Belbury Poly - From an Ancient Star

BELBURY POLY - FROM AN ANCIENT STAR (GHOST BOX)

Ghost Box owner Jim Jupp’s forays into 70’s themed electronica takes an interesting with the release of his 4th album, which takes onboard some interesting influences and welds them to existing ideas. His Belbury Poly project, which to my mind is as British as it’s possible to be, as it overflows with eccentricity, follows in the footsteps of electronic pioneers such as Delia Derbyshire, Bruce Haack and Raymond Scott, producing almost child-like melodies that never seem to move away from an irreverent mood, helped immensely by the analogue production.

“From an Ancient Star” starts with the cosmic grandeur of “From a Hidden Door”, which never really takes off, but Jupp then takes an unexpected twist with the medieval style opening of the album’s title track, segueing into a gorgeous synth which has some nice chord progressions on it. There’s then the sort of pastoral guitar work that one might associate with Bibio on “A Year and a Day”, which coupled with some dreamy keyboards and some spectral vocals demonstrates a hitherto unseen complexity in Jupp’s work. Whilst “The All at Once Club” passed me bay somewhat, we then have the eerie “Time Scale”, which mixes Richard Wahnfried’s Time Actor with the strings of Serge Gainsbourg in an amusing interlude. 

I have to admit that the analogue synths and forays into a particular melodic style Jupp employs began to grate somewhat, and it wasn’t until the joyful “A Great Day Out” that I began to take interest again. This employs dub rhythms with the sort of melodies one might hear in a BBC children’s program circa 1978. It’s a rather unusual collision, but to his credit Jupp pulls it off, and it’s the strongest track on the album. There’s a skanking feel to the archaic sound of “Remember Tomorrow”, the ghost of Roy Budd creeping through the Moog synths, and Klaus Schulze’s influence is apparent in the last track “Seed Ships”.

Its difficult to get away from the fact that Jupp’s use of certain sounds gives Belbury Poly an almost insignificant aspect to it, as if he deliberately wants it to be disposable, and the choice of nostalgic melodies, more associated with library music, only serves to emphasise that feeling. “From an Ancient Star” however has some very interesting ideas, not least with the inflection of certain styles that hint at a more complex direction for the future, and furthermore Jupp continues to colour his sound with a full palette of emotions and atmospheres.

Toby Frith