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FULL CIRCLE TV

Reading far too much into the omission, it seems to symbolize a slight simmering down of the aforementioned hauntological lampoonery. The introduction to that album simply states “The Advisory Circle”, and doesn’t follow it up with a slogan or mission statement.

In Ways of Seeing from 2018, it began to take on more of a traditional early 1980s library music feel, a little more background Windham Hill than intriguingly mystical Ghost Box. Still, as the hype faded and the hauntology genre codified over time, so did Advisory Circle’s sound seemingly start to tighten up and streamline. One imagines it could have been sampled from a call on Edison’s spirit phone, with which the infamous inventor dabbled during the 1920s (and was subsequently expanded on by Frank Sumption to create the contraption known as a “ghost box” in the early 2000s). Yet, the title track is a haunting transmission, sounding like a broadcast from beyond the grave, as a soft-spoken English gentleman wishes his wife well until they may be together again.

Naturally, it came off more pastoral than her earlier work. He practically paraphrases Other Channels.īrooks envisioned her 2014 album, From Out Here, as a kind of computer-interpreted countryside where things aren’t quite right.

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Combining the humor of Monty Python and Doug Kenney-era National Lampoon with the Penguin House-tinged imagery of Julian House, who designed the cover art for Full Circle as well as the rest of the Ghost Box catalogue, Littler spent a chapter of his 2014 book Discovering Scarfolk discussing the unusual television programming in the imaginary, occult-saturated northern England town. It leans the album into the kind of hauntology mythology later built upon by Richard Littler in Scarfolk.

FULL CIRCLE TV

Similarly, following an ominous TV call sign, 2008’s Other Channels begins with an informational proclamation that “Civil Defence Is Common Sense”. We make the decisions, so you don’t have to.” Mind How You Go and 2011’s As the Crow Flies begin with rather cryptic yet official-sounding announcements that establish a ministerial tone: “The Advisory Circle. Brooks has contributed almost as much to the Ghost Box recording archives as Belbury Poly and the Focus Group, the pet projects of label founders Jim Jupp and Julian House, respectively.Įarly in her career, Brooks captured the ominous, eccentric tone of extreme government safety advisory films nestled in kosmiche synth programming, resulting in such evocative, whimsical, haunting works. Since then, she has issued five proper full-lengths, alongside a couple of albums with Ed Macfarlane and Edd Gibson of Friendly Fires under the banner of the Pattern Forms. It’s a loosely-knit aesthetic drawn from a sort of misremembered past, an alternative post-war British culture influenced by public disinformation films that, in their absurd way, make more sense than many of the earnest ones they made.Īfter producing several works under the cute name King of Woolworths, Brooks launched the Advisory Circle with a mini-album entitled Mind How You Go in 2005, which was later expanded and reissued in 2009.

Ghost Box rose to prominence after its founding in 2004 on the back of what would generally become known as hauntology. As one of the most prolific producers in Ghost Box’s history, Cate Brooks practically has her own ministry at the influential music and arts concern (or cult, depending on how far one goes down their rabbit hole).

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