Robin The Fog

Regular listeners to Resonance FM will surely be already aware of Sine Of The Times, presented by DJ and One-Woman-Army Rita Maia. The show describes itself as ‘a varied and in depth exploration of the past, present and future of London’s underground dance music scene, with a focus on the sound system culture [..] and it’s influence & development across the world‘, but I prefer to just say that it goes out at 9pm Saturday for ninety solid minutes of all the latest cutting-edge tracks from that all-encompassing dance music genre everyone seems to call ‘Bass Culture’ (although in the tradition of ‘dubstep’, ‘trip hop’ or indeed ‘purple’, purists tend to look at you askance if you use the term in mixed company – plus have you ever seen a purple purist?). I should also add that Rita gets all the latest ‘dubs’ miles before anyone else and has a pretty hefty book of contacts from which she picks weekly special guests as well as live sessions from artists and producers before they blow up (and indeed after). For my older readers, to ‘blow up’ in youthful parlance means to suddenly become very popular and successful, rather than the horrific accident you might well now be envisioning. But I’m drifting…

Anyway, as well as running the show and her own label Badmood Recordings, she also DJs all over the place and a recent mix for FACT magazine is something of legend if you can track it down (which you can’t). With all this activity and so much exclusive material passing through her hands, it’s a wonder Sine Of The Times Radio is only just now getting around to releasing it’s first compilation of material by guest artists, DJ and contributors to the show over the past three years. Nevertheless, it’s been worth the wait. ‘Rita Maia presents Sine Of The Times‘ is out this week and its really, really good. Here’s a taster:

Cards on the table: I did make a small contribution in the form of a short ‘Intro’, as Rita asked me to make something ‘radiophonic’ in the most literal sense to promote the show behind the album. As someone who has sat in on many of her sessions over the years I was happy to oblige and set about conjuring up show’s broadcasting heritage using some processed shortwave recordings and other assorted bursts of radio static. It’s gigantic leaps of the imagination such as this that have helped me reach the very pinnacle of my game, but you could argue (and why must we always argue?) that I have a vested interest. But as you’ll hear and as the title ‘Intro’ implies, my contribution is really just an entree and pretty meagre in comparison to brand spanking new material from the excellent My Panda Shall Fly, dFranklin, Modo Fractal, BD1982  and a particularly fine track from NKC of Awkward Movements fame, plus more. Will Ward‘s gorgeous, Detroit-inspired ‘Brighter’ is the pick of the bunch for me, though with Rita’s firm grip on the controls there isn’t even a suspicion of filler. And it’s mostly exclusive too. Read the very complimentary review from the good folk of the aforementioned Awkward Movements here and then immediately go and buy it from Rough Trade here (it’s made their top 20 this week!) or indeed from Juno Records here.

In other exciting news, there’s a party to celebrate the release of the album THIS FRIDAY (8th Feb) at the Notting Hill Arts Club, with LV from Hyperdub leading the charge and a live set from My Panda Shall Fly. I shall always be fond of NHAC as it remains the location of my shortest ever DJ set (somewhere in the region of sixteen minutes) and indeed I was originally supposed to be spinning some tunes at the launch party myself. Unfortunately, however, due to my rather frantic current schedule and a succession of encroaching project deadlines, I had no choice but to force myself to deliberately not even notice the email until it was too late (Sorry about that, Rita!) Probably just as well, the line-up is a stonker and I’d only have ended up embarrassing myself by using expressions such as ‘bass culture’ in front of everyone.  Best just to let them get on with it.

Why are you still here? Go and buy the album! Now!

Hello there and a Happy New Year to you. I was beginning to wonder if it might not be a bit too late for such sentiments, but I overheard someone using just those words on the bus today, and as they seemed tastefully attired and of reasonably sound mind, I figured it was probably alright. So a Happy New Year it is. Let us toast one another.

It’s been a busy start to the year, alright, with a couple of hefty commissions already on the books for the next couple of months, not to mention a mammoth production of ‘Hamlet’ in my day job (apparently tomorrow I get to demonstrate my swordplay, so there is a very slight chance this could be my last post ever), all of which is keeping me stimulated. I’ve also engaged in my first soundclash of the year, with my old sparring partner DJ Halfdutch, an almighty tussle at a venue on Caledonian Road which I’ve since forgotten the name of. The one thing I do remember is that downstairs there was a group of people dressed as that Tombraider woman dancing to house music so nondescript it’s a wonder it could be bothered to show up at all. The poor, sexily-clad fools should have joined us upstairs, where a pitched battle was being fought on the turntables, our weapons a downright tasty stew of Dekker, Bongo, Fatty, Hopeton, Tony, Betty and of course some Winstons (of ‘The’ fame):

We chose a strict 45s-only ruling to both add a little frisson to the occasion and also because I’m getting to the stage where lugging a spine-cracking bag of 12″s through central London on a sucession of night buses is at long last beginning to prove irksome. But who was the winner? Why, the audience, of course! We’ve since divided up the spoils and posted them on our respective Mixcloud pages, so those of you aggrieved to have missed the whole thing can play catch up. Here’s part two:

Onto more serious matters, here are some of my resolutions for 2013:

• There IS going to be a second Howlround album. Quite a lot of people have been asking me about a follow-up to ‘The Ghosts of Bush’ and I can confirm one is in the pipeline. But it’s a VERY long pipeline that is currently a bit congested and keeps refusing to ‘pipe’ properly, so I won’t be able to make much progress until I’ve had my equipment thoroughly worked-over by a ‘pipe expert’ (I realise this is beginning to sound dangerously euphemistic, so I’ll leave it there). Some have asked what the theme of the record will be, but I can’t disclose this yet partly because it’s a surprise and partly because it involves a series of recordings that require some rather fiddly copyright clearance. Just like the last album, and indeed pretty much anything I do, I haven’t got the slightest idea what it will sound like or what the end result will actually be, but let’s just say I wasn’t hanging out in the basement of the British Library just to admire the intricacies of their conveyer-belt book transit system (although it is impressive). The Howlround line-up has expanded to include Mr. Chris Weaver of Resonance FM and Oscillatorial Binnage-fame and together I’m hoping we’ll concoct something rather special, once we’ve knocked our collection of broken tape machines into some semblance of functionality. Oh, for the days when I could just walk into a studio, spool up and get cracking!

• A couple of new, limited-edition releases are pending on my low-rent vanity label The Fog Signals, plus hopefully a second full-length album with Guy J. Jackson, if there’s time. His stories get ever darker and weirder! As it happens, both releases feature one Hills Have Riffs, who plays guitar, mandolin, whistle and, as you can see below, a selection of pens. Another talented fellow.

• A brand new mini-series for Resonance FM, ‘Looking Good, Feeling Great’: How to I describe it? Well, it’s a sort of history of aspirational, instructional and educational vinyl compiled into a series of mixtapes by being ruthlessly cut up and thrown about in a most ignoble manner. The results are by turns fascinating, hilarious, nostalgic, deeply weird and – perhaps inevitably – a touch sleazy. Tx dates coming very soon, naturally I’ll be bringing them to your attention…

Not a bad start. Other, lesser resolutions include:

• Reminding myself that I really don’t need any more records that attempt to teach me the bongos while hypnotised.

• Crafting better analogies (that pipe-related paragraph above went completely off the rails. Sorry about that.)

• Finally getting rid of those people who brandish I-pods at me while I’m DJing by throwing the bastarding thing out the nearest window. And then throwing them out after it.

• Developing my upper-body strength in order to facilitate the throwing of i-Pod-owners out of windows.

• Coming up with a DJ name as classic as ‘Martika’s Bitchin’!’ 

• To stop collecting things just because I can’t quite believe they exist. For example:

Seriously, what kind of world are we living in where this kind of publication is given the green light? Although in a curiously topical twist, the first joke that jumped off the page at me (well, it sat up and begged at least) was How does JR rate Jimmy Saville?  The highly dubious likelihood of Larry Hagman actually fostering an opinion of the erstwhile host of Jim’ll Fix It or indeed regularly dropping everything to score some cheap scouts-on-roller-coaster jollies is casually passed over, and the punchline far, far too dismal to render here. But sitting in a Maida Vale studio this week hearing Hamlet’s stirring speech regarding there being ‘more things more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’, I found myself imagining that in these words the great Bard was surely anticipating a distant future where the fortunes of two completely unrelated fellows, one an American with shoulder-pads and the other a pervert in a shell-suit could be needlessly and incomprehensibly slammed together. In a joke book. It’s no wonder Ophelia went bananas.

A final few resolutions:

• To coin a new phrase or expression to describe that thing where one presents a photograph on a digital camera to elderly relative, only for them to exclaim ‘Aww, isn’t that lovely – Oh, wait, where’s it’s gone?’

• To stop updating my website in the small hours of the morning when my ability to construct a coherent sentence goes completely belly-up, and I find myself going off on lengthly tangents about pointless and emphemeral pop-cultural backwaters. (As you can see, that one’s off to a flying start.)

• And lastly, to hunt down and punish every single person involved in the making of THIS:

Yes, friends, if you can think of a better demonstration of just how irredeemably screwy our world has become than the spectacle of Michael Ball challenging Brian Connelly to an obstacle-course race on prime-time afternoon television with the help of a mobility scooter formation display team; before the latter embarks on a carefully choreographed ‘spontaneous’ freak-out, let’s hear it. Seriously, get in touch. And you, Jim Sneardon are a disgrace to the uniform!

Only obscurist, limited edition pieces of sound art can save us now. Which, handily, is exactly what I’ve got planned for the coming months.

Best foot forward, then…

I know I promised that I wouldn’t pester you again until 2013, but in wishing you all the best and winding up my affairs until the close of the year, I completely forgot to mention one final appearance on the national media, namely this week’s edition of Radio 3’s ‘Between The Ears’, Saturday 29/12 at 21.15, looking back one final time at my adoptive home until last summer, Bush House.

I’m rather proud to reveal it’s my second visit to this hallowed channel in the space of a couple of months, as a recent edition of highly-regarded alternative music programme Late Junction very kindly broadcast an entire side of ‘Ghosts of Bush’! How could I have neglected to mention this before now? I really must hire a publicist in the new year. In the meantime, here’s the programme information that I’ve lazily copied and pasted from the Radio 3 website in order to bulk out this post:

Bush House, once the buzzing home of the BBC World Service, now stands empty and silent, stripped of fixtures and fittings. Shortly before the building was handed back to its landlords, Between the Ears invited former Bush House broadcasters to revisit their offices and studios, for a final glimpse at significant spaces in their lives.

Yuri Goligorsky, formerly of the Russian Service, returns to the site of the Bush House dormitory, where night-shift presenters were offered a bed – although Yuri found the snoring unbearable. He also remembers one of the landmark programmes he produced – a phone-in with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, broadcast live to the Soviet Union.

Hamid Ismailov takes one last look at the small office where he was once the first and – at that time – only Uzbek in the building, and Michael Goldfarb recalls the unique sound-world of the building, with its many languages, signature tunes, and hardened smokers.

Between the Ears also hears Bush House memories from correspondent Mark Tully, Irini Roumboglou of the Greek Service, which was closed in 2005, and Najiba Kasraee, once of the Pashto Service. Bush House studio manager Robin [The Fog] reveals how he captured and mixed the sounds of the building’s marble stairwells, and composer and musician Matthew Herbert, now director of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, reflects on Bush’s unique sound world – and why it’s vital to record it.

The bounder! Once again I am pipped to the post by that dastardly Mr. Herbert! I might actually have to start referring to  him as my ARCH-NEMESIS. Particularly as that whole Today Programme Incident back in the autumn proved to be the most incredible blessing in disguise. I must say, though, I do think I’m slightly more at an advantage to discuss the ‘sound world’ of Bush, having spent six months preserving it (rather than 10 minutes – Ooh, I’m a bitch)!

As for my own contribution, I was interviewed for the programme and put a nice high-quality WAV file of the Ghost Of Bush album at the disposal or producer John Goudie; but I have no idea how much or how little of either actually made the final cut.

Why not tune in here on Saturday 29th at 21.15 to find out?

Those of you wondering why Mr. Chris Weaver and I were forced to cancel our recently-mooted ‘Ghosts Of Bush Live’ extravaganza please take note:

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During four days of frenetic scrubbing and spooling, our equipment came to the attention of Chris’ cat ‘Missy’, who appears to consider herself something of an expert in tape manipulation. Sadly, even her finest efforts (documented above) were not enough to get the machines match-fit in time for our planned show on the 21st, and so to our great regret we were forced to cancel and spend several hours sulking. I mean, honestly: of the eleven reel-to-reels we had managed to accumulate, including two from Bush House; not a single machine was found to be in a state coherent enough to guarantee a decent performance.  What are the chances of that, I wonder? The four that simply refused to work from the outset were at least reliably consistent in that fact, but the remainder teasingly kept us guessing throughout with an annoying game of try-and-guess-if-we’re-still-working-cat-and-mouse (no pun intended). Thoroughly tiresome.  However, a spot of internet trawling has turned up a chap somewhere in Sussex who reputedly services elderly machines while demonstrating their mechanics and serving tea, which certainly sounds like my idea of a day out. Let’s hope he can be of some assistance before our next proposed gig in February. Fingers and paws crossed…

On a more definitive note I can confirm that the third pressing of ‘The Ghosts Of Bush’ is now available and looking better than ever, with a spine sleeve and gorgeously appropriate white vinyl, the colour of ghosts, snow and all things wintry. It’s available now from Boomkat.com and indeed has made their much-admired end-of-year charts and their best-sellers list! I’m also flattered to reveal they’ve asked me to supply an end-of-year chart of my own. 2012 having being such an amazing year for music (though not, it must be said, for the universe at large), I was delighted to oblige and you can peruse my top ten here. It was a real effort to compile and I was forced to leave a lot of great records out, but I can assure you that everything here is an instant classic. And I promise I didn’t just put Chips For The Poor in at number two because I remixed them, although that was one of the more pleasurable activities I engaged in over the past twelve months.

Anyway, I’m writing this up north ensconced in the bosom of  the family pile and using an increasingly temperamental internet connection, so this will probably be my last post of the year, and before we all give ourselves up to excessive seasonal festivity I wanted to thank you all so much for the huge amount of support  I’ve received in 2012, from crate-diggers, sound fanatics, DJs, writers and bloggers as well as friends new and old. It’s been an embarrassment of riches and I’d like to wish every single man-jack of you a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hopefully see you for more fun and games in 2013, where I’m looking forward to unleashing a recently-completed new series for Resonance FM, and a second Howlround album, provided the cat can get our spools up and running in time. Get cracking, Missy….

Seasons Greetings,  

RTF x

In the recent dramatic whirlwind of trips to Brighton, clandestine visits to the bowels of the British Library, finishing my new series for Resonance FM (coming soon) and of course my current day job of pretending to be a tree, teapot or set of creaking bedsprings at the behest of Radio 4;  I totally forgot to mention the very exciting development in this month’s Record Collector magazine:

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A very complimentary review by Mark Brend, who praises the album’s ‘aural ectoplasm’ and awards it FOUR STARS! That’s one more than Flying Lotus and two more than Mick Hucknall!  An accolade that, according to the other reviews in the issue puts me on an equal footing for the first and quite possibly final time with such luminaries as 10cc and Cradle of Filth. Praise indeed.

Mark also has a new book out ‘The Sound Of Tomorrow: How Electronic Music Was Smuggled Into The Mainstream’, recently published by Bloomsbury. Currently essential bedtime reading here at Foggy Mansions, I highly recommend you click here and get your order in. Actually, finish reading this bit first. Then click.

I should also say a huge thank you to Joseph Stannard, Kemper Norton and Silver Pyre for making last week’s Outer Church event in Brighton such a great night. I have taken the liberty of uploading my rustic and bucolic DJ set, which has been gaining some admiring glances from the late-comers, the stragglers and of course those poor fools who neglected to drop everything else and jump on a train:

In other news, my sources tell me that the third and quite possibly final pressing of ‘The Ghosts Of Bush‘ is almost upon us – I’m just waiting for the delivery. All being well, those of you who blinked while the first two pressings went on sale will be able to get a special delivery in time for the festive season and therefore enjoy a white Christmas, that being the colour of this edition’s vinyl. Almost as if I planned it. Which of course I didn’t.

I can also confirm that plans are currently afoot for a live ‘Ghosts’ performance during the festive season, in collaboration with Resonance FM’s Chris Weaver. For those of you who might be tempted to enquire how the bloody hell that’s going to work, the simple answer is: ‘At this stage I have absolutely no idea’. All I can tell you is that I spent most of this weekend locked in a studio in Eltham surrounded by a number of tape machines in varying states of decay, including one particular unit that, in a decidedly spooky twist, started running entirely by itself and then caught started smoking. Not to mention the tumultuous death of Isaac Newton. Very sad, and really very confusing…

…And the really crazy thing is that I found an ancient apple core trapped in the poor machine’s spools. What a nightmare of symbolism. Perhaps someone’s trying to tell me that it’s time to knock all this ghostly tape action on the head?

Well, apologies to the spirit world, but I have a deadline to meet. Though I realise that’s a poor choice of words…

Should you happen to be in the region of the South Coast this Friday, here’s a jolly event for your delectation:

Apologies for the rushed and hurried nature of this post. Will add further detail shortly. In the meantime,all questions can be answered at the Outer Church’s own home on the net which can be located here. Well, not all questions, obviously. Questions pertaining to this event.

See you Friday!

If you’re offended by scantily clad women or the colour orange, please look away now:

What’s the meaning of all this semi-nudity? Well, I was recently approached by the writer Sukhdev Sandhu (who you may remember wrote that very complimentary feature about The Ghosts Of Bush in last month’s WIRE magazine) and asked if I would be interested in contributing something to A Cathode Ray Séance,  the day-long celebration of the work of legendary screenwriter Nigel Kneale taking place this weekend in New York City. I certainly did and I certainly have!

I chose as my inspiration Kneale’s landmark 1968 TV play The Year of the Sex Olympics, which depicts a future society where the masses are kept sedated by a constant televised drip-feed of softcore pornography and lowest-common-denominator trash. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the play is credited with predicting the rise of reality TV, particularly such classics of the genre as Big Brother, Celebrity Love Island, Librarians Gone Wild etc. and is therefore arguably more relevant in the modern age than upon its release forty-five years ago. I mean I’m pretty sure back then you couldn’t buy a daily newspaper where the TV guide gave you a nipple count. Though I’d have to check….

My interpretation Glass Bodies is another collaboration with writer and artist Emma Hammond and with the exception of her monologue, is created entirely using processed samples from a single recording of late-night UK TV channel Babestation. For those of you unfamiliar with this televisual feast, it basically consists of one or more painted ladies dressed in impractical swimwear jiggling around on a mattress in the hope that someone will phone in and chat for the staggeringly reasonable fee of about £10 a minute. Goodness knows what you’re supposed to converse about. The debt they owe the work of Nigel Kneale, perhaps?

The track forms part of a limited edition compilation Restligeists, a cassette tape of ‘specially-recorded Knealiana’ available at the event itself, that also features The Asterism & Xylitol, Hong Kong In The 60s, Listening Center, Mordant Music, and The Real Tuesday Weld. A stellar line-up, but copies are limited, so don’t sleep if you want one!

Sadly, work commitments and the lack of a plane ticket means I won’t be able to attend, much as I’d like to. But for those of you in the vicinity, the event takes place this Saturday from noon at The Michelson Theater, Room 648, 721 Broadway, New York [at Broadway and Washington Place – here’s a map] and is free and open to the public. Here’s a quick run-down of what to expect, that I copied and pasted from the Strange Attractor website. Apologies for such laziness, but time grows short!

SCHEDULE

Midday: Introduction (by Sukhdev Sandhu)
12:15: Screening: The Stone Tape (1972, 90 min) (introduced by Dave Tompkins)
2:00 – Screening: Murrain (1975, 60 min) (introduced by Bilge Ebiri)
3:30 – Panel Discussion including Mark Pilkington and Will Fowler
4:45 – Screening: ‘Baby’, from Beasts (1976, 60 min)
6:00 – Screening: Quatermass and The Pit (1967, 97 min) (introduced by David Pike)
8:15 – Musical Performance: The Road (1963) – reading / live synthesiser and percussion soundtrack by Rose Kallal, Micki Pellerano and Mark Pilkington of a long-lost Kneale TV play

Nigel Kneale (1922-2004) was a visionary dramatist, a pioneering screenwriter-auteur, one of the most important British science fiction writers of the 20th century. In works such as the Quatermass trilogy (watched by one third of UK television owners), The Year of the Sex Olympics and The Stone Tape, Kneale forged singularly visceral and unforgettable fusions of horror, spooked thriller and Cold War-era weirdness that have captured the imaginations of artists and intellectuals as diverse as Pink Floyd, Monty Python, Greil Marcus, psychogeographer Patrick Keiller and novelist China Mieville. The radical sound designs these dramas deployed (often courtesy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop), allied to their prescient explorations of the eldritch fringes of auditory Albion, have attracted the attention of theorists such as Mark Fisher and the Ghost Box record label.

A Cathode Ray Séance is a day-long celebration of this hauntological icon whose work, even though it paved the way for well-known series such as Doctor Who, is less familiar to American than to British audiences. Staged by the New York-based Colloquium for Unpopular Culture (Kiss Me Again: The Life and Legacy of Arthur Russell; Leaving The Factory: Wang Bing’s Tie Xi Qu – West of the Tracks) in collaboration with London’s Strange Attractor(, it will include rare screenings, talks by Kneale admirers, and a special musical interpretation by Mark Pilkington, Rose Kallal and Micki Pellerano of Kneale’s legendary-but-lost 1963 drama The Road.

To mark A Cathode Ray Séance, there will be available for sale copies of a very limited-edition book designed by Rob Carmichael (John Cale, LCD Soundsystem, Animal Collective ‘Crack Box’)and featuring contributions by a wide range of musicians, artists, curators and cultural theorists including Sophia Al-Maria, Bilge Ebiri, Mark Fisher, Will Fowler, Ken Hollings, Paolo Javier, Roger Luckhurst, China Mieville, Drew Mulholland, David Pike, Mark Pilkington, Joanna Ruocco, Dave Tompkins, Michael Vazquez, and Evan Calder Williams.

Initial copies will come with Restligeists, a tape of specially-recorded Knealiana by The Asterism & Xylitol, Emma Hammond & Robin The Fog, Hong Kong In The 60s, Listening Center, Mordant Music, and The Real Tuesday Weld.

PS I was also going to close by featuring a link to a full-length youtube video of ‘The Year of the Sex Olympics’ but someone appears to have removed it. Dashed thoughtless. Oh, well, here’s a video of some of the opening scenes at least. Sit back, have a brightener and enjoy:

This redoubtable fellow is Mr. Alex Wilson of the British Library, here taking delivery of the last remaining copy of The Ghosts Of Bush‘s original pressing (last seen fetching what Kool G. Rap might call ‘Bugs Bunny Money’ on Ebay) to add to their Sound Archive. This venerable institution contacted me recently to ask if they might take posession of a vinyl copy to include in their vast store of cultural treasures, and I was delighted and humbled to oblige; partly because of the honour of having my work preserved here long after I’ve shuffled off to that great fog patch in the sky and partly because the British Library has some recordings in it’s collection that I’m rather keen to lay my grubby mitts on…

In case Mr. Wilson looks familiar, I should tell you that as when not tending the archive for future generations, he is also co-founder and curator of the Public Information label; which for my money is one of the most exciting imprints around at the moment. Only a handful of releases old, but boasting work by almost-forgotten Radiophonic Pioneer Fred Judd, the ever-brilliant Ekoplekz and most recently this compilation of 70s and 80s tracks from the Parry Music Library in Canada, crammed full of breezy and optimistic vintage electronic doodles that all sound like they ought to be soundtracking a corporate video in heaven. It also wins my highly-coveted ‘sleeve of the year’ award for this little beauty:

Many thanks to Alex, Cheryl, Paul and Nigel for a warm welcome (and a free lunch!). The Sound Archive’s blog is well worth checking out, as is their ‘Secret Songs of Birds‘ CD. You won’t believe what a Grasshopper Warbler sounds like at 32% of it’s normal speed!

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While we’re on the subject of archives, I’ve dug rather deeper than usual into my own and put together this special mixtape of 78rpm records to celebrate my new-found immortality (of-sorts). I had originally issued this with the strict proviso that it was only to be played on the occasion of the listener’s 78th birthday, but I quickly realised there was no practical way of my enforcing this. Besides, I had a very excitable response on Twitter from someone pertaining to be the actual Sean Connery, and quickly realised that the world simply wouldn’t wait that long…

Over the past couple of months I’ve been lucky enough to receive an awful lot of what I’m almost tempted to call ‘fan mail’ (but won’t for the sake of modesty); as well as quite a number of messages from people interested in reviewing or discussing the ‘Ghosts Of Bush’ album for their magazine, blog, radio show, knitting circle et cetera. This included an email from one Etienne Noiseau, a French journalist who writes for the Syntone blog as well as LE BLOG DE LA CRÉATION SONORE, part of the online section of the magazine Télérama. Both of these websites look so interesting that I’m almost certainly going to brush up on my language skills in order to explore them further!

Unfortunately the aforementioned correspondence co-incided with what I think we might as well refer to as ‘Herbertgate‘, and as a result got rather buried at the back of my inbox. Despite my failing to properly answer any questions (for which I must apologise), he’s written a really nice feature on the album which the french-speaking quotient of my readership will find here.

For the rest of us who find our language skills to be sadly lacking, I’ve taken the liberty of running the article through that perennially unreliable engine of confusion and unintentional hilarity that is Google Translate. I expect you’re already familiar with this intriguing piece of online software, which at the merest touch of a button can transform a writer’s reasoned and thoughtful prose into absolute gibberish in almost any language in the world. Isn’t modern technology wonderful? I think it’s fair to say have Etienne’s words have not survived the process wholly intact, though I did find it most amusing to be described as ‘wispy’. Here is the bleeding corpse:

Sound design: the ghosts of the BBC
RADIO | Do you know Robin the Fog? This sound artist working at the BBC, where he hunts sounds at night. He released an album, The Ghosts of Bush. A document.

Pulsation organic, singing haunting, dark atmosphere, threadbare and sweet at the same time. Staining sound difficult to date. The Ghosts of Bush, however, is an album produced in 2012 by an artist under the pseudonym wispy sound: Robin The Fog.

Night, Robin The Fog works as director antenna “Bush House”, the headquarters of BBC World Service. In the morning, it saves the atmosphere of the workplace, offices deserts, caulked studios, halls gigantic acoustic reverberation. Then invests the reserves, made his bed on his antique machines, handles bands in all directions … and heritage work done on 12 July, the international radio has definitely left Bush House to other premises in central London .

British collective memory, this move does not without nostalgia. The World Service was a historical relay dissent Third World, as well as a cultural platform of multi-ethnic London. George Orwell was employed there (it was inspired by Bush House for the Ministry of Truth in 1984), General De Gaulle spoke to the French there, Paul McCartney young Soviets. Bush House is a mythical place that has sometimes haunted said. Robin The Fog architecture resonates like an old abandoned body. Reconnecting with creativity house, it also pays tribute to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the legendary studio in the ’60s, a generation nourished and futuristic sounds fantastic.

September 13, information on the antenna launched the BBC had the effect of a small bomb: the rebirth of the Workshop is announced, with the amazing Matthew Herbert its controllers. Known for its concept albums musiquettes electro, Herbert made from samples of atmospheres nightclub or noises pigs. This exciting news is however tinged with a shadow: the first order is entitled to Herbert Bush House and is based on an approach similar to Robin The Fog: a tribute to the sound of the BBC building. Shameless plagiarism or unpleasant coincidence? Reassured by the sales of its fan vinyl and Matthew Herbert, Robin opted for fair play. As he looks forward to the next stirrings of New Radiophonic Workshop. For now, his Ghosts of Bush continues to haunt us.

The 26/10/2012 at 19:59
Etienne Noiseau

Many thanks to Etienne for writing such a complimentary article (and for predicting that my attempts to translate it using dodgy online software would ‘surely rock’!), I urge you to go and check out Syntone and Télérama if you haven’t already done so. Thanks also to Mr. Rob Allanson for taking the above instagram picture of the second, green edition of the album, which as mentioned before, sold out in about five days. There will almost certainly be a third pressing, but those of you who haven’t  yet picked up a copy might have to be extra patient this time. Stick with me, though, I won’t let you down…

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It is with great pleasure that I hereby present the podcast of last Saturday’s edition of OST on Resonance FM, a two-hour special devoted to the many faces of BBC Records, compiled and presented by myself in my capacity as the corporation’s ‘Resident Hauntologist’. In response to your demands I’ve included a full tracklist too.

(Or carry it with you by choosing a download here.)

I’ve tried to steer clear of anything instantly recognisable, but there’s some truly fabulous stuff buried in this mix – songs, voices, sound effects, girl guides, home movie musics, steam trains in stereo, church bells (not an entire LP’s worth, though I could have easily managed it!), hi-fi maintenance tips, how to offer someone fruit in German, and of course a generous portion of Radiophonic nuggets, some of which will hopefully come as a surprise. It’s sometimes hard to believe just what a wide variety of weird and wonderful things BBC Records were putting out in its 60s and 70s heyday; and harder still to believe that any label could be responsible for both Keith Harris and Orville and ‘Sounds Of Death and Horror’. Then again, perhaps it’s not so hard after all…

As there was so much to get in, I’ve done quite a bit of mixing and the occasional gentle edit here and there; but nonetheless the vast majority of what you’re hearing is fresh off the vinyl and unmolested. Although I’m sure many of you will automatically assume I was trying to be wacky by juxtaposing a choir of monks with the sound of a missile exploding, in actual fact that’s exactly how it appeared on Sailor: A Portrait in Sound of the British Navy, a 1978 LP which must be one of the most quietly bizarre records the BBC ever released. I’ve used three cuts, including the rather lovely ‘Sea Fog’ and ‘Reqium’, which once again finds another settling for Dick Mills eternally haunting ‘Adagio’. There’s an awful lot of Dick amongst these tracks, which surely proves just how much of a Radiophonic cornerstone he really was.  He also turns up during Robert Dougall’s attempt to explain the dangers of loud-speaker phasing (the track used is ‘Thomas the Rhymer’) and if that isn’t his voice announcing ‘bubbling, musical, sound one’ on the Off-Beat Sound Effects LP, then I shall record the sound of eating my own hat and donate it to the BBC Grams Library.

Personally, I find a number of the most affecting moments here come courtesy of the Some British Accents and Dialects LP from 1971. It consists of thirty-odd recordings of voices from different parts of the UK speaking on various topics. Some reminisce over childhood, some describe local traditions, others tell stories and one chap recites a poem in Geordie. Often funny, curious and even strangely moving (particularly the ‘Welsh Ugly Duckling’), it’s a perfect time capsule of Britain in the 1970s, although there is frustratingly no biographical information about these people at all on the strictly functional cover. My favourite is the genial prayer of elderly man who talks to God simply ‘as an old Cotswold’ likes to talk’. He expresses gratitude for the old tree in his back garden (‘a living sermon’, he says) and the apple turnovers baked by missus, while the only thing he would ask of his creator is that it doesn’t rain too hard on his allotment. ‘Thanks to you, I don’t do so badly for an 80 year-old’ he says and you can hear the smile on his face throughout this short recording, perhaps now his only legacy – so simple and yet so deeply affecting. I find myself coming back to this track a lot – it’s something all of us in our restless, temporary, quick-fix world could do with hearing once in a while.

Naturally I’ve book-ended the programme with extracts from The Ghosts Of Bush, partly to maintain the BBC connection and partly to celebrate the second edition selling out in five days flat! I’ve also included the soundtrack to my recent ‘Haunted Homes Under The Hammer’ video, which was made entirely using processed recordings from an old 1950s BBC transcription disc, just to prove I’m not resting on my resident hauntologist laurels.

So, there you have it. There are a few honourable mentions I must make for records not included in the programme, including Lyn Marshall’s ‘Everyday Yoga’, at least twenty different LPs devoted to various types of bird fowl (including an entire album’s worth of Coastal Waders) and a cover version of ‘The Good, The Bad & The Ugly’ performed by Edd The Duck which frankly deserves to be sealed in concrete and dumped in the North Sea. Despite their splendid and comprehensive catalogue of wildlife recordings, the BBC really does have very poor form when it comes to pond life releasing pop records.

Track Listing:

1. Howlround – Cold Space and Peeling Oxide (from ‘The Ghosts Of Bush’)
2. Paddy Kingsland – Scene and Heard
3. Play Away Cast – Superstition
4. Pete Winslow & The King Size Brass – Los Reyes del Bronse
5. Paddy Kingsland – Flashback
6. Malcolm Clarke – Arcadea
7. Lionel & Toni – If I Had a Hammer
8. John Baker – Milky Way
9. Pete Winslow & The King Size Brass – Waiting in the Rain
10. Paddy Kingsland – Vespucci
11. Delia Derbyshire – Mattachin
12. Jonathan, Spike, Al & Jeff – Stops and Starts
BBC Sound Effects – Sounds of Death and Horror
Bob Symes-Schutzmann – BR. No. 92220 ‘Evening Star’ (Extract)
John Priest -Lichfield, Staffs, Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary
13. Sylvia & Bernard Broere – N.Africa (vase drum, cup bells, tambourine, flute)
14. Pete Winslow & The King Size Brass – Saturday Sounds
15. Lionel – The Hippo Song
16. Pete Winslow & The King Size Brass – Girl on the Test Card
17. The Girl Guides – Timber Yell
18. The Girl Guides – Tyrolean Tramping Song
19. Off-Beat Sound Effects – Bubbling, Musical
20. Dick Mills – Computer Waltz
21. Off-Beat Sound Effects – Big Steam Engine
22. Dick Mills – “43”
Accents and Dialects – Geordie (Durham)
23. Geoff and Derek – The Fox and the Goose
24. Geoff and Derek – The Big Rock Candy Mountain
25. The Girl Guides – Cheelo-Cheelo
26. Sylvia and Bernard Broere – Italy (Fountain)
27. Sylvia and Bernard Broere – France or Belgium
28. Dick Mills – Ascending Asteroids
29. George Martin and his Orchestra – Theme One (aka Gale Warning)
30. Hi-Tech FX – Space Intruders
31. Simon Hancock – Computer Rant
32. Dick Mills – Invaders Rock
33. Robert Dougall – Loudspeaker Phasing
34. Roger Limb – Aerial Currents (from ‘Relaxing Sounds’)
Accents and Dialects – Cotswolds
Movement, Mime & Music – Dawn Chorus
35. Wie Bitte? – Programme 7, Band 1: Like and Dislike
Movement, Mime & Music – Fairground Music
Off-Beat Sound Effects – Objects Crashing
36. Simon Hancock – Singularly Simon
37. Robert Dougall – Wow and Flutter
38. Dick Mills(?) – JDC Background (Duke Diamond, Radio 4, 1973)
39. The Brownies – Mr. Banjo
40. Dick Mills – Ascending Asteroids
Accents and Dialects –  Cornwall / Isle of Man
41. The New Philharmonia & Chorus – Neptune, The Mystic (Sea Fog)
42. The Girl Guides – Images and Reflections
43. Sailor: A Picture in Sound of the Royal Navy – Requiem (inc. Dick Mills‘ Adagio)
44. Bernard Broere – General Use: Piano Music
45. Spaceship Landing (Hi-Fi Weekly’s Demo Disc)
46. John Baker – Structures
Accents and Dialects – London (Cockney)
47. Delia Derbyshire – Towards Tomorrow
48. Dick Mills – Force of the Universe
Accents and Dialects – Birmingham
49. Monastic Choir of Hauterive Abbey – Veni Creator Spiritus (aka ‘Missile’)
50. Dick Mills – Purple Space and White Coronas
Accents and Dialects – Welsh (North)
51. Robin The Fog – Haunted Homes Under The Hammer
52. BBC Sound Effects – Combat: Karate
53. Howlround – Shortwave Fishtank
54. Howlround – The Haunted Handle / Stairwell Reprise

Thanks for listening! Time for bed…