The pandemic parade of hastily assembled, but immensely rewarding, label comps continues with this bountiful batch from British imprint Ghost Box, a fine thing to haunt your household with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They describe their roster as \u201cartists exploring the misremembered musical history of a parallel world\u201d, and their collective sensibility might be summed up as a vision of electro-pop fed by everything but pop music proper. Lines can be drawn, if you want, to library tracks for commercial licensing, mood music and self-help tapes, nature documentaries and archival audio files, sound installations in the loft district, even the auditory by-products of office tech \u2013 all as though the Top 40 never even existed. Ingredients are of course usually stewed in a thick, rich psychedelic sauce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ToiToiToi\u2019s \u201cDie Dosis macht das Gift\u201d validates the label\u2019s name, popping the lid on a Pandora\u2019s Box of noisy phantoms before resolving itself as a slice of schizophrenic exotica. Elsewhere, equally enjoyable are the clockwork synthwave of Pye Corner Audio\u2019s \u201cPhoton Dust\u201d, The Advisory Circle\u2019s aspirational and\/or motivational \u201cForward Motion\u201d, and the vaporous dream-folk of Beautify Junkyards\u2019 \u201cA Garden by the Sea\u201d and Sharron Kraus\u2019 \u201cTell Me Why\u201d (hope you like recorders). Justin Hopper\u2019s spoken-word bits are fun, as are a pair of new tracks from the recently resurrected Plone, analog investigators in motion again after 20 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n