group - Colouring Toys
11. The Focus Group - Danse & Atoms
12. The Focus Group - Free psych & mirrors
13. The Focus Group - Verberation int.
14. The Focus Group - Jout sections
15. The Focus Group - Geometree hou
16. The Focus Group - Sun groof
17. The Focus Group - Diagonalam
18. The Focus Group - Underwater pries
19. The Focus Group - Jass Tarp
20. The Focus Group - Hocusing loe
21. The Focus Group - What are you seeing?
22. The Focus Group - Bromiding place
23. The Focus Group - Kasratu
24. The Focus Group - Swirling paths
25. The Focus Group - Starry wisdom
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Norman Records,
Unit 20, Croydon House,
Croydon Street,
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Email: phil@normanrecords.com
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